Certain images will always be with us. The flag raising at Iwo Jima of February 23, 1945 belongs to our collective memory as a symbol of everlasting glory. To our everlasting shame, however, comes an entirely different image: President George W. Bush tiptoeing through the tulips with the Crown Prince of Darkness.
This photo, of our president smooching and then holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, was taken April 25, 2005.
How the mighty have fallen from that generation to this generation.
News photographer Joe Rosenthal was there in 1945, snapped the flag raising, and won himself a well-deserved Pulitzer. Let's hope that the photographers and TV cameramen who caught the canoodling between Bush and his prince earn themselves no Pulitzer.
We must try to forget. President Bush represents us all. This was not our finest hour.
At the same time that our president was playing kissy-face with the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia was busy rounding up and arresting 40 Pakistani Christians. For what? For gathering in someone's home to pray. That is against the law. You are permitted to pray over there, but only if you are Muslim, as is the case throughout that land and many other such oily kingdoms. These are towns without pity for Christians, Jews and women.
Since when do we dip our flag to terror? Riyadh is the world capital of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. Exports include 9/11 (15 of them were Saudis), billions for mosque and campus incitement against Jews and Christians around the world, and an express train of Wahhabi jihadists to derail us in Iraq and to murder our heroic American soldiers. For amusement, they stage telethons over there, raising millions to fund Palestinian Arab suicide bombers, in case there's a let-up in bloodshed against Israelis.
Happy trails for Crawford; but not for the rest of us.
Did President Bush forget? We are supposed to be the United States of America, for crying out loud, the biggest and the best. In God We Trust, not their oil. Nations turn to us for leadership, strength and liberty, and it gives us no esteem to show ourselves spineless, weak and craven.
For that, we will always have Paris, and London. Over there, in England, the Association of University Teachers (AUT), a collection of 40,000 feebleminded academics, has decided that the only country in the Middle East that offers liberty to all, Israel, must be taught a lesson, hence, a boycott, for starters, against Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities. Urging these measures (according to published reports) were professors Steven and Hillary Rose - people along with AUT who have chosen the path of Yasser Arafat and the vision of Adolph Hitler as their life's work.
In more news from what used to be "Great" Britain, child star Alan Rickman is producing a blood libel play at the Royal Court Theatre.
We should be different. We look to President Bush to keep us free and strong, to distinguish between friend (Israel) and foe (Saudi Arabia), to firm up our borders, so that only the right people, and not the wrong people, get in, and to fight terror wholeheartedly, not halfheartedly.
Colin Powell, while still secretary of state, never stopped playing racquetball with Prince Bandar, even after 9/11.
You do not fight terror by kissing up to terror.
Sadly, for all of us, we now have another date, April 25, 2005, and another photo, that will live not to our everlasting glory, but to our everlasting shame.
This photo, of our president smooching and then holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, was taken April 25, 2005.
How the mighty have fallen from that generation to this generation.
News photographer Joe Rosenthal was there in 1945, snapped the flag raising, and won himself a well-deserved Pulitzer. Let's hope that the photographers and TV cameramen who caught the canoodling between Bush and his prince earn themselves no Pulitzer.
We must try to forget. President Bush represents us all. This was not our finest hour.
At the same time that our president was playing kissy-face with the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia was busy rounding up and arresting 40 Pakistani Christians. For what? For gathering in someone's home to pray. That is against the law. You are permitted to pray over there, but only if you are Muslim, as is the case throughout that land and many other such oily kingdoms. These are towns without pity for Christians, Jews and women.
Since when do we dip our flag to terror? Riyadh is the world capital of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. Exports include 9/11 (15 of them were Saudis), billions for mosque and campus incitement against Jews and Christians around the world, and an express train of Wahhabi jihadists to derail us in Iraq and to murder our heroic American soldiers. For amusement, they stage telethons over there, raising millions to fund Palestinian Arab suicide bombers, in case there's a let-up in bloodshed against Israelis.
Happy trails for Crawford; but not for the rest of us.
Did President Bush forget? We are supposed to be the United States of America, for crying out loud, the biggest and the best. In God We Trust, not their oil. Nations turn to us for leadership, strength and liberty, and it gives us no esteem to show ourselves spineless, weak and craven.
For that, we will always have Paris, and London. Over there, in England, the Association of University Teachers (AUT), a collection of 40,000 feebleminded academics, has decided that the only country in the Middle East that offers liberty to all, Israel, must be taught a lesson, hence, a boycott, for starters, against Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities. Urging these measures (according to published reports) were professors Steven and Hillary Rose - people along with AUT who have chosen the path of Yasser Arafat and the vision of Adolph Hitler as their life's work.
In more news from what used to be "Great" Britain, child star Alan Rickman is producing a blood libel play at the Royal Court Theatre.
We should be different. We look to President Bush to keep us free and strong, to distinguish between friend (Israel) and foe (Saudi Arabia), to firm up our borders, so that only the right people, and not the wrong people, get in, and to fight terror wholeheartedly, not halfheartedly.
Colin Powell, while still secretary of state, never stopped playing racquetball with Prince Bandar, even after 9/11.
You do not fight terror by kissing up to terror.
Sadly, for all of us, we now have another date, April 25, 2005, and another photo, that will live not to our everlasting glory, but to our everlasting shame.