Screeds
Sunday, September 26, 2004
A Time For Clarity
June 15, 2002
“The government and media for the past nine months have called this a war against terror. So have we here. But terror is not the enemy. It is what the enemy wants to achieve. So on this broadcast, we are making a change in the interests of clarity and honesty.
“The enemies in this war are radical Islamists who argue all non-believers in their faith must be killed. They are called Islamists. That’s why we are abandoning the phrase, War Against Terror. Let us be clear. This is not a war against Muslims or Islam. It is a war against Islamists and all who support them. If ever there were a time for clarity, it is now.”—Lou Dobbs, on Lou Dobbs Moneyline, June 6, 2002
I think I have a new hero.
I knew little of Mr. Dobbs before the above statement came to my attention a few days ago, but it’s more than sufficient to win him my admiration, both for its specific content and its general orientation. It seems appropriate that a man from the world of finance, where the virtues of clarity and exactitude are not mere desiderata but absolute requirements, should be the one to weigh in on the national consciousness with this message.
Indeed, the old saw that “the first casualty of war is truth” notwithstanding, no need is more urgent in wartime than clarity. One must know precisely who the enemy is, and precisely what his goals are, and precisely how he plans to achieve them. Once these things are known, one must dispatch one’s forces to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy—precisely.
But then, is there ever not a need for clarity? Is this ever not something one wants to have?
The question might seem absurd when put so bluntly, but only because the penchant for uncertainty and ambiguity has been driven so deeply into us that it has become invisible.
In Three Days Of The Condor, the classic movie of self-devouring intrigue at the CIA, a deputy director played by Cliff Robertson is listening to the Director of Central Intelligence, played by John Houseman, relate a story of his exploits in World War II. When Houseman runs down, Robertson asks him, “Do you miss that kind of action, sir?” “No,” Houseman replies, “I miss that kind of clarity.”
What I’m most concerned with is moral clarity, the ability to tell right from wrong, the good guys from the bad guys, with little or no uncertainty. It’s been shockingly corroded these past fifty years or so. We need it desperately. To hear Mr. Dobbs speak of it so forthrightly was a stirring thing, a trumpet call to a slumbering people.
Slumbering? Us? Yes, us. U.S. We are awake only in the sense that having been stung in our sleep has caused us to lash out against the most obvious of our tormentors. But a film remains over too many eyes. Too many wish to “declare victory and withdraw,” that they may return at once to the arms of Morpheus.
Clarity makes demands upon a person, or a nation. It can hurt the eyes, for with a clear understanding of right and wrong comes a moral imperative to act in defense of the former and against the perpetrators of the latter. When we are without clarity, we can rationalize our indifference to the evil that moves in the world—and the less clear we are, the closer it can get without stirring us to our duty to defend freedom and justice.
The most pernicious of all the toxins to our clarity, the mud that has most effectively clouded the waters of our understanding and inhibited us from doing what we must, is the notion of historical injustice, sometimes called “social injustice.”
Atrocities are perpetrated daily against Israeli citizens by Palestinian irredentists. Young men who might pass any street in America unremarked—well, at least before Black Tuesday they would have—have been strapping themselves into belts stuffed with explosives and lethal projectiles, seeking out concentrations of defenseless, unsuspecting Israelis, screaming “Allahu Akhbar!”, and blowing themselves up. And a goodly number of Americans are excusing them for it on the grounds of historical injustice.
A rising movement here at home seeks to compel white Americans to pay reparations for slavery to black Americans. Not one of the whites who would be mulcted has ever owned a slave. Not one of the blacks who would presumedly receive the money has ever been a slave. How, then, is this demand for trillions of dollars of “reparations,” which would repair nothing and would sunder American society irreparably, rationalized? On the grounds of historical injustice.
There is a considerable inclination to excuse American blacks who father illegitimate children or do evil deeds on the grounds of the “historical injustice” of slavery or the “social injustice” of racism. There is a considerable inclination to allow Mexicans unrestricted privileges to enter the United States and take up residence here, and to absolve those who have already done so in violation of the immigration laws, on the grounds of the “historical injustice” of the Mexican War and the Spanish-American War.
Could it be any clearer that these invocations of “historical injustice” are anesthetic in nature, intended to soothe our moral urgings to oppose the individual perpetrator of injustice, he who freely chose to do wrong instead of right, and hold him to account for his crimes? But to ask that question requires a certain degree of clarity, doesn’t it?
Expect an attempt to shout you down if you raise this sort of issue in public. But don’t let it stop you. Mr. Dobbs was spot-on. If there was ever a time for clarity, it is now.
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