Whatever It Takes
I was just having a conversation with the BF the other day about how the infighting and finger-pointing among our current crop of political figures will unfailingly result in a backlash from a public impatient with the political culture's seeming inability to address a real and growing problem. Dinocrat does a good job of summing up this trend in the post: We hear growing impatience to end the war, by doing whatever it takes to win.
"Americans are by nature not imperialists. Americans do not want to rule foreign countries. But neither do they want to feel threatened by them . . . the rhetoric of democracy from President Bush was okay, but it has worn out its welcome, just as the embarrassing, strangely apologetic sucking-up about peaceful religion has. America does not need five years to wipe out this unworthy enemy. America does not have to put up with Islamofascists who intimidate our government from even calling them the Islamofascists that they are. We hear again and again from Americans who are sick of politicians who lie, kowtow and demonstrate weakness . . . the United States of America should have made it plenty clear over the last five years that the last people on earth that Muslim terrorists or Islamofascist ideologues want to screw around with is us -- (w)ars are meant to be won, not endured."
For a primer on How to Be a Politician and Piss Off Your Entire Constituency, read the whole thing.