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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: T L Comiskey who wrote (7716)	10/3/2002 9:53:19 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

A personal front By Ellen Goodman Columnist The Boston Globe 10/3/2002 IF ALL THE WORDS used in the run-up-to-war rhetoric, what stays in my mind is the time the president got personal. At a Houston fund-raiser he described Saddam Hussein as ''a guy that tried to kill my dad.'' It wasn't the first time he'd mentioned the assassination attempt. At the United Nations he'd said that the Iraqi leader had tried to kill ''a former American president.'' But this time it was the son talking about his ''dad.'' I won't read a family vendetta into one straight-from-the-gut phrase. I don't believe that the president is planning the Bush-Hatfields against the Hussein-McCoys. But I think there is something in this son's ardent desire to lead the country in war that has to do with the father and the son, with the greatest generation and the baby boom generation. With a son who sees himself picking up the baton and defining this war as his destiny. George Bush the elder fought in World War II. George Bush the younger joined the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. As an adult Dubya was often described as a good ol' boy or a frat boy. As a candidate he was likable and lite. As a president he was elected with a minority of votes and a butterfly ballot. Sept. 11, 2001, was the most sober day in his life - as it was in ours. The United States of America was attacked on George W. Bush's watch. Life doesn't get much more serious, much more grown-up than that. If there was ever a moment when the responsibility and the burden shifted onto his shoulders - shoulders that had often shrugged - it was that day. I hadn't voted for him, but I rooted for him. When Bush spoke to the nation after the attacks, I prayed that he was up to the job. And he was. Now when I reread the speech, a few sentences jump out at me. ''We have suffered great loss. And in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment,'' he said. ''Our nation - our generation - will lift a dark threat of violence from our people and our future.'' ''Our mission.'' ''Our generation.'' The father flew 58 combat missions over the Pacific as a young man. The boomer son found his mission - and his moment - in the war on terrorism. Last year George W. Bush's mission was ours - one and the same. The personal was universal. The attack on Al Qaeda, the war against the Taliban, were fought on deep moral principles. We were attacked, and we acted in self-defense. I was never entirely comfortable with the language of the presidential missionary. I didn't like the talk of ''evildoers,'' though I believed that terrorists were evil. It evoked an apocalyptic view of a world in which God and Satan were contending for the world and the godly people were justified in doing anything to Satan's people. That seemed like the vocabulary of terrorists, not Americans. But it was a just war, and the world was with us. Then the evildoer Osama bin Laden morphed into Saddam Hussein. The enemy evolved from an international band of terrorists who attacked us into a nation that could, wants to, someday, maybe, attack us. The moral argument also switched from self-defense to preemptive war to preventive war - which is difficult to separate from simple aggression. The universal principle has become a unilateral principle. In his radio speech last Saturday, the president said flatly, ''We refuse to live in this future of fear.'' Without proof of an imminent threat, fear is now the justification for war. And if this president thinks his mission is eliminating a ''future of fear,'' where does that end? In the switch from Osama to Saddam, from self-defense to ''prevention,'' ''our war'' is becoming ''his war.'' This is where I become wary of a son with a mission. Listening, I hear a man who believes that he is finally facing the test passed by his elders: the test of war. And while I detest the pejorative ''chicken hawk,'' I can't help noting how many of the pro-warriors in the administration, those who believe that war is not hell but the solution, never fought in one. Dwight Eisenhower once said, ''When you resorted to force ... you didn't know where you were going. If you got deeper and deeper, there was just no limit except the limitations of force itself.'' Saddam is the guy who ''tried to kill my dad.'' He is without doubt a brutal, maybe mad, man. But the question isn't about our dads. It's about our sons and daughters. Is this a just war? A necessary one? Would you send your sons and daughters into Iraq today and without allies? The case has yet to be made. Ellen Goodman's e-mail address is ellengoodman@globe.com. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. boston.com