There are two major stories in today’s news. One will receive will receive front page prominence in the media. The other, though far more important will be largely ignored.
So let’s start with the front page news.
Mitt Romney’s supporters and detractors have called upon the governor to pull back the curtain…to allow voters a peek inside the candidate. To allow voters to understand what Mitt Romney really believes deep within his core. Yesterday they got their wish.
Speaking to a private gathering of wealthy supporters Mitt Romney said the following:
“ There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. There are 47% of the people who are with him, who are dependent on the government, who believe that…that they are victims, who believe that the government has the responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, you name it. That’s an entitlement and government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. I mean the president starts off with 48, 49%...he starts off with a huge number. These people pay no income tax. 47% of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect...My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
If we are to take Mitt Romney at his word then we must infer that he sees half of the country as slackers who have failed to take responsibility for their lives and live under the expectation that the government should assume responsibility for their care and feeding. These are the Obama supporters.
That will come as quite a shock to the millions of Americans, many of whom are Republicans, living on the social safety net through no fault of their own. It will come as quite a shock to the 16 million elderly Americans, many of whom are Republicans, who avoid paying federal taxes because they live on Social Security and Medicaid. It will come as a shock to the millions of small businesses and large corporations, many of whom donate to Romney’s campaign war chest, who avoid paying federal taxes due to business losses or legal loopholes in the tax code.
But what struck us even more than the audacity of Romney’s comments was the casual way in which he made them. This was not the stilted, robotic candidate who appears so cold, stiff and careful in front of the cameras. This was a candidate who was very comfortable among his peers; speaking in a casual conversational manner. This was Romney unplugged. This was the disconnected Thurston Howell III that many of us long expected him to be. This was not a gaff or a miss-statement. This was Romney really being Romney.
The other far more important story concerns our troops serving in Afghanistan.
Yesterday the United States announced that US and NATO forces would be suspending joint operations with Afghan troops. The move comes after Afghan police on Sunday killed four American soldiers and a gunman in an Afghan militia uniform killed two British soldiers earlier in the day. 51 international troops have been murdered by their Afghan “partners” since the first of the year.
The president sent an additional 30,000 troops into the fray to help secure the country and ostensibly to allow the US military time to train the Afghans so that they could provide their own security. The goal was to complete the task and reduce our military presence in country by 2014. This apparent lack of trust between NATO coalition forces and our Afghan “partners” calls that strategy into question.
As we have said so many times before…it is time to bring our troops home. There is no “military victory” that justifies supporting a government whose troops are murdering our military men and women.
This war is lost. When we leave…and we will eventually leave…the country will return to a society steeped in the 4th century. We are only here because no politician is willing to admit that the war is lost and it’s time to bring our troops home.
If only we still had the military draft still in place. For if we still had the draft, the cries from American mothers to bring their sons and daughters home would have ended this senseless war years ago.
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