Out of My Mind (21 page)

It's easier to make a case for secrecy in government than for privacy. Government officials make the argument for not telling us much. We are getting little or no independently generated information about the war on terrorism because our government believes it's in the best interest of the American people for them not to know. It's for our own good that reporters are kept away from the action.

Who are we to say that is wrong? Do you want terrorists to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge, the White House, the New York subway system? If you don't want that to happen, our government doesn't think you should complain about secrecy in government.

When viewers of
60 Minutes
dislike something I've said and want to hurt me with a mean letter, they always say I should stick to my amusing little comments about the ingredients in a corn flake. The
Journal
used this style of attack, saying, “. . . the CBS humorist turned into a pundit. . . .” This is designed to put me in my place as someone who is funny but not smart enough to have a serious thought. The
word “pundit” is most often used in a pejorative sense and people who are occasionally funny are not ever taken seriously. Adlai Stevenson never got to be President because he was too quick with a funny remark. I, on the other hand, was chastised by the
Wall Street Journal
for being too quick with a serious remark.

The funny thing about this terrible time we're in—well, it isn't funny, it's strange—is that we don't have our dependable old enemies. We're practically best friends with the Russians, the Japanese, the Germans. We have billions of dollars worth of conventional weapons that are of no use anymore because the enemy has changed its tactics. Tanks don't work against an enemy we can't find. Stealth bombers don't help. At West Point, they make the cadets stand up straight for four years—and even that doesn't do anything for us.

When we were fighting the British during the American Revolution, their soldiers stood in strict formation during combat.

Today, our enemies behave differently. We can't see them, so we aren't “facing” them at all. “Face” is not the only word we're using loosely. The words “terrorist” and “terrorism” are not quite accurate and we only use them because we haven't come up with anything better. Americans are not terrorized. We're nervous and aware there may be another attack, but to suggest we are “terrorized” is not valid.

The dictionary says terrorism is “a systematic use of terror as a means of coercion.” A terrorist is “one who coerces by intimidation.” Well, we do not live in fear. We have been neither intimidated nor coerced.

We say that what we're in is a “war” but it's not a war. I don't know what to call it. President Bush has called the enemy “evildoers,” and even evil is hard to define.

The hard line Muslims who made up the Taliban and followed Osama bin Laden didn't think of themselves as evil. The Taliban destroyed
that ancient Buddhist shrine because they believed this would please their God. The Sept. 11 bombers thought that destroying as much of America as they could was what their God, Allah, wanted. They thought they were doing the right thing in the eyes of God. How do we fight that?

There has always been confusion about what is and is not evil. In Puritan times, several women were hanged, in the name of God, after being accused of witchcraft. The Puritans didn't consider themselves evil; they thought they were religious. Most of the world is religious, but there's no evidence that religious people are less evil than those who are not religious. Our prisons are filled with the devout.

We're clearer about virtue than we are about evil. Every school should have classes in virtue. The virtues can be named and explained better than evil. Children should have no doubt what constitutes virtue—they should be told. Sunday schools do some of the teaching, but the message is too often buried in Biblical stories that are not direct and clear.

Resisting our worst impulses is virtuous. Stopping to help someone across the street when we're in a hurry is virtuous. Entering a burning building to rescue someone at the risk of your own life, which you like very much, is virtuous. What constitutes bravery is shadowy, though. We call a Muslim fanatic evil when he dies crashing a plane into a building in the name of Allah, yet, among his own, he was “brave.” We're in a war of words.

There's so much going on in places I don't know anything about that I've been giving myself a geography lesson. In school, I was good at geography. Once, in the fourth grade, I had to list the capital of every one of the forty-eight states—there were only forty-eight when I was in fourth grade—and the only one I missed was the capital of Nebraska (Lincoln).

Most of my problems with geography now are in the Middle East, sometimes referred to as the Near East. I know the Middle East is not as far away as the Far East, but I'm not sure what the Middle East is in the middle of. We refer to a lot of the places there as “Arab countries,” so I looked up the word “Arab” in my dictionary, and it says, “A native or inhabitant of Arabia.”

I went to my world atlas and tried to find “Arabia,” but there's no such country as “Arabia” anymore. There must have been an Arabia at one time because I clearly remember reading the book
Lawrence of Arabia.

Another definition says an Arab is anyone from the Middle East who is Semitic. Israel is in the Middle East and Jews are Semitic, but there are not many Jewish Arabs. I have concluded, to my own satisfaction, that the word “Arab” refers more to cultural and linguistic distinctions than to geographic ones. I'm easily satisfied when the conclusion is my own and I am no longer using the word “Muslim” and “Arab” interchangeably.

For most Americans, the fact that Iran and Iraq sound so much alike is a problem. It was easier years ago when Iran was called “Persia” and Iraq was called “Mesopotamia.” Rugs made in Iran are still called “Persian” because they sell better than rugs called “Iranian.”

My almanac says there are 25 million people in Iraq. One other statistic we know for certain: There are about 135,000 American soldiers there and too many of them have been killed, many since President Bush declared that we had won the war.

Iran is the other country that has only four letters and just one letter is different. It would be as confusing as if there was a state right next to Utah called Utaq.

Iran is bigger than Iraq and has more people (67 million). Iranians speak Farsi, not Arabic, so they are not called Arabs. Out of every 1,000 Iranians, 154 have television sets.

Iraq is about the size of California—not the shape—and only 82 of every 1,000 people have television sets. I suppose those people in Iraq who can't read, watch television. Like here.

