Posted on 06/04/2008 7:46:37 PM PDT by jazusamo
Now that the two parties have finally selected their presidential candidates, it is time for a sober-- if not grim-- assessment of where we are.
Not since 1972 have we been presented with two such painfully inadequate candidates. When election day came that year, I could not bring myself to vote for either George McGovern or Richard Nixon. I stayed home.
This year, none of us has that luxury. While all sorts of gushing is going on in the media, and posturing is going on in politics, the biggest national sponsor of terrorism in the world-- Iran-- is moving step by step toward building a nuclear bomb.
The point when they get that bomb will be the point of no return. Iran's nuclear bomb will be the terrorists' nuclear bomb-- and they can make 9/11 look like child's play.
All the options that are on the table right now will be swept off the table forever. Our choices will be to give in to whatever the terrorists demand-- however outrageous those demands might be-- or to risk seeing American cities start disappearing in radioactive mushroom clouds.
All the things we are preoccupied with today, from the price of gasoline to health care to global warming, will suddenly no longer matter.
Just as the Nazis did not find it enough to simply kill people in their concentration camps, but had to humiliate and dehumanize them first, so we can expect terrorists with nuclear weapons to both humiliate us and force us to humiliate ourselves, before they finally start killing us.
They have already telegraphed their punches with their sadistic beheadings of innocent civilians, and with the popularity of videotapes of those beheadings in the Middle East.
They have already telegraphed their intention to dictate to us with such things as Osama bin Laden's threats to target those places in America that did not vote the way he prescribed in the 2004 elections. He could not back up those threats then but he may be able to in a very few years.
The terrorists have given us as clear a picture of what they are all about as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis did during the 1930s-- and our "leaders" and intelligentsia have ignored the warning signs as resolutely as the "leaders" and intelligentsia of the 1930s downplayed the dangers of Hitler.
We are much like people drifting down the Niagara River, oblivious to the waterfalls up ahead. Once we go over those falls, we cannot come back up again.
What does this have to do with today's presidential candidates? It has everything to do with them.
One of these candidates will determine what we are going to do to stop Iran from going nuclear-- or whether we are going to do anything other than talk, as Western leaders talked in the 1930s.
There is one big difference between now and the 1930s. Although the West's lack of military preparedness and its political irresolution led to three solid years of devastating losses to Nazi Germany and imperial Japan, nevertheless when all the West's industrial and military forces were finally mobilized, the democracies were able to turn the tide and win decisively.
But you cannot lose a nuclear war for three years and then come back. You cannot even sustain the will to resist for three years when you are first broken down morally by threats and then devastated by nuclear bombs.
Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.
On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.
---
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is www.tsowell.com.
At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure-- at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.
The choice between him (McCain) and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.
Sowell gets it right, yet again.
Yes, Dr. Sowell is absolutely right!
and if the obamama wins and what Sowell and so many of the rest of us can understand may well happen, does happen, I can only hope that people who sat back and did nothing to stop it - (the thumb suckers) are the first to suffer the consequences.
McCain is now a U.N. flunky.
I believe he WILL be president. I have no doubt what so ever.
God help us all
>> Our one window of opportunity to prevent this will occur within the term of whoever becomes President of the United States next January.
Woah...
It’s time for Freedom to put down the remote and get off the couch. Now that’s “change”.
Sowell speaks the truth. Boy, is it painful.
Looking that way.
waaaa!
what a baby
can’t have your way so you take your ball home and pout.
obama is fine with 1million babies a year murdered and is fine with iran getting nukes.
and you won’t vote against him.
at this point, yes. it is too much to hope for.
vote against obama.
Same old story every year. You *have* to vote republican or the world will end as we know it. I can’t believe how many times we all fall for it. sigh.
“at this point, yes. it is too much to hope for.
vote against obama.”
I can’t vote against BOTH liberals?
(note; I will vote for McIdiot if he quits urinating upon conservatives for the next five months and picks a conservative VP)
Well then your other choice is Obama, a Socialist . Use your head my friend.
Sorry. Not a thumb sucker.
I truly believe he has some mental issues which make him unfit for the Job.
I will vote R downticket all the way and am working for some R’s here.
Just can’t do it.
I still have some principles, McQueeg does not.
Kind of like Ground Hog Day, isn’t it?
You can holler and scream all you want.
As I said before, I will vote a straight R ticket.
McQueeg is No Republican I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime.
Bush is still CIC for seven or so months.
There was dancing and celebration in the streets of Mexico City too, on 9/11. We should never forget that fact either.
You can name-call all you want. I am a liberal, left-wing Democrat who is voting for McCain. I don't want to see a radical Leftwinger in the White House.
Amazing that so many freepers, who have basically been nowhere and done nothing, seem to know so much better than Thomas Sowell.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.