Psychologist and author Dr. Jacob Mermelstein, among many attainments, is
knowledgeable in his Jewish observance. He was on the staff of a
clinic with a large Jewish population and when the chaplain was
suddenly called away, he asked Mermelstein to officiate in his
stead at Yom Kippur services. So Yom Kippur Eve found him in an
unaccustomed hortatory role, sermonizing to a “flock” of mental
patients. Delivering a talk about Man’s purpose in the world, he
became impassioned and began imploring: “Why are we here? Why are
we here?” From the back of the room a riposte was heard.
“Because we’re not all there.”
This puts me in mind of the current gestalt of the Democratic
Party. It has latched unto something that is not untrue, the fact
that our presence in Iraq is “not all there.” Yet it is dooming the
efficacy of its cry by losing perspective of “why we are here.” Its
preferred solution is retreat, than which no more deleterious
program is imaginable. Leaving Iraq to inherit the maelstrom would
be a recipe for untold disaster.
AND YET, we have problems there. Subtle ones. Problems that require
delicacy and forethought and planning and execution, not to mention
the occasional execution. The fact is that in past invasions which
bred insurgencies, the resistance tended to be sporadic and rarely
effective. Today we are in a situation where there are successful
bombings of significant targets such as police stations and army
recruitment centers on virtually a daily basis. Each guerrilla
sortie or terrorist massacre claims between ten and a hundred
lives. This is more than attrition for a society’s sense of
wellbeing; this is wholesale erosion.
Even if the military obstacles are eventually breached, we are
caught in a subtle conflict that simultaneously challenges our
political, governmental, legal, and moral sensibility. Say we
determine, as hitherto we have, that the peculiar morphology of
modern terrorism requires the suspension of certain precious mores.
It allows, even demands, that we imprison people for years with
less-than-due process, or torture people who have urgent knowledge
of pending or impending horrors. What, then, do we tell the new
government of Iraq? Can we allow it to behave in this manner?
This is akin to the maxim attributed to Rabbi Ezekiel Landau
(1713-1793) of Prague, who said: “If you can walk straight,
standing on your head is acrobatics. If you can only stand on your
head, that’s illness.” For a nation such as our own, grounded in
centuries of altruism and fair play, the emergency torture option
can be employed in special instances without introducing a culture
of sadism. But if the fledgling democracy of Iraq opens for
business from Day One with torture chambers “reserved for
terrorists,” it is almost a cinch to segue into Saddam redux.
It’s no fun, I know, but think about it. Can we practice torture
because of the special circumstances of the age while hectoring
Iraq against such excesses? Can we credibly try Saddam for torture
while winking to his replacement that torture is the order of the
day? Probably the best of these admittedly troublesome options is
to return to our primordial conscience against torture, regaining
our moral perch from which to ban the practice for the New Iraq,
and take our chances that we can prevail within the standard
playbook. In which case the Democrats, abetted by Senator McCain,
may be on to something, or at least a piece of something, with
their anti-torture amendment.
However, in their hysteria of overreaching, they insist on
qualifying Iraq as a quagmire. Their rhetoric of imputing lies and
conspiracies to the prosecution of a war of security and conscience
saps their meager reservoir of credibility. The American People,
when polled, express a vague sentiment of dissatisfaction with the
Iraq operation. Yet they do not embrace the Democrats’ shrill
cavils. Still, Republicans should not try to bargain them down from
a quagmire to a quiddity — more like an earnest quandary, but
amenable to resolution.
Always we must remember the answer to “why are we here?” We are
here because Saddams may no longer rule by crushing the human
spirit. We are here because the globe cannot afford little
laboratory countries for breeding terrorists. We are here because
even if Saddam was not saber-toothed, he was a saber rattler, and
in the desert when you hear a rattle you shoot first and ask
questions later. And we are here because even if it’s the other
guy’s mess, we have to mop up before we leave. Finally, we are here
because there is a still voice in our heart that enjoins us to heed
the prophet’s call and beat swords into plowshares.
As to the Democrats’ overwrought claims, all we can say is:
“There, there.” There is no there there.
