The President is in Iraq saying farewell both to the troops that he’ll leave behind at the end of his term, and the flawed, but recognizably democratic government left in the place of the brutal tyranny his efforts displaced.
Proving that no country has a monopoly on the stilt-puppet set, an Iraqi journalist decided that the moment was fortuitous for expressing his own brand of dissent.
Two shoes thrown in rapid succession, and hizzoner quick enough from maybe 8 meters away to duck the first, and in between salvos show that trademark smirk that so enrages the BDS set, all equally convinced that he’s not paying enough attention to their feelings. Remarkably self-possessed, given the circumstances, including his “I’m alright” to the Secret Service agent that dutifully stepped into the line of fire after the ammunition had run out.
The Mesopotamian journo evidently felt ret proud of himself at his moment of sneaking truth to power, although his voice changed an octave or two as the Iraqi security guards hustled him out the door. Almost like he was suddenly concerned about what might happen next, and surprised that he hadn’t been universally applauded.
I guess they’ve got a ways to go. So do we.
Update: I guess, by comparison, that visit with the troops went fairly well.
More like this from the Af.
Perhaps this link will illustrate some of my concerns with the issue of ideological uniformity in academia.
http://proteinwisdom.com/pub/?p=2577
I work in an institute of higher learning in the PacNW (to remain nameless). I’m a computer tech, but I interact with the students some. From my perspective, the students are very liberal because that’s what they know and have been taught. We discussed current events as the elections came upon us and some of the past presidents, and most were completely ignorant of this country’s history — current history, let alone our greater history. We’ve had discussions about the Vietnam war and history of the war, Clinton’s presidency, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and the Iranian hostages, and they have no clue how those events really happened. They know the sound bites and slogans. Granted, they didn’t learn all that here, but in high school, too, but it’s a problem. A big problem.
Somehow, teachers have quit teaching history as the wonderful and messy story of our past and are teaching it as a painful litany of our failures. Who wants to remember that stuff? Dates and names and failures — ick. There’s so much more to history than that.
Hello Laurie and Welcome.
I started a response here, but before I got too far along I decided that I have to join Virgil in taking my time a little and work on it a bit.
I think your question is probably one of the best ones in a while. What is Postive Americanism? Wow, books could be written.
To me it’s everything that is great about America. But there’s more. So I’ll work on it.
Welcome again
Claudio
Laurie,
Another quick read as partial jumping off point@ “A Commonplace Blog” at:
http://www.dgnyers.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-universitiy-is-dominated-by-left.html
Blog is run by PhD in English at Texas A & M