Last Friday, the news wires carried this from Newt, while speaking at an AEI event: a call for a US war now on both North Korea and Iran, now – re-labeling the War on Terror as a War on Radical Islam.
Now, let me get this right. Newt just broadcast into the whirlpool of our 24/7 21stC Media, a call for our economically troubled nation of some 300 million, to declare a War against Islam (the Arab Street will not hear the word "Radical") – the religious belief of 1+ Billion people, out of nearly 7 Billion currently crowding this planet? Did I read that right?
Would you take on three or four guys in a street fight tonight when you leave the restaurant at which you have enjoyed dining? Will we really force our truly exhausted military (and their beleaguered families) who have served 3, 4, 5 or more tours in Iraq and/or Afghanistan (literally, the ends of the earth) to now make ready for, not one, but, two more wars, one against a Hermit Kingdom, run by a little Madman who thinks he is John Wayne; the other against a huge, intensely mountainous country, run by a little Wise Guy in a cheap golfing, zip-up jacket, who is shilling for a bunch of Mullahs with attitudes, but not much else in the way of guts or brains?
We have not even fully assimilated our solemn societal obligation to care for and bring back to civilized life, all of the brave military people who have fought so hard , and continuously, for us since Fall 2001 – we don’t even know what the cost for that will be, nor do we have the money to pay it; now, Newt wants to plunge us further into this maelstrom? Now, of all times?
In my last piece here, "1937?" I alluded at the end to some who believe that the only thing that ended finally the Great Depression of the 1930’s, was America’s mobilized War Machine, which enabled us to win WWII and to eliminate fascist threats of world domination. Is Newt offering that (oh, so thinly disguised) as the solution to our seemingly intractable economic woes?
Do we now launch the Great Crusades, Part Deux (you and I may not see it that way, but brainwashed people without much education will) against 1+Billion Muslims, who, I guarantee you, will not hear or understand the qualifier that Newt used: "Radical?"
Is that really a wise use of our dwindling fortunes when we have so, so, so (think exponentially) many problems at home like our crumbling infrastructure and antique power grids, a Gulf full of small oil droplets made more toxic by dispersants, raging unemployment, foreclosure records set monthly, legions of twenty-somethings who just may miss out on life as we know it, millions of battle-scarred vets to nurse back to a semblance of a normal life and educate, and millions of aging Baby Boomers who are mowing through our society like the pig that was swallowed by the giant snake, and will soon be in need of social security, medicare and who are guaranteed to live longer and longer (some 50% of all people over 80, now suffer some kind of dementia, according to latest studies!) and so many other gaping problems? Is this our best, creative thinking? A bad joke, perhaps?
Newt used to be the Speaker of the House, once, but two heartbeats away from the Presidency. When he speaks, the world listens. Our constant drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan have already alienated exactly the people that we hope to persuade that our way of freedom, equality and capitalism’s many opportunities to better oneself, is preferable to their hijacked-religiously-justified, horrendous lifestyle (ask any woman you know if she would like to go live in one of those countries! – women still cannot drive in Saudi Arabia, for God’s sake!), a culture stuck somewhere in the 12th Century and badly in need of a Reformation.
And, now this?
I expected more of Newt, a brilliant Renaissance-like man. If he is pandering to bloodlust, shame on him. If he was tired and having a sloppy-mouthed day (it happens to the best of us), OK, there is still time to retract. But, if he really means it, God help us all.
I keep having this feeling that life, as we know it, has gone Through the Looking Glass in this first decade of the 21stC that we are busy completing trying to live through. Well, Newt just invited us all to the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. Please RSVP: that you don’t want to attend, and, what’s more, that we really need an injection of rationality and good old common sense right now, a commodity in short supply in these troubled times, not a red-meat declaration of war on the world’s Muslim population which outnumber us 3+:1.