No Proof Would Be Enough
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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