Posted on 02/22/2003 1:09:31 PM PST by alan alda
According to a story in the New York Post, after a memorial service in Houston last week for the seven astronauts who perished in the Columbia disaster, President Bush embraced one of Ilan Ramon`s children and asked him to "tell me about your father."
He told Mr. Bush his father was a jet-fighter pilot who had bombed Iraq`s reactor at Osirak, near Baghdad. The president reportedly responded by saying, "Your father started the job and I am going to finish it."
Although the Reagan Administration went through the motions of publicly criticizing the Israeli move against the reactor, they privately welcomed it as having set back Iraq`s efforts to secretly develop atomic weapons. Thus, this remarkable exchange revealed once again how fortunate we are to have someone like George W. Bush in charge. Someone who cuts through all of the political gobbledygook and stays focused and recognizes that the post-9/11 world does not afford us the luxury of avoiding responsibility and relying on face saving, band-aid solutions.
Given all of the international pressures on him to lapse into a business as usual mode and defer any action respecting Saddam Hussein, he surely had a convenient way out. Yet he remains committed to do what most everyone really knows has to be done, but who may be fainthearted about taking the bull by the horns.
It is a similar resolve that has placed the U.S. firmly behind Israel`s uncompromising drive against Palestinian terror. We hardly think that a Clinton administration would have permitted Israel to stick to its plainly logical position of refusing to negotiate as long as the terror continues. Again, everyone knows that ascribing a political dimension to terror rewards it and encourages its continuation. Yet it took someone like Mr. Bush to call a halt to the Clinton policy of discounting violence and giving its perpetrators a seat at the table in the name of a papered-over political solution.
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