[update: sullivan has a pretty sober follow-up "morning after" analysis offering qualified support and an interesting speculation. It should be weighed with what is below.]
From the blog of Andrew Sullivan:
Land Of The Afraid
A commenter responds to Sullivan:
This is the most salient thing you've written in some time.
"The way our politics of fear is now constructed, there is no limit to the costs involved in nation-building in every conceivable failed state that could be a safe harbor for Jihadists. We cannot have the adult conversation about how much terrorist damage the US should tolerate compared with the costs of trying to control this phenomenon at its source. We are not mature enough as a country to have that conversation. And Obama has decided it isn't worth confronting that question now."
This is indeed what this is all about. To avoid a potential terrorist attack we are willing to invade countries and conduct wars to the end of time, if necessary. We are a country of cowards. And we're not too bright, either.
Not a good combination of traits. And soon enough we'll be bankrupt. But it all goes to the point that we'd rather ravage the armed forces and bankrupt the nation than risk a bomb going off in a rail station in Philadelphia. We no longer are in a state where we can guarantee 100% that we can't get hit by a terrorist. That world doesn't exist anymore. The sooner we wrap our tiny little heads and hearts around that notion the better off we'll all be.
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Cowardice seems as too strong a charge as it would take deep courage to admit to this. But, it's also true that (thank God) I'm not a civilian facing bombs falling on me and mine. Nor, do I have the responsibility of managing an empire in decline.
Perhaps all that can be said follows a line from the play, "The Man From La Mancha" when Poncho says to Don Quixote, "When the glass and the rock decide to fight, I don't know who is right but I'm sure that it is not going to be good for the glass."
1 comment:
good one.
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