By Richard Billies of AllThingsPoliticalToday.com

You’re probably looking at this headline and wondering what this post could be about. Liberals are from Venus, Conservatives are from Mars. We already know this. John Boehner commented that he and Obama come from different planets, when discussing their relationship.

Besides the obvious political difference between the opposing  philosophies, there’s a difference in how each side approaches a crisis or some other situation.

Liberals are into the process. They will sweat over every minor detail while a crisis explodes. A case in point is the ongoing situation in Syria. Thousands are being killed by the brutal Syrian regime and yet all that we are doing is talking, condemning, and condemning in the strongest possible terms and so on. If condemnations were bombs, it would be over. Assad would be gone and a new government would have been installed.

The classic process-driven crisis is the on-going nuclear situation in Iran. In what seems like a lifetime, we have been talking, condemning and threatening for at least five or six years. Let me make one thing clear here. George Bush then was just as guilty as Barack Obama is now. Process has been everything with regards to Iran. Last month, the Western powers finally imposed an oil embargo after threatening it for several years.

Meanwhile, Iran continues to make weapons-grade fuel and continues to play us like a fiddle. “Send your inspectors“, they said and the IAEA did. Of course, the Iranians made sure they only saw “peaceful” nuclear projects. Once again, the process is the whole game here.

Let’s compare process to action. On September 11, 2001, the United States was attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists who used planes as weapons. On October 7th, President George Bush, after securing a war declaration against the terrorist organization, unleashed the United States military on the enemy. Using a combination of Special Operations troops, airpower and Afghan Northern Alliance, we overthrew the Taliban-al-Qaeda government and replaced it with a representative government. Action in its purest form was exercised by the President.

He’s another example from an earlier conflict, World War II. On December16, 1944, the German Wehrmacht attacked the Allied defensive line through the Ardennes Forest. The American forces were split in half. On the northern side of the Bulge, the VII Corps came under the command of Field Marshall Bernard Law Montgomery, a process-driven British officer.

The commander of the VII Corps was J. Lawton Collins. His nickname was “Lightning Joe.” He inquired when the Allies were going to counterattack and cut off the German penetration. Montgomery went on about lines of supply and have a “tidy battlefield. He told Collins that he didn’t plan to attack for some weeks.

Collins told Montgomery that the Americans were organized at the line of attack and that he planned to advance the follow morning. He told Montgomery that they could join him or not. The following morning, the assault companies of his spearhead division, cold and tired, slogged through the snow and relieved their besieged comrades in St. Vith. Action trumped process in the crisis.

On September 11, 2001, over 3,000 people were killed in the Twin Towers and at the Pentagon. The Pentagon was repaired fairly quickly and a memorial for the dead was opened a year after the attack. A more permanent memorial was dedicated on September 11, 2008.

In New York, the process drags on to this day over ten years later. A virtual tour is possible. You can preview what it will look like in the future but it is not yet a fact. The process has failed the families of the dead.