"War American-Style"

Margaret brings to my attention this Tony Blankley column in yesterday's Washington Post:

.... The American personality might be characterized as an easygoing, sentimental, fair-minded ruthlessness. We tie yellow ribbons round the old oak tree at the same moment that we dispatch a wing of B-52s to carpet bomb the enemy. No murderer in the world gets as many appeals from his conviction as an American murderer. But when we have finished being fair (about the same length of time that a French murderer has to spend in prison before being released), we fry him. More recently, to show our gentle side, we have taken to killing our murderers with a painless lethal injection.

Even amongst our law-abiding citizens, we shock the Europeans with both our generosity and ferocity. We provide for every kid with a pulse to go to college, and then let them sink or swim in the workplace. American workers are lucky to get two weeks of vacation a year, and if an American is out of work, he is, after a few months, out of luck. In 1996 we repealed the right to welfare payments. Poor people in America have the choice of going to work or going to h*ll. A few nitwit school boards have outlawed dodgeball: But for most Americans dodgeball is a way of life — and we aim at the head....

Americans are fair, and more than fair. We will even accept a few unnecessary casualties to give the other side time to do the right thing. We understand the need to have as many Iraqis as possible friendly when the shooting stops. But even more importantly, we understand that if Saddam and his gang are still on their feet when the shooting stops, all the goodwill of the Iraqi people would be worth nothing.

And expending the lives of American soldiers in order to save the lives of Iraqi civilians is not a transaction Americans will look kindly on for long. Woe betide the American president who is not prepared to be as murderously ruthless as the American people when we are finished being easygoing, sentimental and fair-minded.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 03/27/03 08:56:28 AM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.