AUSTIN, Texas -- Say, here's an item: A group of right-wing journalists
famed for their impartiality has set themselves up as the Patriotism Police.
No less distinguished a crowd than Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, The New York
Post editorial page and the Fox News Channel --- quite a bunch of Pulitzer
winners there -- are now passing judgment on whether media outlets that do
actual reporting are sufficiently one-sided for their taste.
With the insouciance toward fact for which he is so noted,
Limbaugh erroneously reported that Peter Jennings had been highly critical
of President Bush for disappearing on Sept. 11. The Dittoheads flooded ABC
with complaints. The bone of contention since has been over the reporting of
civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
Been there, done that. Yes, bombing causes the deaths of
innocent civilians, a fact not mitigated by referring to them as collateral
damage, nor by repeated references to "pinpoint bombing," an absurd
combination of words. By the Pentagon's own analysis, even our smart bombs
often miss. Among our more memorable recent errors were hitting the Red
Cross complex in Kabul (twice), the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade (an error
caused by heavy pressure to step up bombing when there weren't enough real
targets) and the time we shot down an Iranian airliner, apparently under the
impression that it was something else.
After both the Persian Gulf and the Yugoslav campaigns, analyses
by the Pentagon and by independent agencies showed that bombing was
significantly less accurate and less effective than we had been told. Most
of us are grown-ups and do not need to be protected from this unpleasant
truth by those who think it may weaken our moral fiber.
A bombing campaign in Afghanistan brings special perils, beyond
what the Pentagon refers to as holding civilian casualties to "an acceptable
minimum." In the first place, there's not much there to hit, and in the
second place, we are up against the dismal fact that the bombing campaign
could well cause the starvation of literally millions of Afghans who never
did anything to us. And if mass starvation does occur, we will lose this war
against terrorism -- whether or not we find Bin Laden, since such a tragedy
would instantly create more terrorists, as well as wrecking the coalition.
And that is why some of us think it is even more important to figure out how
to get food into Afghanistan before winter hits than it is to find Bin
Laden. Our resolve to nail him will outlast the winter -- the Afghan people
may not.
The Patriotism Police are pleased that CNN is now balancing
reports of civilian casualties with reminders of Sept. 11, as though the one
cancels out the other. But there is a moral problem with this equivalence.
The Rev. Sterling Lands of Austin put it this way: "If a man comes into my
house and hurts my wife and children, he better give his heart to God,
'cause the rest of him belongs to me. But if a man comes into my house,
hurts my wife and children and leaves, and then I go to his house and hurt
his wife and children, that is not justice." And in this case, it's not even
vengeance, because letting Afghans starve is the equivalent of going into
the wrong house.
It seems to me one obligation of citizenship is to be as
well-informed as one has time to become. The more one reads about
Afghanistan, the more apparent it becomes that we cannot afford to
underestimate the complexity of this task. For example, the Northern
Alliance is not the good guys; they're just a different set of bad guys. And
at least two of our allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, have done more to
nourish the Taliban than has Bin Laden. The crowning irony is that we helped
arm the Afghans ourselves. Reducing all this to cowboy-movie black hats and
white hats is a serious public disservice. The New York Times quotes Brit
Hume, the Fox News anchor, as saying, "This is a conflict between the United
States and murdering barbarians." Would that it were that simple.
This is a war against terrorism, a phenomenon with complex
roots, including resentment over our foreign policy, some of it
well-founded. There is nothing unpatriotic about facing facts. I'm so
patriotic, I think Americans are smart enough and resolute enough to deal
with all the complexities of a situation that is rife with them. We don't
need patriotic pap -- we do need all the solid information we can get. Honor
to those who risk their lives getting it for us.
If it turns out a military invasion of Afghanistan is
inadvisable for either political or strategic reasons, we need to figure out
other ways to go after the terrorists. "Whatever works" should be the
deciding factor.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
