Tuesday, April 28, 2009

QOTD

Noemie Emery writes about the left's mooted "truth commission" in the May 5th Weekly Standard:
Let's get at the truth too about the word "torture," which to different people, means different things. Some think "torture" means standing on the 98th floor of a burning skyscraper and realizing you have a choice between jumping and being incinerated. Some think torture is being crushed when a building implodes around you. Some think torture is not thinking you might drown for several minutes, but looking at burning buildings on television and knowing that people you love are inside them. They remember that being crushed, incinerated, or killed in a jump from the 98th story happened to almost 3,000 blameless Americans (as well as a number of foreigners), and that 125 Pentagon employees were killed at their desks, while many survivors suffered terrible burns. They think the choice between stopping this from happening again by slapping around or scaring the hell out of a cluster of brigands, or leaving the brigands alone and letting it happen again, is a no-brainer. . .

The first job of a president is to safeguard his country and fellow citizens, which Bush did, to the apparent dismay of the opposition. Usually, an investigation takes place after someone has failed in his duty, to find out what went wrong so that it can be changed and improved on. But no attacks on U.S. soil in the seven-plus years between September 11, 2001, and January 20, 2009, is a record of success. Do the Democrats want to find out what went right, and then change it, to avoid repetition? The way that they're going, they probably will.

2 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

"The first job of a president is to safeguard his country and fellow citizens."

Apparently not. Getting re-elected seems to be taking precedent.

@nooil4pacifists said...

This still is one of the most admirable things about George W. Bush--he went to war for the sake of the country regardless of what it would do to his chance of re-election.