Russell Morse, Call me America: A young man contemplates going to war

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2001

Lips, loose & otherwise

Once again, as I often have in the past few weeks, I’m flip-flopping between fear and fury.

I’m looking at an op-ed piece in the October 18 New York Times by Richard Butler, “ambassador in residence at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the forthcoming ‘Fatal Choice: Nuclear Weapons and the Illusion of Missile Defense.’” Butler also served as executive chair of the UN special commission charged with weapons inspection in Iraq.

The piece is an extended example of an increasingly common practice: building a case upon unfounded suppositions. The opening statement, tossed off in a whispered aside, acknowledges, “We have no evidence for X,” followed by a slightly louder, “but if we did…” Then the fanfare begins, ushering in the whole point of the exercise.

The sudden appearance of anthrax in our midst has encouraged what was already a bad habit. President Bush: “I wouldn’t put it past [Osama bin Laden], but we don’t have hard evidence yet.” National security adviser Condoleezza Rice: “There isn’t any hard evidence of a link of any kind, but we don’t want to be blind to that link.”

But Butler’s article turns the habit into an art form. “If,” he begins, terrorists want “to use biological weapons to kill on a large scale, they have not succeeded — not yet.” If we discover that the anthrax “was supplied by a state,” he continues, then the situation will be very grave indeed. Was the anthrax weapons-grade, “which could only have been made by skilled people in possession of expensive equipment? The findings from the office of Senator Tom Daschle, although they are still quite tentative, may suggest” that it was.

Tada! Enter The Point: Iraq may be responsible. “If the scientific path leads to Iraq as the supporter of the anthrax used by the terrorist mailers in the United States, no one should be surprised.”

“If … quite tentative … may suggest … if.”

Circumstances may confirm Butler’s reasoning. If they do, we’ll manage to factor the new facts into our own reasoning. But for now, it feels like we’re being manipulated, op-ed piece by op-ed piece, official statement by official statement.

While the official pageant continues, real people try to continue with real lives. The president vows to “do whatever it takes to defeat terror,” and I worry that my son visited Duke University during the same week that Robert Stevens, the first anthrax casualty, was there. A friend pales at the thought of her thoughtful free-spirited son being drafted and sent into combat. Another tries to explain to her eight-year-old daughter why all the grownups look worried, and includes the little girl in her daily visits to a neighborhood Jordanian-owned market.

Women’s work? Perhaps. ZNet commentator Cynthia Peters notes that women “are being told that shopping is their patriotic duty, that their unpaid caring labor is now part of the war effort, that they must obsess about the minutia of daily routines and not focus on the larger issues, and that they should stand united with the rest of the country as if it were one big family.”

Peters traces this pattern all the way to the White House: In his October 7, 2001 war announcement, she says, Bush shamefully showcased the ideal feminine gesture during this tragic time — literally to be willing to sacrifice our men. He said, “I recently received a touching letter that says a lot about the state of America in these difficult times, a letter from a fourth grade girl with a father in the military. ‘As much as I don’t want my dad to fight,’ she wrote, ‘I’m willing to give him to you.’”

But in times when the country’s wars are fought by volunteers, most men are relegated to cheerleading roles as well, to sharing with women the frustrating burden of concern for loved ones, in effect creating a nation that stays at home, baking red, white, and blue cakes, while daddy goes off to do important work.

What can we do to undo this kind of damage?

Scuttle loose lips before they sink you. Watch out for signs of the “no evidence, but …” syndrome and insist on straight answers.

Counter loose lips with some stiff talk of our own, which tries — as many of the contributions to this week’s Call do — to address the present situation directly. Honest, open conversation creates a wonderful barrier to hype.

And then, when all the talking is done, go home and kiss your loved ones.