Fwd: Better "Yes" than Right

[telebob x]

Too bad GWB doesn't have Safire on the payroll...all of these are good 
questions...even if you don't support the war...which I don't.
tbob


----Original Message Follows----
From: Richard Torre <rumaggi@attbi.com>
To: Bob Simmons <telebob@hotmail.com>
Subject: Better "Yes" than Right
Date: Fri, 21 Feb 2003 08:51:02 -0800

February 20, 2003

The Yes-But Parade
By WILLIAM SAFIRE


WASHINGTON

After his resounding re-election in 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt turned on 
the right wing of his Democratic Party. "He invented a new word," recalled 
his speechwriter, Samuel Rosenman, "to describe the congressman who publicly 
approved a progressive objective but who always found something wrong with 
any specific proposal to gain that objective — a yes-but fellow."

In gaining the progressive objective of stripping a genocidal maniac of 
weapons capable of murdering millions, today's U.S. president is 
half-supported, half-obstructed by a new parade of politicians and pundits 
who applaud the goal but deplore the means necessary to achieve it. Count 
the banners of today's yes-butters:

1. Yes, Saddam Hussein is evil, a monster in power, but is it for us to 
assume the power to crush every cruel tyrant in the world?

2. Yes, only the threat of U.S. force enabled the U.N. inspectors to get 
back into Iraq, but now that they're there, why not let them poke around 
until they find something?

3. Yes, Saddam is probably working on germs and poison gases and maybe even 
nukes, but he hasn't used them lately, and what's the rush to stop him now — 
why not wait until inspectors find proof positive or he demonstrates his 
possession?

4. Yes, Iraqi weapons could someday obliterate New York, but what's the use 
of stopping them when North Korean missiles could even sooner take out Los 
Angeles?

5. Yes, Saddam has defied 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions over a dozen 
years to disarm, but aren't we his moral equivalent by threatening to get it 
done despite a French veto?

6. Yes, we have credible testimony from captives that Saddam harbors in 
Baghdad terrorists trained by and affiliated with Al Qaeda, but where's the 
smoking gun that shows the ultimate nexus — that he personally ordered the 
attacks of Sept. 11?

7. Yes, ending Saddam's rewards to families of suicide bombers would remove 
an incentive to kill innocents, but wouldn't the exercise of coalition power 
to curtail the financing of terror create a thousand new Osama bin Ladens?

8. Yes, the liberation of 23 million oppressed and brutalized Iraqis would 
spread realistic hope for democratic change throughout the Arab world, but 
wouldn't that destabilize the Saudi monarchy and drive up oil prices?

9. Yes, we could win, and perhaps quickly, but what if we have to fight in 
the streets of Baghdad or have to watch scenes of civilians dying on TV?

10. Yes, cost is no object in maintaining U.S. national security, but 
exactly how much is war going to cost and why not break your tax-cut 
promises in advance?

11. Yes, the democratic nation most easily targeted by Saddam's missiles is 
willing to brave that risk, but doesn't such silent support prove that 
American foreign policy is manipulated by the elders of Zion?

12. Yes, liberation and human rights and the promotion of democracy and the 
example to North Korea and Iran are all fine Wilsonian concepts, but such 
idealism has no place in realpolitik — and can you guarantee that our 
servicemembers will be home for Christmas?

This is the dirty dozen of doubt, the non-rallying cry of the half-hearted. 
The yes-butters never forthrightly oppose, as principled pacifists do. 
Rather than challenge the ends, they demean the means. Rather than go up 
against a grand design, they play the devil with the details. Afflicted by 
doubt created by the potential cost of action, they flinch at calculating 
the far greater cost of inaction.

Haughty statesmen felt for years that "poorly brought up" Bosnians and 
Kosovars were unworthy of outside military defense — until hundreds of 
thousands of innocent Muslims embarrassingly died. Iraqi Kurds by the 
thousands were poison-gassed as well, their cries and exodus ignored by 
European leaders in the name of preserving the sovereignty of despots. These 
local crowd-pleasers are ready to again embrace peace at any price so long 
as others pay the price.

The firm opponents of a just war draw succor from the yes-butters, whose 
fears are expressed in dwelling on the uncertainty of great enterprises. 
Their fears are neither unreasoning or unjustified, but, in the words of a 
president who rose above paralysis, "paralyze needed efforts to turn retreat 
into advance." 

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