“Thinking Out Loud”

(About Maureen Dowd)

By Gerard Meister

In a piece intriguingly titled “White Man’s Last Stand,” Maureen Dowd (New York Times, July 15, 2009) gives the reader the benefit of her viewing America through the prism of contempt she holds for a Supreme Court “stocked with white men.” But now, with President Obama’s choice of a “wise Latina woman”, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, on the cusp of approval for elevation to our Supreme Court all that is going to change (hence the title). Still, there remain in the legacy of our great country a few points to be made on behalf of some white men, to wit

·        The gentlemen who wrote The Declaration of Independence

·        The men and boys that whipped the pants of the mighty British army

·        The gentlemen who conceived, wrote and had ratified our Constitution

·        The same group then gave us our Bill of Rights, which gives Ms Dowd her inalienable right of dissent

I believe the reader now knows where I’m coming from, but still, history demands a few more talking points: two world wars fought by my father’s and my generation to make the world safe for democracy; the Marshall plan which fed, clothed and housed half a billion people; Reagan’s tearing down of the Berlin wall which freed close to a billion people. True that (some) white men were the putative father of slavery, yet it is also true that several hundred thousand white men died fighting to end slavery.

            In a way I feel sorry for Maureen Dowd, I truly do. For all too many years she has been swimming in sea of journalistic bile, too busy struggling to keep from drowning in it or to pause, for even a moment, to smell the roses growing all around her. And one of the blooms she is missing is that over 40 million whites voted for Obama.  Ergo, it is statistically inevitable and with the certainty that day follows night that someday one of those white men will be eligible for a Supreme Court appointment! What then Maureen? What then?

(Published in the Sun-Sentinel’s Reader Forum, July 23, 2009)

• Guantamano. Here he couldn't even convince his own party to go along with closing the base and shifting the terrorists (a word, which for some implausible reason, has been absent from his vocabulary) to locations in our country. Thus giving the terrorists all the rights and privileges of the country they are trying to destroy. Additionally, putting those Islamic radicals in a federal prison will enable them to recruit new followers. It stands to reason that some of the prisoners might not be enchanted with spending the rest of their lives in a small cell, when instead, they could be sleeping with the seventy-odd virgins awaiting them in Seventh Heaven after their conversion.
• Korea. Big trouble here. Apparently, the North Koreans are not swayed by Obama, not his messianic hold on his followers or his apologies for American conduct for the last 100 years or so. What the North Koreans see is someone who, in the midst of the North's rattling their nuclear and missle sabres, is talking about cutting back (or scuttling altogether) our missle shield.
• Iran. If the Mullahs don't play their cards right Obama will sic the UN on them or invite Ahmadinejad to a one-on-one sit down. This is all part of Obama's vision of "What A Wonderful World," which is the same view Neville Chamberlain held until he died of a broken heart a couple of years after the debacle at Munich.
• Israel and the Palestinians. If Obama doesn't let the powers-that-be in that part of the world understand that the sine qua non for anything to happen is the right of Israel to exist. So far all I've heard is our president getting on Netanyahu's case about West Bank settlements.

   I could go on and on: his apologies in Europe and his reaching out to Castro and Hugo Chavez, all to no avail. Not a single additional troop from a European country has set foot in Afghanistan, nor has the bellicose statements from Castro or Chavez diminished one iota. What my personal 'Audacity of Hope' is that Obama wakes up and puts away the rose colored prism through which he views this world of ours and sees, before it's too late, the one in which we really live, the one that's frought with danger.

• Gitmo, branded a violation of American "values" by Obama cannot get his own party to agree to close the facility forthwith and the president, clearly uncertain of what to do with the detainees, is not making an issue of the setback
• All Gitmo trials were suspended by Obama back in January pending a review of the commission system. Apparently, the review gave Obama pause and trials by Military Tribunals have been reinstated. (Of course, the ACLU is threatening court action.)
• Along with reconstituting the Tribunals the Justice Department is seeking to detain some terrorist suspects indefinetly, even after Gitmo is closed, as someday it surely will.
• Obama, citing national security, reversed his decision to relase photos of alleged detainee abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Obama's Justice Department is seeking to shut down a law suit by ex-detainees against the CIA using the same doctrine of "state secrets" argument as the Bush administration
• And most importantly, the White House has used the same Bush arguments for the authority to continue warrantless wiretapping

Something to Think About

By Gerard Meister

I find President Obama’s position on our prospective interrogation techniques during his tenure as Commander in Chief to be frighteningly and dangerously naïve. It is delusional to think that Islamic terrorists will be swayed by the power of Obama’s messianic fervor or beguiled by his “reaching out” to Muslim nations. To wit, here is a hypothetical situation that our president will likely have to face sooner than later.

An important American icon (probably a woman) will be traveling somewhere and get led into trap, ala Daniel Pearl. So let us set the following hypothetical scenario: While on a diplomatic mission to Jerusalem, Hillary Clinton was abducted. Immediately thereafter a set of demands were aired on al Jazeera:

1.      All Islamic prisoners in American custody are to be flown to a location in Somalia within 48 hours

2.      Israel must issue a proclamation at the UN abandoning  plans to make Jerusalem its capital within 48 hours

3.      All Arab prisoners in Israel are to released within 48 hours

Further, the text of the terrorists’ demand goes on, “FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH ANY OF THESE TERMS WILL FORCE US TO DECAPITATE OUR HOSTAGE!”

Within minutes of the airing the Mossad delivers to the American Embassy a captured Hamas operative, whom the Mossad claims was the man who lured Mrs. Clinton into the ambush and that he (most probably) knows where she is being held. The operative has no rank, no serial number and not less than a dozen aliases known to the Mossad, yet the Israelis are not even sure of his real name.

So what should our president do? What do you think he would do? Name, rank and serial number, plus no loud music? Farfetched? I wish I could believe that, but I don’t. It’s only a matter of time before the president’s mettle is tested by the Islamic fanatics. And I hope, nay-I pray, that Obama will then come to understand the full nature of our enemy. Then, only then, and not until then will he pass the test.