It's time to grow upWho would have thought that words spoken long ago by Benjamin Franklin would speak so clearly to this time of terrorism and its discontents?
"A child thinks 20 shillings and 20 years can scarce ever be spent," Franklin said.
In a child, such optimism mixed with ignorance can be charming.
In leaders who shape national security policy for the United States, it's distressing.
When George W. Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001, his minions chortled that, after a Clinton White House staffed by puerile boomers, the nation could rest easy. It was now being led by adults, people you could trust to make sound judgments: Dick Cheney. Donald Rumsfeld. Colin Powell. Condoleezza Rice.
Yet five years after al-Qaeda used planes as weapons in Manhattan, at the Pentagon, and in the sky over Pennsylvania, the war on terrorism they've conducted seems more the work of children than of grown-ups.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/15480239.htm