Sunday, June 25, 2006
Ten Things Flat Out Wrong - Number Nine
Number Nine - Who is enemy number one? The battles we choose — rather, the battles our politicians choose are flat out wrong.
They decide who our enemies are and they plan the fights accordingly. They appear to choose enemies that they think we can defeat fast. It must be fast; it can’t take long; the attention span of the American people is about eight days – max. Who would they choose to fight if they had the nerve to go fight a difficult fight?
It’s not that I’m claiming our current battles aren’t difficult. They are tremendously difficult, and most of our leaders are steering clear of them. They don’t endorse our battles, and they want us to forget that they did way back when we engaged in them. Why won’t a single one of them stand up and say, ‘we have bigger threats to worry about. We need to focus on defeating our greatest enemy. We must set an agenda to lead us out of the fear and the misery caused by our enemy.’
To me, that sounds a little like JFK setting an impossible agenda to reach the moon by the end of 1969. It seemed important at the time, and it started a spending escalation that seemed to catch Ronald Reagan’s eye later on, when he used space again to cause Russia to try to keep up with us. Turns out they went broke. Was that the plan? That one declaration by Kennedy when he told the world that the United States would set foot on the moon by the end of the decade stands out. In fact it stands alone.
Why aren’t agendas set to accomplish things today? They may take five, seven, ten years or more, but what if they are worthwhile agendas that could create leadership platforms viable for more than eight days? The bigger battles may take a while. Our leader couldn’t declare, ‘mission accomplished,’ after a few short months.
Please take just a few seconds to listen as I get back on track. I asked at the top of the page, ‘who should we fight.’ Or rather, ‘who would our leaders choose to fight if they had the nerve?’ It gets down to determining who our biggest enemy is today. We know of the thousands killed by guns, either domestic or terror every year. War takes lives every day. Murder rates climb and drop; car accidents take thousands of lives. Who or what should we fight? Cancer takes over half a million American lives a year. In 2006, it is estimated at about 570,000 deaths in the United States. We’re talking within our own borders this menace is killing our people.
Have you heard a politician stand up and say, ‘We are going to provide the funds needed to destroy Cancer by 2015?’ I’m giving some extra time here. It could be 2010. Somebody could say, ‘By the end of the decade…’ We’ve heard that before, and it cost a lot of money, but we did it. Getting to the moon wasn’t as important a mission, but it was a very difficult task that took committing the resources and manpower to make it happen. I believe we fall very short of attacking our true worst enemies.
Ask our leaders if the United States government is spending as much money to fight Cancer as it spends to fight Iraq.
Ask our leaders if it’s a battle they want to win.
Ask our leaders ‘who is killing more of our citizens every year, every day.’ Ask them if they don’t realize we have an enemy within our borders that will kill half a million of us this year.
Then ask them how much money our government invests in finding the cure. It’ll sound like a lot. Then compare it to the military, to spending for destroying, defeating, then rebuilding Iraq. Just ask one to stand up to the task. Ask one to declare, ‘By the end of the decade, we will…….’
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