Bush's leadership skills far surpass Clinton's
By Chris Plumblee
Student Columnist

First of all, I want to take this opportunity to clear up the prediction that I made in my last column (“Is the fall of Kabul the beginning of the Taliban’s end?”, Nov. 15) about the Taliban and its fighters holding out in Kandahar for another month after they were chased out of the capital city. Obviously, I was wrong. The Taliban is still in possession of Kandahar at this point, but they are on the verge of collapse, according to all reliable information. They have lost much of the rest of the country and all reports state that they are on the run back to their points of strength.

The news of the last few weeks has been that there have been American deaths: first a pair of soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Pakistan, next a CIA operative died in a prison uprising in Afghanistan. While I don’t want to belittle the lives of these men or of any American citizen serving the country in combat, those are pretty low losses. Even if, by the time this column sees print more people have died, I think that with these losses weighed against the gains made, America has a lot to be proud of. Consider, if you will, the question of success in Afghanistan. America was warned that Afghanistan was a breaker of nations after the debacle of the Soviet attempt to prop up their puppet government failed miserably in the latter years of the Cold War. We were also reminded about the massacre of thousands of British troops and civilians in Afghanistan when they tried to force their will on the Afghan people. These prophecies have been proven, I think, to be almost without merit.

The United States has not collapsed under the weight of the war in Afghanistan. The United States has actually done better in Afghanistan than anyone could have expected given the recent lack of success in Bosnia and Somalia. I choose to attribute this to the will and resolve to do what needs doing that has returned to the White House. The contrast between former president Bill Clinton’s response to a bombing by Osama bin Laden (shooting cruise missiles at suspected terrorist camps in Afghanistan) and President George W. Bush’s response (actually making the commitment to enter Afghanistan and bring bin Laden to justice) is stark, but before everyone condemns this column to the huge number of Clinton-bashing columns that they think I’ve written, consider this: the only difference in the Sept. 11 attacks and the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa is a matter of scale.

A U.S. embassy in another country is formally considered a part of the United States, just as much as the World Trade Center was. Now it’s true that it’s easier to get outraged about the attacks on American soil that’s actually in America, but the people in those embassies were doing no more or no less to deserve to be killed or injured.

They were merely going to work, though they lived in another part of the world. I’m afraid that if the country had had weaker leadership in this time of crisis, that the only thing that would get done would be a period of national mourning and a call for bin Laden to surrender himself to the proper authorities, or face the destruction of a few more square miles of desert in Afghanistan.

Now on to another matter that is somewhat related. When I stated above that the United States has not been crushed under the inexorable will of the Afghan people and bowed down to have the ceremonial coup de grace delivered, some among the student body sat up and exclaimed, “But we’re in a recession now, it’s the beginning of the end!”

While I respect those individuals no less for their beliefs, let me go on the record as saying that the economy is experiencing what scientists, not necessarily economists, call the rebound effect. Consider this: when a person is put on Prozac, they get happy, right? Prozac is an antidepressant, right? Well, let’s say that a person was put on a normal dose of Prozac for a year, then taken off it completely. That person wouldn’t merely return to a normal state because their brain and body have gotten used to being on Prozac all the time. Rather, they will bounce down, most likely to a depressed state, before they function normally.

Now, to extend the analogy, let’s consider the Clinton years, the “greatest economy the world has ever seen” as that dose of Prozac and let’s consider the end of that period as the end of that daily dose. When considered that way, this period of economic slowdown is only the natural reaction to the artificially inflated economy of the ’90s. Consider this as well: the precursors to the economic downturn were present in 1999 and early in 2000, but that doesn’t get much mention because that was merely the natural movement of the economy during Clinton’s term in office. The liberal bias of the media is at work again in that instance.

Well, now that I have dispelled fears of a recession and declared that Afghanistan will not crush the spirit of the average American, I think I’ll address something a little closer to my heart and a little less controversial. I think that the Demon Deacons are playing and will continue to play the best football I have ever seen from a university team this year. I’m confident that a bowl bid is in the works for the Deacs, and I hope that everyone will make plans to at least watch the game on TV and give the team all the support they can. This could be the crowning moment of Deacon football, or it could be the start of a new tradition. I personally hope it’s the start of a new tradition, but I’ll be satisfied if the team can continue to play with the heart that they have shown throughout this season.