Quote Of The Day: Plugging Up The Ratholes

29 Oct, 2004 by John Hawkins

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If you understand what Jonah Goldberg is talking about in this quote from his latest column, then at the most fundamental level, you understand the war on terrorism…

“If you live in a house infested by rats, you may think it’s OK to tolerate them for a while. They’re just a “nuisance,” as John Kerry might say. You might, if you’re Bill Clinton, tolerate a series of “minor” rat attacks. But when one of your children dies from a bite, you do everything you can to kill the rats and plug up all the rat holes to protect your family. You don’t care which specific rat was responsible for the death. You simply do everything necessary to make sure nothing like that ever happens again. In the post-9/11 world George Bush faced a world with a lot of rat holes. The most obvious, urgent and “doable” rat hole was in Baghdad.”