Thomas Friedman tends to give too many "the next 6 months are important" without ever criticizing the previous 6 months of stagnation. In his op-ed he points how the past 7 years have been different for the US and China.
"As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones."
Bush, and Conservatives, have Americans thinking we can be taken over by extremists. Somehow our whole country is going to be taken over. With all the guns we have here, good luck. So with our collective eye focused on an exaggerated, although necessary, goal of "fighting terrorism", Friedman points out that once you're off target you need to refocus.
"But the first rule of holes is that when you’re in one, stop digging. When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America."
Read more at NYT
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