Looking to Daddy for the Answer...and Not Listening. Part 1

There is a consistent theme that runs through many people who oppose America’s actions in the Middle East, now centered on Iraq. It is summarized fairly well in the comments by Warren Small who writes:

For the pragmatist, the ultimate criticism of Bush is not that he never had a good reason to attack Iraq in the first place but that he had no idea what to do with it, or how, once he knocked off its tyrant. "Mission Accomplished", firefight-wise, but what then? "Regime change" to what? We've never been given an understandable goal or path or timetable by which we could measure what the WH means by "we're not losing".

This is a criticism that reminds me of the “Pony Tailed Guy” who, during a debate between Bill Clinton, Ross Perot and George Bush (Sr.) in 1992 in Richmond, VA

I ask the three of you, how can we as symbolically the children of the future president expect the two of you, the three of you to meet our needs?

Like the "pony tailed guy," Warren Small wants the president to treat us as his children and explain it all to him. He pleads that his understanding of our problem and its possible solution is beyond his childlike understanding and wants his “daddy” the President explain it all to him.

Why is it I never had that problem? Why did I never look to some authority figure to explain the situation to me after 9/11? Why did 9/11 explain a lot to me and make me realize – all over again – how fragile civilization is? How a few well motivated people can bring a modern interdependent society to a stop? Perhaps it helps to know that I live in Tidewater, Virginia where summer hurricane season is often accompanied by hours, days or even weeks of power outages when all our shiny toys that cook our food and heat our water and light up our gadgets become useless hunks of metal and glass, and we’re back to candles for light, bathing in cold water or not at all, and cooking over outdoor grills … until the fuel runs out.

Perhaps my understanding of religion made it obvious to me that suicide attacks were neither illogical nor inexplicable. And that led me to the understanding that one of the world’s great religions was breeding a cancer that threatened Western civilization. And the world’s fuel supply was located smack dab in the middle of that cancer. And that meant we had to do something to change that situation, to remove that cancer or we could die. And that Iraq was a good place to start.

But only to start.

To be continued…