news.yahoo– Back in 1990, President George H.W. Bush faced a decision about going to war against Iraq after the surprise invasion of Kuwait in August. Victory was never in doubt, but it would still be a momentous step to take the United States and its allies into a conflict with what was then a significant military power.
As Bush weighed his options that summer, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned him in a phone call that “this is no time to go wobbly.”
Three decades later, this is still good advice. Americans face enemies both from within and from abroad. The country is being ravaged by a pandemic that has killed 1,000 times as many Americans as died in Operation Desert Storm, and at its worst has reached 9/11 levels of deaths almost daily. The Russians are plowing through the cyber defenses of multiple U.S. agencies. Congress could barely agree to send a pittance of relief to people facing cold, hunger and eviction.
Incalculable damage to America
And the president of the United States, instead of defending us from these physical and virtual threats, has become an avowed enemy of our people, our democracy and of our Constitution. He vetoed funding for the Department of Defense and threatened to stop the COVID-19 relief package before signing it Sunday night. He has used the Oval Office as a command center for meetings with seditious kooks and conspiracy cranks as he plots a military intervention against individual American states to punish them for having the temerity to insult his fragile and sociopathic ego.
This is no time for Americans to go all wobbly. Trump is trying to unnerve the nation in order to prepare us for yet more outrages, right to the last day of his term. But the new year is in sight and victory, as it was against Iraq in 1991, is not in doubt. The worst thing that could happen is for us to give in to our fears, or to begin bickering among ourselves, when we are so close to overcoming the terrible year we are about to leave behind us.
