[iwar] [fc:Factoring.PC.Into.The.Warfare.Equation]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2001-10-31 05:32:35


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Subject: [iwar] [fc:Factoring.PC.Into.The.Warfare.Equation]
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Washington Times
October 30, 2001
Factoring PC Into The Warfare Equation
By Martin Gross
Can a politically correct America win this war? The short answer to that
question is "No." The nation's moral stance and resolve have been corrupted
by a decade of political correctness, and we are now paying the price.
In this war, political correctness is the willingness to yield to the
sensitivity of others, including the enemy. This new weakness has now caught
up with us on two fronts: the war in Afghanistan and the domestic war
against terrorism.
In the war 6,000 miles away, we are displaying a lack of nerve that
manifests itself in several self-defeating ways.
The first is the need to regularly confess that we have injured Afghan
civilians.
Because of our technology, we believe we can fight a surgically antiseptic
war - that we can hit a tank but spare a home 100 feet away. No one can
always fight such a war and the occasional failure feeds enemy propaganda.
"Sorry, sorry," our politically correct government utters while American
television and newspapers show close-ups of injured Afghan children, a
portrait that can weaken our resolve. Instead we should endlessly repeat
that civilian casualties are an absolute necessity of any war.
Acknowledging incidents of "collateral damage," as we now regularly do, only
serves an enemy propaganda. Our commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks,
even foolishly stated we will always tell the truth about civilian
casualties. We might as well take over the propaganda chore for the enemy.
What should be done?
Acknowledge nothing about any specific incident. Merely repeat that our
government does not aim at civilian targets.
A second aspect of political correctness is so-called purity, the need to
tell the enemy the truth, even when it hurts us by creating defeatism. This
was displayed by a Pentagon spokesman, Rear Adm. John D. Stufflebeem, who
stated that "I am a bit surprised at how doggedly they're [the Taliban]
hanging on to their - to power."
He should be placed in a Pentagon backroom, never again to speak to the
press, who love to latch on to a case of American bad luck or failure.
The third politically correct failure is our insistence on telling the enemy
that we are sorry about killing him and that we will try to respect his
religion and holidays. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who once said of the
Iraqis, that "we'll cut them off and then kill them," has apparently found
political correctness, acknowledging "sensitivity" to the enemy's Ramadan
holiday, which lasts for a month. Helping the Taliban to celebrate their
holiday would virtually destroy our military campaign.
Is that sensitivity like the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on the Sunday
sabbath morning? Or the Arab attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, or the
Iraq-Iran war when Ramadan was suspended for years. War is hell, Gen.
William Tecumseh Sherman once advised us. There's no room there for
religious holidays.
The fourth politically correct activity is the temptation to put down our
own allies as not being pure enough. The American press has begun to talk
about the Northern Alliance as being too weak and even as "bad guys,"
injuring our coalition. They are "pure" enough to hate and fight the
Taliban, which makes them freedom fighters in any lexicon.
The fifth case of foolish political correctness involves the domestic war
against terrorists, where our attitudes are crippling us. While we're
fighting the Taliban to stop the training of terrorists there, we are
importing their recent graduates, a new Fifth Column, under the PC doctrine
of free and open American borders, even for our enemy.
Of the 19 suicide hijackers, 15 came here on "Multiple Use" Saudi visas,
good for up to two years of stay. Are there many Saudis still here? Some
60,000 total Saudi visas are granted each year, too many for anyone to check
their backgrounds.
Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has been doing a good job within the
confines of the present law, has also fallen into the politically correct
trap. Given new authority last week, he now states that "if they overstay
their visas by even one day," he'll arrest them. Does that mean that if
their visas are not overdue, which was the case in nine of the Saudi
killers, that's it's OK to plan and execute terrorism here?
The villain here is the comment, made to me regularly by government
personnel, that to tighten our borders to Middle Easterners would be "racial
profiling." This is an incorrect use of a phrase used to discriminate
falsely against our own people. But in the case of aliens, especially
potential enemy aliens, the use of word "racial profiling" to describe
security matters is a self-defeating, politically correct attitude.
To properly tighten our borders, all we need do is reduce the visa quota of
some 250,000 Middle Easterners a year by 90 percent, carefully checking the
remaining 10 percent. If we are blocked by PC champions in Washington,
especially in the State Department or the Immigration and Nationalization
Service, we should go across the board and eliminate 90 percent of all 7
million visas a year. Most important, we should reduce the length of all
visas to only 30 days, fingerprinting all and requiring them to reapply for
any extension.
(This wouldn't inhibit travel by citizens of 29 nations, mostly Europeans,
who don't need a visa to come here.)
The present open visa policy, with it overconcern for aliens, including
enemy aliens, is ludicrous. It even stretches to the fact that now - some
eight weeks after Sept. 11 - a terrorist is still able to take flying
lessons at any of the flight schools in America.
"I haven't received any directives from the government to stop training
foreigners," says the operator a of a flight schools in Danbury, Conn.
If nothing else, that is the ultimate victory of political correctness over
common sense, once a great American virtue.
The assault on the World Trade Center was our Pearl Harbor, killing twice as
many as died on Dec. 7, 1941. In addition to the plethora of flags, we
should add a reminder, a poster of the once-gallant Lower New York skyline
with the motto, "Remember The Twin Towers."
That might help dispel the tendency to call on the politically correct
concern for the sensibilities of the enemy. Anger and the desire for revenge
and victory would be the more appropriate and sincere emotions.
Martin Gross is a nationally syndicated columnist. 

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