Tell me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't one of their primary complaints that President Bush blew a golden opportunity to demonstrate to the world, and especially Muslims, how much we care about the victims and how much compassion we have?You see the foolishness here. Of course what many editorialists said was that we need to send money because it was the right thing to do, because people were suffering and we needed to help them out. There is also a political reason to do this as well, which many pointed out.
The point was not actually to care or do something altruistic and constructive, but to show how much we care. (You can read the New York Times and other liberal editorialists and commentators to confirm this.)
Let's be clear about something. The United States government has very little mandate to give yours and my money away, even in the face of this unprecedented tragedy. It's nice, but they can only send the money by taking it away from the people, so there are considerations. On the other hand they do have a mandate to work towards our foreign policy goals, one of which has to be to improve our image in the Middle East and the Muslim nations of the world. Seen in that light, offering $15 million was a serious misstep.
But, according to Mr. Limbaugh, the real fault comes not in the Bush administration in making this mistake, but in the Democrats and Liberals of America for criticizing the President for making this mistake. See, if we really cared what the rest of the world thought of us, we would be telling the rest of the world how generous the United States is, instead of criticizing the President.
Similarly if we were really interested in presenting America in the best light, we wouldn't have opposed the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General. We wouldn't be looking into voter fraud in the 2004 election. Frankly it's hard to know what we would be doing if we were a moral party (in Limbaugh's Eyes). Probably very little.
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