A Question of Decency
To: Charles Krauthammer & Michael Kelly, Warriors Extraordinaire From: Patricia Koyce Wanniski Re: Prudence Is Not Treason
Of all the columns I've seen, read, and sometimes wept over since September 12th, the day after the terrorist bombings, it is the attacks on prudence which have surprised me most. The two offenders who come to mind are you, Misters Krauthammer and Kelly. Your headlines read in Monday's New York Daily News, "‘Blame America’ Gang Should Just Pipe Down," and Wednesday's Washington Post, "...Pacifist Claptrap," respectively. Gentlemen, I may not speak for all those you deride, but I feel it is incumbent for me to defend myself, since my views are included in your analyses. Let me be blunt: I am not anti-war, I am anti-stupid. I am not against military intervention, I am against indiscriminate military intervention. If you actually examine some of the arguments about which you are screaming, you might find that the case to be made for serious thought before a single shot is fired is stronger than you think.
Mr. Krauthammer, you took Susan Sontag's "Talk of the Town" essay from the September 24 New Yorker and asserted, "within days of the World Trade Center massacre, an event of blinding clarity, we are already beginning to hear the voices of moral obtuseness....what Sontag is implying, but does not quite have the courage to say, is that because of these alliances and actions, such as the bombing of Iraq, we had it [the bombing attacks] coming." There is nowhere I can find that Ms. Sontag even remotely implies "we had it coming." Rather, she asks pertinent questions about the "thinking that needs to be done, and perhaps is being done in Washington and elsewhere, about the ineptitude of American intelligence and counter-intelligence, about options available to American foreign policy, particularly in the Middle East, and about what constitutes a smart program of military defense." The same questions are being asked within the administration and among our allies and friends.
You close by saying "This is no time for obfuscation. Or for agonized relativism. Or, obscenely, for blaming America first. (The habit dies hard.) This is a time for clarity. At a time like this, those who search for root causes, for extenuations, are, to borrow from Newsweek's Lance Morrow, ‘too philosophical for decent company.’"
It is indeed a time for truth and clarity. But how can one reach truth and clarity without knowing the root cause of the problem? Thus to deride the search for a root cause to the problem is not only foolhardy but dangerous. Do you really believe terrorism can be stopped without finding the root cause? Why is it that those friends and allies lining up to join a global anti-terrorism campaign see the necessity you don't for going after the root causes of terrorism as well as its individual practitioners? Hasn't it been the case historically in Israel and Ireland and other nations beset by terrorism that it becomes a vicious cycle if the root causes and grievances are not addressed? And does not America, as the leader of the free world and the world's enduring democracy, have the obligation to search for root causes to the problem rather than, as some would have it, indiscriminately bombing the Islamic world until it exists only in memory? And if premature or, God forbid, wrongheaded military action divides the country, can any war against terrorism be won? If there were ever a time for debate and discussion, it is now, before troops are engaged, and before any more innocent lives are lost, either ours or theirs. Advocating caution is not "blaming America" nor is it obfuscating nor is it indecent. It is vital to the long-term strategy against terrorism; American policymakers must be very careful about what they are doing. Increasingly, many of them are absorbing that fact. You seem to have overlooked this point in your analysis. Or perhaps you chose to overlook it.
Mr. Kelly, you yourself are guilty of overlooking the central question which you yourself pose as the pacifist's position: "Yes, we must do something, but is an escalation of aggression really the right thing? Mightn't it just make matters ever so much worse?" I would suggest that you answer it before attacking the people who espouse this view.
You err in assuming those who advocate prudence hamper the war effort. Let's find these criminals before we start firing, wait until we see the whites of their eyes, and make sure justice is served. I agree with your assessment that "no honest person can pretend that the groups that attacked America will, if let alone, not attack again. Nor can any honest person say that this attack is not at least reasonably likely to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people." However, I cannot accept that "to not fight in this instance is to let the attackers live to attack and murder again; to be a pacifist in this instance is to accept and, in practice, support this outcome." Must America go to war to find these terrorists? And where exactly do we attack, sir? Which country do we burn to the ground? Is Germany a target, since Hamburg was a central gathering point for the terrorists? Or are we only aiming at the Islamic world? Are you willing to risk more lives in combat, both ours and theirs, and most possibly allow Osama bin Laden and his cohorts to slip away, since even our Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld admits the U.S. does not know where they are? It seems the only acceptable justice is to get the fellows responsible, and punish them to the fullest extent of the law, otherwise those nearly 7,000 souls who perished on September 11th will have died in vain.
Referencing George Orwell's words -- "Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist" -- in your paraphrase of President George W. Bush's address to the nation, Mr. Kelly, is nothing but terminological terrorism: "You are either for doing what is necessary to capture or kill those who control and fund and harbor the terrorists, or you are for not doing this. If you are for not doing this, you are for allowing the terrorists to continue their attacks on America. You are saying, in fact: I believe that it is better to allow more Americans -- perhaps a great many more -- to be murdered than to capture or kill the murderers....that is the pacifists' position, and it is evil." You are very good at punching the stuffing out of straw men of your own creation, but no thinking human being wants the perpetrators of this crime to go unpunished. I will bear any burden to punish these bastards, but common sense dictates we have to find them first. That won't be done by bombing. Tell me, though, how my view is evil?
Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion in a free and open democracy. Like the lines attributed to Voltaire, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." Such respectful disagreements can only make a democracy stronger. Anything less, and the terrorists win. And to stifle that debate by characterizing prudence as cowardly, unpatriotic, aiding the terrorists or evil is intellectually dishonest and morally wretched. We all agree at least that the events of September 11th, 2001, must never be repeated. Open and unintimidated debate over how to accomplish that is the best way to ensure that goal is achieved.
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