I rarely read Maureen Dowd anymore. I idolized her columns when I was in college.
Times change.
But she ends a column—ironically titled “The Wrong Stuff—about the current sniping about the candidates’ military experience, with this:
Maybe instead of refighting the Vietnam War while we’re still fighting the Iraq war, the candidates can figure out how to feed the world, find enough fuel for everyone, and, oh, yeah, catch that bin Laden fiend who’s running around free.
Funny, but I thought the primary duty of the president of the United States of America was running the United States, not feeding and fueling the world.
And let me tell you, even in my most liberal leftist college days, I didn’t think it was America’s responsibility to feed the world. I thought it was our responsibility to help the poorer nations figure out how to feed themselves. Or send famine-stricken nations food. But no, it’s not my president’s responsibility to figure out how to feed the world.
The world needs to learn how to pull on its big-boy pants and feed itself.
I definitely agree with you about your comment. It is time the United States stopped trying to help the world for a while and see what this world would do without our good-intenetioned assistance.
These crackpots on the Left constantly accuse the US of being “Imperialist” and of trying to become a global dictator, but then they state that the US is solely responsible for every problem experienced by every nation.
I’m sorry. If you’re going to dump the responsibility on me, then I’m claiming the authority as well. If you think I don’t have the right to act then don’t you dare try to hold me responsible for the results of inaction.
Ah, Meryl, you’ve fallen for it. I will explain this in detail some other time but for the moment–there is no “Maureen Dowd.” The construct is an elaborate practical joke the New York Times editorial staff plays on its readers.
And I’m curious how “running around free” is synonymous with “trapped in the wilds of Pakistan, unable to appear in public or use any electronic means of communication.”
Osama has the run of the cave and the mud hut village just down the slope from it. That’s running around free.
“oh, yeah, catch that bin Laden fiend who’s running around free.”
And how does she think that will be done, by asking the UN to declare a declaration to capture him, or, by US soldiers and planes attacking the hell out of the Pakistan border area he ‘lives’ in?
I am sure that she will find something else to bitch about if we actually make an all out effort to kill him and stray into another country.
The Left’s focus on bin Laden as an individual is bizarre. Can anyone really believe it would be “bin Laden caught…terrorism problem solved?”
For all their intellectual pretensions, leftists tend to have very concrete minds and to be weak at abstract thinking.
The job of the president isn’t even running the United States. It’s running the executive branch of the federal government.
Yeah, but now we’re getting into word games. The President is the de facto head of the U.S. Yes, he’s only one of the three branches, but we didn’t count on the Supreme Court to lead us after the World Trade Center was attacked. We didn’t want Congress to make a speech. It’s the President’s job to lead us.