Sunday News Quiz
December 26, 2004
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
My wife constantly regales me about her favorite National
Public Radio show, "Wait Wait ...Don't Tell Me." The show
features three journalists who have to answer questions
about the week's news. Some of the news stories they are
quizzed about seem totally unbelievable, while others are
straightforward. Well, this is my last column for 2004, so
let's play a little "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me." I'll
give you 10 news stories from the past few weeks and you
tell me what they all have in common.
1. The report that Colin Powell told President Bush a few
weeks ago that we do not have enough troops in Iraq and
that we don't control the terrain. 2. The report that the
Pentagon's $10 billion-a-year effort to build an
antimissile shield, and have a basic ground-based version
in place by the end of this year, ran into difficulty two
weeks ago when the first test in almost two years failed
because the interceptor missile didn't take off. 3. The
report that the Bush-Republican budget for 2005 contained a
$100 million cut in federal funding to the National Science
Foundation. 4. The report that at a time when young
Americans are competing head to head with young Chinese,
Indians and Eastern Europeans more than ever, the Bush team
is trimming support for the Pell grant program, which helps
poor and working-class young Americans get a higher
education. (The change will save $300 million, while some
1.3 million students will receive smaller Pell grants.)
5. The report this month that children in Asian countries
once again surpassed U.S. fourth graders and eighth graders
in the latest Trends in International Mathematics and
Science Study. (U.S. eighth graders did improve their
scores from four years ago, but U.S. fourth graders
remained stagnant.) A week earlier, the Program for
International Student Assessment showed U.S. 15-year-olds
scoring below average compared with those in other
countries when asked to apply math skills to real-life
tasks, the A.P. reported. 6. The report this month that the
Bush administration has reduced America's contribution to
global food aid programs intended to help the world's
hungry feed themselves. (The Bush team said the cut was
necessary to keep our deficit under control!) 7. The report
that U.S. military spending this year is running at about
$450 billion.
Wait, wait, don't go way; there's more: 8. The report that
Donald Rumsfeld was confronted by troops in Iraq about the
fact that they did not have enough armor on their vehicles
and were having to scrounge for makeshift armor to protect
themselves. 9. The report that among President Bush's top
priorities in his second term is to simplify the tax code
and to make the sweeping tax cuts from his first term
permanent. (The cost to the Treasury for doing so, the A.P.
reported, would be over a trillion.) And finally: 10. The
report that the U.S. dollar continued to hover near record
lows against the euro.
So what is the common denominator of all these news
stories? Wait, wait, don't tell me. I want to tell you. The
common denominator is a country with a totally
contradictory and messed-up set of priorities.
We face two gigantic national challenges today: One is the
challenge to protect America in the wake of the new
terrorist threats, which has involved us in three huge
military commitments - Afghanistan, Iraq and missile
defense. And the other is the challenge to strengthen
American competitiveness in the wake of an expanding global
economy, where more and more good jobs require higher
levels of education, and those good jobs will increasingly
migrate to those countries with the brainpower to do them.
In the face of these two national challenges, we have an
administration committed to radical tax cuts, which, one
can already see, are starting to affect everything from the
number of troops we can deploy in Iraq to the number of
students we can properly educate at our universities. And
if we stay on this course, the trade-offs are only going to
get worse.
Something has to give. We can't protect America with the
grand strategy George Bush has embarked on and strengthen
our students with the skills they need and cut taxes, as if
we didn't have a care in the world.
If we were actually having a serious national debate, this
is what we would be discussing, but alas, 9/11 has been
deftly exploited to choke any debate. Which reminds me of
my wife's other favorite NPR radio show. It's called
"Whad'ya Know?" It always opens the same way. The announcer
shouts to the studio audience, "Whad'ya know?" And they
shout back. "Not Much. You?"
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/26/opinion/26friedman.html?ex=1105092607&ei=1&en=0917c15639971112
And this after feigning concern that people are dying in the streets?
The end of our occupation will come, or more accurately be realized, when the Majority of Iraqis are capable of subduing the minority, who oppose freedom, for themselves.
POLYTHESTIC wars are too numerous to record them all here. For example, how about the wars between the Romans and Greeks, or among the Greeks, between the ancient Japanese and ancient Chinese, or among the ancient Chinese, or among the ancient Japanese ?
Merry Crhristmas, Ike.