Iran is more like the size of Alaska, but Alaska is mostly ice and Iran is mostly sand. It's too hot most of the time and, fortunately for the Iranian people, they don't have to work very hard because under the sand is an ocean of oil they suck up and sell to us.

A lot of Middle Eastern countries are small. Israel, of course, is small. Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait is even smaller than Israel, but you can see on the map why Saddam Hussein tried to take it over in 1991. Kuwait has a port right on the Persian Gulf, so a lot of oil goes through there. The country pretty much blocks off Iraq from the Gulf.

Iraq just barely touches the gulf near Abadan, Iran. I flew into Abadan once. The end of the world must look something like that. The day I came in, a couple of GIs stationed there were sitting on a bench at the airport watching the planes come and go. I asked one of them what he did on his day off and he just looked at me and said, “This IS my day off.”

I hope this encourages all of you to do more research on the Middle East on your own. You might look into such countries as Uzbekistan, Yemen, Oman, Qatar and, of course, Turkmenistan. Perhaps there are real estate opportunities you've been overlooking.

 

 

 

It is possible to imagine a time in five years, after New York and Washington have been destroyed and millions of people killed with biological or nuclear weapons. Won't those Americans left alive ask why we didn't attack and eliminate our enemy years before when we could have done it easily? Like in 2000, 2002 or 2006?

It's easy to imagine our living to regret an all-out attack on Iraq. A great many Americans would object to our attacking another nation for any reason. There are people with strong moral objections to our being the aggressor. Even though we would have saved a lot of time, trouble and American lives if we'd attacked Germany before Hitler conquered all of Europe, opposition to our entry into World War II was strong. It was hard to convince the American people that we had to go to war even after Hitler had moved into France. Stories about concentration camps where Jews were being murdered seemed like propaganda designed to suck us into a war that was none of our business. President Roosevelt was even accused of baiting the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor as a trick to get the American people to support our entry into the war.

It seems likely that most Americans do not think we should attack Iraq. The Bush administration is ignoring us and proceeding on a course that is going to take us to war. Saddam Hussein is refusing to let UN observers see what he is doing. We have to trust that President Bush and his military advisors know things about Hussein, his weapons and his intentions, that we do not know. We have to believe, as patriotic Americans, that an attack is an urgent necessity or they wouldn't be planning one. We have to put a lot of trust in some people who have not been very trustworthy. As Americans, we have to believe they know what they are doing. The alternative, if we are wrong and substantial parts of the United States are destroyed, is too terrible to contemplate.

Most Americans don't know Iran from Iraq, or either one from Saudi Arabia. Iraq is a little bigger than California in square miles. Iran has the most people, 66 million; Saudi Arabia the most land, if you call sand land. It's three times as big as Texas. Iraq has only 23 million people, slightly more than Saudi Arabia.

These three countries are swimming in oil. The people don't have to lift a finger to prosper. It's as if they have a money tree and only have to shake it to get what they want. They have very little industry and little farming.

Saudi Arabia is on our official list of “friends,” but a recent study presented to top-ranking Pentagon officials said that “Saudi Arabia supports
our enemies and attacks our allies.” The report went on to say that Saudi Arabia “is the most dangerous opponent” in the Middle East.

That briefing included a suggestion that if Saudi Arabia didn't cease its anti-American activities, we should move in and take over its oil fields. This is macho stuff that a segment of our population loves. The idea of gas for 50 cents a gallon is appealing. Saudi Arabians couldn't do much about it if we decided to move in and start taking their oil.

The majority of Americans support and approve of George W. Bush as their President. It seems strange then that while he is apparently intent on invading Iraq, Americans who voted for him and would vote for him again tomorrow, are not so enthusiastic about it as he is.

President Bush seems almost eager for war. It's as if he knows something about Saddam Hussein that we don't know and for some reason won't tell us. He's asking us to trust him on this and we don't trust him. Bush's critics accuse him of using Iraq to take our minds off the economy which has been so bad during his time in office.

However, it seems unlikely that the Republicans are responsible for the downturn any more than President Clinton and the Democrats should get all the credit for how good things were during Clinton's regime. The economy is something that doesn't ever respond predictably to any effort economists make to influence it.

We're all asking each other now how we feel about attacking Iraq. People ask me what I think, as if I knew more than they do because I'm on television. There is a tendency to invest people in the public eye with an intelligence they don't have—and whether or not we should go after Iraq is beyond my ken.

The idea of using our great power to straighten out the world appeals to most of us. We think that in attacking Iraq, we are the good guys and
have the best interests of mankind at heart. The trouble is, war has never done much for mankind.

Americans like the idea of taking action, as if action were always good, but we know that action has often had bad results, too. The administration is calling this current phase “the war on terror” but it is not war. Attacking Iraq would be war.

My own feeling about attacking Iraq is colored by my embarrassing past, which is so much on my mind that I keep writing about it. In college, I had a pacifist professor who convinced me that I was one. I accepted his opinion that it would be wrong for the United States to get involved in the war in Europe against Adolf Hitler. Stories of Nazi persecution of the Jews seemed like hard-to-believe propaganda designed to get America involved in someone else's war. I didn't believe rumors of the persecution of Jews that were oozing out of Germany. They seemed too far-fetched to accept. I did not have the courage of my convictions, however, and after registering for the draft I was inducted into the Army. It was three years later, after I entered Buchenwald, before I realized what a stupid college student I had been. The only way for me to relieve myself of the guilt I feel is to talk about it like this.