From Peggy Noonan this morning We can’t fire the president right now, so we’re waiting it out:
We hire them and fire them. President Bush was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.
That’s the deal. It’s the real “grand bargain.” If you are a midlevel Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can’t take care of–the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part. You meet your part of the bargain. You work, pay your taxes, which are your financial contribution to making it all work, you become involved in local things — the boy’s ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can handle within your ken, and give the big things to the president.
Please set down your popcorn America and listen up. Presidents are not the CEO of America’s national security; they are, for the allotted time, the Commander-in-Chief.
For nearly 30 years, the American people have failed to fight the rise of Islamic fascism via a remote control will to fight. We tune in only long enough to adjust the volume or change the channel, to deploy and redeploy America’s TV troops before heading off to the mall, beach, or backyard barbeque.
Only, what America keeps attempting to capture on its VCRs does not replay; America’s troop were not and never will be on TV — we serve, sacrificed, and lived or died for real. No dead American — thousands of civilians and thousands of soldiers — that died at the hands of Islamic fascists since 1979 will replay.
They only thing new about the ‘normal’ so many wish to return to — the return to forcefully fooling ourselves into again believing law alone makes us safe from our enemies — is the date.
If we lose this war, the people subjugated by tyrants will be us, the liberty lost forever will be ours, and no remote control will ever bring back the America so many gave so much to win and keep.
