Doing the Right Thing—Again

by Doug Patton

For each generation, there is a moment of awareness, when the man in the White House becomes “The President.” For
my parents, it was Franklin Roosevelt, the only man ever elected to the presidency four times. For me, growing up in the fifties, it was “Ike,” who embodied the optimism of the times. For my sons, born in the mid-seventies, Ronald Reagan was the president of their world.

For those who became aware in the nineties, the man in the White House was a sociopath who could not or would not answer a straight question with a straight answer, a man whose legacy will forever include quibbling over the definition of the word “is.”

To a limited degree, the whole country became accustomed to Clintonesque behavior; but for those of us who have known simpler
times presided over by more honorable men, the years 1993 through 2000 were a little like living through a bad episode of “The
Twilight Zone.” Nothing was as it seemed, and those things that seemed certain were relegated to the murky depths of public opinion
polls and political spin.

Thus, having a president like George W. Bush, who says what he means and means what he says concerning the use of American
military might, is something of a culture shock to some. These include the vacuous dolts of the Hollywood left. Surrounded by fawning sycophants who tell them constantly how wonderful they are, these make-believe heroes in a make-believe world savage those who
have the very real responsibility for defending a very real country.

There are our critics overseas, chief among them Gerhard Schroeder of Germany (a country we liberated, rebuilt and then helped
to reunify, thus making it prosperous beyond its people’s wildest dreams) and Jacques Chirac of France (a nation that owes its
very existence to our benevolence).

The irritating dissent of these two irrelevant “leaders” is to be expected. Both nations are riddled with anti-Semitism, and France has an economic interest in seeing Saddam Hussein remain in power.

However, the most infuriating and irrational criticism of American foreign policy came from President Nelson Mandela of South Africa. In
a speech last week, Mandela said this of the United States:

“One power, with a president who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust.”

Mandela went on to imply that President Bush is a racist because he is supposedly ignoring the United Nations, an organization
with a black man as its leader, in order to invade Iraq, a nation populated by “people of color.”

Mandela spent many years in a South African prison for the “crime” of opposing Apartheid, a despicable policy America helped to end. As president of a newly integrated South Africa, Mandela had an opportunity to lead his nation to freedom, equality and prosperity. Instead, he has reduced it to an economic shambles by embracing the same Marxist jingoism that has brought most of Africa to ruin,
thus destroying any credibility he might have had with clear-thinking free people.

So, what’s next on the agenda of the loopy left? Will Susan Sarandon, Alec Baldwin, Barbra Streisand, George Clooney and the ever-articulate Sean Penn join forces to bring Nelson Mandela to Hollywood for another speech, this time accusing the evil, racist George
Bush of destroying our own space shuttle in order to kill a black man and an Indian-American woman? Where does this nonsense end?

America will not colonize Iraq; we will liberate it. We will do the right thing again, and when the smoke clears, even the hate-America
crowd in Hollywood and elsewhere will reap the benefits of the action. Not that they will ever admit it, especially with a man in the White House who knows what he means when he says, “America is going to disarm Saddam Hussein!”

© 2003 by Doug Patton

Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a speechwriter and public policy advisor at the federal, state and local levels.
His weekly columns can be read in newspapers across the country. Readers can e-mail him at dpatton@neonramp.com.