Ask Auntie Pinko
September 20, 2001

Dear Auntie Pinko,

More than five thousand Americans are dead from terrorist attacks on America. How are we going to look ourselves in the mirror if we don't do something about this? And how are we going to keep ourselves safe from more such attacks if we don't go after the people who did it and the countries who support it?

I hear a lot of liberals saying that sending the military in to destroy these terrorists and the governments that support them is a bad idea. But what is the alternative? What else can we do that will stop this madness now? Don't we have to put aside partisan politics and support President Bush, whether we like him or not?

Steven
Charlotte, NC

Dear Steven,

Auntie Pinko shares the feelings of anger, sorrow, and anxiety which is overwhelming Americans right now. And, like many Americans, I've been thinking and thinking and thinking about "what we can do." You raise a lot of important questions, and I'd like to answer them all, so bear with me.

How are we going to look ourselves in the mirror if we don't do something about this?

It's not a question of whether we do something, but of what we do. We face two dangers right now: The first is that our anger will overwhelm our good judgment and the action we take will make things worse, not better. And the second is that if we can't unite behind our course of action, we won't be able to make it effective.

We will act, Steven. We mustn't lose confidence in ourselves, in our strength, and in our will to overcome this challenge and make the world safer. While it's tempting to use the immediate energy of our collective national anger to make a swift, unified response to these attacks, that places us in danger of making things worse, not better.

Remember that these terrorists have been building their strength and nurturing their plans against us for many years. They have the asset of patience - they are willing to wait, and watch, and plan, to make their strikes effective. We, too, must put aside our American need for instant gratification and grow the patience to build a careful, complete, effective response. We must build a real, lasting unity, a unity founded on confidence in our effectiveness.

And how are we going to keep ourselves safe from more such attacks if we don't go after the people who did it and the countries who support it?

The most powerful force in human affairs is the idea. It is the idea that men are willing to die for that we must fear, not the men who die. Karl Marx was already dead when his ideas were used to fuel a revolution that (ultimately) claimed millions of lives and changed the balance of world power. We can kill legions of idea-obsessed fanatics, but others will take their places.

We can do two things to make ourselves safe: First, we can deprive these fanatics of the means to carry out their war-money, weapons, communications, real estate, leadership. Second, we can rob their idea of its power by studying it, learning why and how it appeals to so many followers, and counteracting it. We can do that by eliminating peoples' need for this poisonous idea, by counteracting it with other ideas, or other strategies.

I hear a lot of liberals saying that sending the military in to destroy these terrorists and the governments that support them is a bad idea. But what is the alternative? What else can we do that will stop this madness now?

Well, heavens! Let's apply a little Yankee ingenuity! If Auntie Pinko were in charge (thank heavens I'm not) I could think of a lot of alternatives. Let's see…

We could start by working with virtually every other nation in the world to track down their money, take it away, and make it impossible for them to hide money and move money around in the future. While this might make things difficult for others who like a certain laissez-faire anonymity in their financial dealings, sacrifice is essential to a successful war effort. And, as Mr. Bush keeps pointing out, this is war, a whole new kind of war.

Hmmm…. next, we can work with virtually every other nation in the world to regulate the arms trade in such a way that these people cannot get anymore bullets for their guns, missiles for their launchers, etc. Once they use up what they've stockpiled, they're done. Of course, this should also include the means to make weapons of mass destruction.

Auntie Pinko would also get on the phone to the leaders in Israel and tell them that it's time to pull all those settlers off the West Bank and withdraw opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian nation, or lose our support entirely. Whereas, if they don't oppose it, in fact if they make an effort to establish friendly ties with the new state, the U.S. will continue and increase our support for them. Of course, this would imply a major, long-term American commitment to promoting dialogue and security with their Arab neighbors, but again, sacrifice is essential to winning this war.

Auntie Pinko also thinks in terms of working with other Muslim governments to increase their economic stability, strengthen democracy in their countries, and promote the true Islamic values of peace and friendship. This would be part of a larger "propaganda war" to rob fundamentalism of its power and lessen the number of potential recruits to the fanatics.

In the mean time, an Auntie Pinko government would be supporting large investments in non-petroleum based energy resources, to eliminate America's dependence on oil and render us un-blackmailable by that means. And new forms of technology that would enable us to use our national infrastructure of communications and transportation safely.

Given the track record of our intelligence services and how their reckless and paranoid operational policies contributed to the conditions that allowed this tragedy, Auntie Pinko would probably also dismantle and reconstitute them to focus on effective intelligence gathering, rather than on covert policy implementation.

Gracious, if Auntie Pinko can think of all these ideas, I'm certain that people with far more wisdom and experience in government can easily come up with three bags full, Steven. There are plenty of alternatives to Rambo!

Don't we have to put aside partisan politics and support President Bush, whether we like him or not?

We do have to support Mr. Bush. Like it or not, he is our head of state and we're stuck with him for at least another three years. A bitter internal struggle will deplete us of the energy and will needed for the fight against this terrorist enemy.

But "support" takes many forms. It is not necessarily a blind acquiescence to everything he and his advisors propose. It can take the form of pointing out alternatives, of offering reasoned dissent, of maintaining focus on long-term results and constitutional priorities.

Auntie Pinko is hoping to hear from her fellow Democrats a toning-down of the personal and personality-based attacks on Mr. Bush. I'm hoping that we will have the patience to give his administration some maneuvering room (within the Constitution) to develop and propose a strategy. I'm hoping that our discussion of that strategy will focus on issues of effectiveness and common goals, not on partisan advantage.

Democrats must vigilantly guard all Constitutional rights and liberties, and do our best to steer Mr. Bush's administration toward Constitutional, rather than expedient, strategies. We must retain the right (indeed, the democratic duty) to oppose Mr. Bush in domestic policy matters, and to provide measured and reasonable criticism of his performance. But we must use that right with restraint, and that is our sacrifice in this war.

Thank you for writing to Auntie Pinko, Steven!

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