Sowell: Irrelevant Apologies
Despite clever spin from Obama’s supporters about avoiding “guilt by association,” much more is involved than casual association with people like Jeremiah Wright and Father Pfleger.
In addition to giving $20,000 of his own money to Jeremiah Wright, as a state senator Obama directed $225,000 of the Illinois taxpayers’ money for programs run by Father Pfleger. In the U.S. Senate, Obama earmarked $100,000 in federal tax money for Father Pfleger’s work. Giving someone more than 300 grand is not just some tenuous, coincidental association.
The complete contrast between Obama’s election year image as a healer of divisions and his whole career of promoting far-left grievance politics, in association with America-haters like Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, are brushed aside by his supporters who talk about getting back to “the real issues.”
There is nothing more real than a man’s character and values. The track record of what he has actually done is far more real than anything he says, however elegantly he says it.
That was never more true than today, with Iran moving ever closer to a nuclear bomb, while the United Nations wrings its hands and Congress fritters away its time on everything from steroids in sports to earmarks for pet projects back home.
Does anyone seriously consider what it would mean for Iran to have nuclear weapons? They are already supplying terrorists with the means of killing people in other countries, including killing American troops in Iraq.
Senator Obama has been downplaying the Iran threat, saying that they are just “a small country,” not like the Soviet Union. The people who flew planes into the World Trade Center were an even smaller group than the Iranian government.
Half a dozen terrorists like that with nuclear weapons would be a bigger danger than the Soviet Union ever was, because the Soviet leaders were not suicide bombers. They could be deterred by the threat of what we would do to Moscow if they attacked New York.
You cannot deter suicidal fanatics. They are not going to stop