Punishment

Dallas.org | Allen Gwinn:

“I'm sitting here writing this editorial on a plane headed for Seattle and it got me thinking about things I don't like. It's the little things, really. For instance, I don't like having my 2 ounce bottle of hand sanitizer excluded because someone in TSAHomelandSecurity thinks some terrorist might try to blow up a plane with it. Call me narrow-minded, callous, whatever, but I don't like having to check my suitcase so I can carry my own toothpaste and shampoo.”

Allen Gwinn is irritable really because the Republicans lost the mid-terms. So, maybe I shouldn't psycho-analyze his choice of irritants to complain about. Sometimes a tube of toothpaste is just a tube of toothpaste. But bear with me. I think there's a connection between what he says he's irritated about and the root cause, those same mid-term elections.

It seems to me that one reason why the Iraq War has been such a disaster is because President Bush decided to fight this war on the cheap, on borrowed money, on borrowed sacrifice. Only days after 9/11, President Bush went on national television to tell Americans to keep going to DisneyWorld. That mixed message has been consistent ever since.

President Bush wants Americans to believe we are in a global war for civilization, a thirty years war, a war against Islamo-fascism. But no military draft to fight that war. No taxes to pay for it. No sacrifice at all. In fact, even a little inconvenience like having to check your toothpaste before boarding a plane is cause for complaint.

I have my own theory. You don't win wars without sacrifice. And you don't win elections by trying to win wars without sacrifice. Not forever, anyway. It caught up to the Republicans this time. And irritated Mr Gwinn enough for him to reveal that he is, as he suspects, "narrow-minded, callous, whatever."