Play Nice With Bad Guys

After 9/11, President George W. Bush didn’t fly to Europe to quarrel with our allies and accuse them of not contributing enough to their defense. He didn’t go to England and tell a British tabloid that Tony Blair’s rival would make a great Prime Minister. He didn’t go to Helsinki and hold a summit, including a two-hour private chat, with the leader of the Taliban. He didn’t invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. He didn’t dispute our intelligence blaming the attack on al-Qaeda and instead say it could be other people, maybe China, or a 400-pound guy on a bed in New Jersey. He didn’t lavish praise on bin Laden while accusing the press of being the real enemy. He didn’t call the European Union a foe of the United States while calling the Taliban a competitor. He didn’t congratulate bin Laden on winning reelection to the presidency of al-Qaeda or lobby for him to be added to the G-7. He didn’t listen to any crazy ideas from bin Laden about allowing him to interrogate Americans in Afghanistan.

What George W. Bush did was climb on top of a pile of rubble that was once the World Trade Center and promise that the people responsible would be hearing from us very soon. He rallied the American people and NATO. Then we attacked the people responsible.

Bush made a lot of mistakes after that, like attacking the wrong nation a couple of years later, but he didn’t placate and massage the feelings of the guy responsible for attacking our nation.

We also changed how we do a lot of things. For starters, you can’t take box cutters and pocket knives on commercial flights anymore. You can’t even walk through security at an airport with your shoes on. What are we doing to prevent further attacks on our electoral process from Russia? Nothing.

Last week, House Republicans voted AGAINST renewing funding for election security to combat efforts by foreign powers to meddle in our elections. Donald Trump has not directed the National Security Agency to do anything to prevent Russia from attacking our elections in the future. It took Trump five months to enact sanctions against Russia after they were passed by Congress.

Of course, we shouldn’t go to war with Russia over election meddling. But, we shouldn’t be sitting around with our guard down. We should enact measures to prevent future attacks. We shouldn’t be awarding Vladimir Putin with high praise and summits. We shouldn’t be inviting him to the White House.

Russia attacked our nation. They are not our friends. Trump can’t even bring himself to criticize Putin, instead, wishing for his dictatorial powers.

If Trump was president in 2001, we would have lost further buildings, airplanes, and American lives because he doesn’t know who the bad guys are. He can’t, and refuses to recognize an attack on our nation. He would have encouraged them to attack us again.

We need to treat Russia as a foe who has attacked the United States. In fact, we should start treating Donald Trump the exact same way.

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