Posted on 02/25/2003 5:55:31 AM PST by conservativecorner
No matter what the evidence, some folks will just never come around to the notion that America could be right. by Larry Miller 02/25/2003 12:00:00 AM
Larry Miller, contributing humorist
IN THE COURSE of our adult lives, we all learn lessons about humanity that disappoint us, but, for me, this one has been stunning.
I swear, I cannot fathom the people who insist that Saddam Hussein is not going to merrily kill us and everyone he can reach as soon as he is able. What is it about some people that makes them live in this suicidal denial? I could normally shrug it off, except that now it's not just suicidal. They're going to get us all killed, and that makes it homicidal as well.
They have their mantras:
"Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein and would never work with him." Really? Bin Laden is nothing if not shrewd, and he knows that job number one is killing Americans and Israelis. After that, when the carnage is complete, he'll have plenty of time to turn his attention to Iraq. Hate Hussein? So, what? If he thought he could get the same results with Larry Flynt, he would do it in a New York minute.
"Peace is good; war is bad." I don't even know what this means. Which peace? Which war? Did the people of Europe have peace after being conquered by Hitler? Should we have dealt with him in "peace" in the interest of "stability?"
Do the people of Iraq have peace? Surely not the ones who find themselves led into a basement to find their children hooked up to electrodes. Surely not the Kurds. Surely not anyone who doesn't work for the government. Who, then? The generals on the file footage who bounce up to The Great Uncle with frozen smiles for a kiss and a chat? The soldiers of the so-called elite Republican Guard? What horrors have they all committed to earn their privileges? What does a man have to do over there to be called "elite?" One shudders to imagine. I can't help but think of the old restaurant motto from years past: "Where The Elite Meet To Eat." I wonder where they meet in Iraq. Now there's a nightspot where the waiters don't want to screw up an order. (One thing you've got to hand the Iraqi General Staff: They all have terrific moustaches. Not as well sculpted as the Saudi princes, but who has that kind of time?)
"This is just about oil." I know facts don't matter to people whose favorite hobby is shouting, but has no one noticed that if we wanted Iraq's oil so much, all we'd have to do is make a deal with Saddam tomorrow? Oil companies aren't running policy, because if they were, that would be it: Sign a deal with the man. So why don't we? Saddam would be happy (or, at least, as happy as a guy like him gets), the left would be happy, and Old Europe would be happy. (Shouldn't we be spelling that Olde Europe?) Yes, everyone would be happy. Ah, but then we'd all have to pretend we don't know he's building a giant scimitar out of radium. Aye, there's the rub.
Of course, what the "just-about-oilers" mean is that President Bush is going to get a skadillion people killed "just" so he can steal Iraq's oil; and it may be overstating the obvious, but we don't do that. The phrase "Spoils of War" is as dead in America as Cotton Mather. In fact, if there's one thing history has taught us, it's that the best thing that can ever happen to a country is to go to war with us and lose. This was so obvious after the Second World War that a wonderful satire was made, "The Mouse That Roared," about a little, impoverished country that decides to declare war on the United States for the express purpose of immediately surrendering and being rebuilt afterwards with foreign aid.
No, we'll never take their oil, and everyone knows it. After this thing is over, whatever this "thing" winds up being, we'll sign a deal and pay for it, rebuild their country with foreign aid (uh-huh), and show them how to have a government where Tom Daschle and Bill Frist can work together in friendship and respect. Come to think of it, I wouldn't mind learning how that one works, too.
"Most people in the world are against this." So? Most people in the world want us to be as miserable as they are. Sure, after September 11 everyone said, "We're all Americans today," but that was baloney. As soon as they got home and closed the door, they all danced a jig. It's a sad fact of human nature, but most people don't look at success and try to emulate it. Instead, they look at success and hate it, and hate themselves, and do whatever they can to bring the successful people down a peg. "Most people in the world" don't mind being buried in boiling dung up to their necks as long as we're buried there with them. And I don't know about you, but, as a rule, I hate being buried in boiling dung.
"The Arab world just wants Israel to stop occupying Palestine. Then all of this tension will go away." The Arab world just wants Israel to stop occupying itself. If Belgium were there instead of Israel, we would be in the exact same situation we are today. They want Israel to die, and the preferred method of that is for every Jew to die. And this "tension" will never go away, because this "tension" is exactly what the world of radical Islam has been planning for the last fourteen hundred years.
"We shouldn't rush into this." This is a rush? The World Trade Center was attacked a year and a half ago. As others have observed, eighteen months after Pearl Harbor, American soldiers were in Sicily. (It's a little ironic that the first European spot in WWII we landed our guys was a place where it was more dangerous for them to ask a local girl on a date than to charge a machine gun nest.)
And never mind the first attack on the Twin Towers years before, or the murders at our embassies, or on the Cole, or in Bali, or all the other assorted throat-cuttings. Last summer, to avoid the "rush," everyone insisted President Bush get a resolution from Congress, so he did. Then everyone insisted he stop the mad lust for battle and go to the United Nations, and he did, even though the U.N. couldn't break up a cookie fight at a Brownie meeting. Then everyone pleaded with him to give inspections a chance, and he did. Now Hans Blix is insisting that the inspections are working, when what he really means is that the inspectors are working. (Maybe that's his idea for full employment.)
Some rush.
"Our most important allies aren't with us, like France." You can make up your own jokes for this one. It's too big a target, and I have my professional pride. I'll only say that you can never trust people who use those goofy things next to the toilets in fancy hotels.
"Bush is a cowboy." Well, but it depends how you define "cowboy," doesn't it? Robert Redford played a cowboy in "The Electric Horseman," and everyone loved him.
Of course, Jacques Chirac uses it to mean a reckless, lawless idiot. I think a cowboy is: hardworking; unafraid; clear-eyed; innately understanding of a high, unmuddled morality; possessed of good values; ready for action; ready for a fight; ready to protect the weak; ready to stand alone. In this sense, I would agree completely. George W. Bush is a cowboy. I wish we all were. (I'd like to throw in "periodically hard-drinking," too, but that wouldn't apply here. Besides, the rest is what's important.)
There are some on the left who are sincerely and reflectively engaged. The other day I heard a radio interview on KPFK with Susan Sontag, and I had a lot of respect for what she said, and for this reason. She said she is not against our country using force, in theory, and that she has no love for Saddam Hussein, or the threat he poses, or the way he treats his people. She just felt our invasion now would cost thousands upon thousands of innocent lives. And when the interviewer asked, "But what if you're proved wrong?" she immediately and honestly answered, "I pray that I am." I believed her, and I can live with that. No one wants even one innocent life lost.
But the millions of world-wide protestors have been reflexive rather than reflective. I didn't see a single sign that said, "Maybe Saddam Is A Bad Guy." No, it was all about Cowboy Bush and oil and greed and American arrogance, and underneath it all, underneath angry, red skin so thin it's transparent, are jealous, puerile, feckless souls screaming, "America should bleed and be brought low, and then just go away."
Mr. Bush, Mr. Powell, Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice, Mr. Rumsfeld, et al, have made a policy and a plan. Every American has the right to ask, "What if they're wrong?" But I think those in opposition should also sincerely be asking themselves, "What if they're right?" I think they are. What if I'm wrong? I pray that I'm not.
And what about the furious protestors?
It's time for us to stop saying, "I don't get them." It's time for them not to get us.
Larry Miller is a contributing humorist to The Daily Standard and a writer, actor, and comedian living in Los Angeles.
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