The boys at the WSJ are shocked, shocked that political correctness is going on in this country

Rick U. writes:

Here is Bret Stephens in today’s WSJ (“Airport security and our incompetent civilization”) pointing out the folly of political correctness in our society. I don’t agree with every reference he makes, but he does make the salient point that war and security require tough choices. I remember during the campaign Obama was constantly saying; “America is less safe today then we were on 9-11,” and that his administration was going to fix it. If the people Obama has trotted out since Christmas to explain the attack and the response are any indication of the administration’s “best and brightest,” we can be sure that they will make the best political choices and nothing more.

LA replies:

Brett Stephens and his fellow neocons and Bushites are part of the problem. They’re the ones who for years threw the American people into hopeless intellectual confusion on this issue by telling them that we’re in a “war” against a deadly, totalitarian enemy who intends our destruction, but that the co-religionists of this deadly enemy belong to a “religion of peace” and that we must bend over backwards and punish ourselves in order to avoid the slightest hint of discrimination against the followers of this religion of peace. It was the Bushites who said we must instantly report any suspicious activity in airports, and who then charged people with discrimination for doing so. How does Stephens expect Americans to think clearly about the nature of the enemy and take serious action against him, when he and his fellow Bushites has said that the enemy is our friend and just wants democracy and that any truthful statements about the nature of this enemy are “condescending” and “racist”?

Yes, Obama is much worse than Bush. But he is only taking to its logical conclusion the politically correct DENIAL OF THE REALITY OF ISLAM that the Bush administration and the neocons imposed on us for seven years.

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James N. sent this comment before the above exchange was written:

This is the essence of the Bush Doctrine. Afraid to attack the Saudi Arabia-Yemen-Pakistan coalition which is our mortal enemy, George W. Bush decided to pretend that they were our friends. Needing an easy victory, he chose Saddam (who WAS wearing a big “kick me” sign after 9/11). After choosing Saddam, his liberal ethos made him devise the fiction of an “Iraqi people” (who do not exist, as such) longing for democracy as the casus belli. This led directly, adopting whole the “hearts and minds” fantasy from our (disastrous) Vietnam strategy, to McChrystal’s Afghanistan plan—let them blow up mothers of three to show we’re serious about befriending our little brown brothers.

The war with Arabia-Pakistan has yet to begin. We are immeasurably weaker than we were right after 9/11. And craven and foolish though Obama is, I must say, our present situation (including the ascension of Obama) is almost entirely Bush’s fault.

Rick U. writes:

I agree with your response completely! I am no Bush apologist, nor do I blame Bush for everything bad like James does above. Of course, the easy questions for Stephens would be: Why haven’t we been profiling since 9-11 or even Lockerbie? Why, only now, are you making the point that PC has reached some tipping-point in our society?

All that, however, is water under the bridge, and Stephens’s hypocrisy aside, anyone advocating the need to profile has my support.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 05, 2010 01:31 PM | Send