Hissy Fit

This is a topic normally beyond the scope of this site, but after reading Maureen Dowd's column in the NYTimes this morning, I felt compelled to share it with you. Entitled "No More Bratwurst", the article discusses the Bush administration's recent response to German President Schroeder's - as well as another German official's - remarks regarding W. and his campaign against Iraq. Personally, I thought our administration was overreacting, acting the bully and, frankly, being downright rude and lacking in any class. Dowd refers to the administration's short memory:

In their eagerness to apply adolescent torture methods, Bush hawks seem to have forgotten history: Do we really want to punish the Germans for being pacifists? Once those guys get rolling in the other direction, they don't really know how to put the brakes on.

Reluctance to enter into a war should be expected from a nation that spent the first half of the twentieth century trying to take over the world and the second half trying to recover from the devastation those attempts brought down upon them. We ostracize the Germans for remarks made during an election, a situation under which the veracity and intent of most statements should be questioned, yet the Saudis churn out America-hating terrorists in assembly-line fashion and they are our friends.

Like those middle school princesses in Dowd's column, we need to be careful about who we choose as friends or we will wake up one day to find that not only do we not have friends, but also that we never really had any. Except of course for poor Tony Blair, who for some reason has been given the task of fighting our fight and documenting the reasons we want to go to war, doing our homework.