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Are we safer? Bush Keeps Popping the QuestionBy Rick Horowitz
It's a perfectly reasonable question. You'd be asking it, too, if you were in his shoes. You'd realize, just as he does, that whoever picks the question controls the conversation. And you'd be totally intent -- if you were in his shoes -- on controlling the conversation. President Bush's shoes, that is. If you were in President Bush's shoes. And the question, of course, is this one: Are we safer with Saddam Hussein in power, or in a prison cell? The president waves the question like a flag, or a 2-by-4. It's his rallying cry, and his punch to the solar plexus. The president's strategists are so convinced it's the winning question that they spend their days trying to goad John Kerry into giving the wrong answer. And when Kerry doesn't quite say what they need him to say -- well, they just pretend he said it anyhow. Then they bash him for saying it. It's a perfectly reasonable question: Are we safer with Saddam Hussein in power, or in a prison cell? It's a perfectly reasonable question -- and there's only one plausible (which is to say, politically palatable) answer: We're safer with Saddam in a prison cell. Just as there's only one plausible response when the president declares, as he does so often, that if he has to choose whether to "take the word of a madman, or defend our country...I will defend America every time!" (On the count of three, please: "Duh!") Saddam in power, or in a prison cell? Of course in a prison cell! In a vacuum. The great thing about picking the question is that you also get to eliminate all the other stuff, the peripheral stuff, all those annoying little tug-at-your-sleeve considerations that go by the name of "the real world." In a vacuum, you throw Saddam Hussein -- who is a bad, bad man -- out of power, and you've eliminated a bad, bad man; that's one for the good guys. End of discussion. In a vacuum, you toss an evil dictator behind bars, and you've gotten rid of a dictatorship. The absence of dictatorship is freedom, right? Freedom is good. End of discussion. In a vacuum, you get rid of someone who struck fear in the hearts of his people, so there's no more fear, and his people are grateful. Grateful is great. End of discussion. In the real world, on the other hand... In the real world, you can't take just one log out of the pile and expect everything else to stay the same. Moving this one also means moving that one, and these others, too -- and suddenly the whole pile is wobbling! In the real world, you don't work your will on others without the risk that others (or even other others) might take exception -- or worse. Maybe you should have a plan to deal with that. In the real world, the time you spend on X is time you didn't spend on Y. You see where this is going, don't you? In a vacuum, Saddam in a prison cell is much better than Saddam in power -- but what if it also means terrorists taking root in a key country in a vital region? In a vacuum, Saddam in a prison cell is much better than Saddam in power -- but what if becoming an occupying force also means losing whatever allies and friends we once had in the Muslim world? In a vacuum, Saddam in a prison cell is much better than Saddam in power -- but is it better than 1,000 American soldiers with their hearts still beating, thousands more with their organs and limbs still intact? Saddam in a prison cell is much better than Saddam in power -- but is it better than spending that same time and money making our airplanes secure, and our railroads and our power plants, and inspecting more than a fraction of all those cargo ships gliding into our ports? Is it better than staying focused on the worst of our enemies, and the gravest of threats? Or maybe you'd prefer to ask it this way: "Are we safer with Saddam Hussein in a prison cell -- or Osama bin Laden?" It's a perfectly reasonable question. Posted 9/26/04. For
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Rick Horowitz
