Julio Gallo - Larry, Mo and Curley

Julio Gallo has died. My hero. Hearty Burgundy was a cheap and well made wine on which I floated through college. Thunderbird came along on every picnic and tubing trip. My board game, Risk, had red Gallo wine stains on it and so did a lot of my clothes in those days.

Then it was wine stained Risk boards - now its the very real Risk of our country being run by Larry, Mo, and Curley.

Tom Friedman points out that, from the start, the Bush team has tried to keep the Iraq war “off the books” both financially and emotionally. As Larry Diamond of Stanford’s Hoover Institution said: “America is not at war. The U.S. Army is at war.” The rest of us are just watching, or just ignoring, while the whole fight is carried on by 150,000 soldiers and their families."

In an interview last Jan. 16, Jim Lehrer asked President Bush why, if the war on terrorism was so overwhelmingly important, he had never asked more Americans “to sacrifice something.” Mr. Bush gave the most unbelievable answer: “Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.” Sacrifice peace of mind watching TV? What kind of crazy thing is that to say?

Leadership is about enabling and inspiring people to contribute in time of war so the enemy has to fight all of us — not insulating the public so the enemy has to fight only a few of us.