If Not Now, When?
David C. Stolinsky, M.D.
Friday, Feb. 7, 2003
A long time ago, a wise man asked, "If not now, when?" That is, we should ask ourselves whether we are waiting for something specific, or just procrastinating.
I used to make teaching rounds at the hospital with interns and residents. Quite often, when I asked what they were doing for a patient, I was told that they were waiting for a laboratory test result. Sometimes this result was important and would point the way to effective therapy.
But sometimes, as we discussed the problem, it became obvious that whether the test came back high, low or normal, it wouldn’t matter. They weren’t really waiting for the test result. They were waiting because of uncertainty, doubt or lack of confidence.
They were just waiting.
Minor problems may solve themselves. But this was the medical oncology service. Cancer doesn’t go away by itself. Waiting invariably results in a worse problem, one harder or even impossible to treat. So unless there was a good reason to wait, we made the best decision we could and began treatment without delay.
That lesson stayed with me. It is especially relevant today.
Anti-war activists, enemies of the administration and enemies of America insist that we shouldn’t make war on Iraq now, but we should wait. Wait for what? What can any rational person expect to happen that will make waiting worthwhile?
When the Gulf War ended, the cease-fire required Iraq to divest itself of weapons of mass destruction, as verified by U.N. inspectors. We knew for certain that Saddam Hussein had these weapons, because he actually used them.
He had used poison gas on Iran during the bloody war he began. He had used poison gas on his own Kurdish minority. And some believe he used poison gas on our troops during the Gulf War, though this has not been generally accepted.
What’s more, Saddam accumulated huge stores of biological weapons, including anthrax. And he built Scud missiles, which he used against us and Israel. Finally, there is clear evidence that he was attempting to develop nuclear weapons.
But here’s something odd. Liberals want to ban private ownership of firearms, for fear the presence of a gun will turn law-abiding citizens into killers. But then they claim that the presence of weapons of mass destruction doesn’t mean we should intervene, because Saddam might not use them. This raises illogic to an art form.
For a decade, Saddam played hide-and-seek with the inspectors, while the U.N. did little to force him to comply. Finally the inspectors left in disgust, and Saddam refused to readmit them. That is, he threw them out in such a way that he could deny doing so.
And what did the U.N. do to enforce its "binding" resolutions? What did the Clinton administration do to punish this breach of the cease-fire? What did the "world community" do? They waited.
So for four years, Saddam was free to build more weapons of mass destruction. He was free to hide those he had. He reportedly bought tunneling equipment from France, with which he could excavate large caves underground or in mountainsides. And he reportedly purchased precursors of chemical, biologic and perhaps nuclear weapons from various nations.
And what happened? Precisely nothing happened — until President Bush threatened military action unless Saddam readmitted the U.N. inspectors. Under threat of force, the inspectors were readmitted, but as clearly stated in the U.N. resolution, their role was to verify the destruction of the forbidden weapons.
No rational person expects roughly 100 inspectors to be able to search a mountainous nation the size of California and to find weapons that could be concealed in a suitcase, a truck or a cave. But even if the weapons aren’t in Iraq, where did Saddam send the tons of nerve gas, mustard gas, anthrax, and botulism toxin? To al-Qaeda?
Now the critics turn the U.N. resolution on its head. They claim there is no "smoking gun." Instead of verifying the destruction of the weapons, they misstate the inspectors’ role as verifying their existence.
In short, the critics insist that we wait until the virtually impossible has been achieved. That is, they want us to wait forever. They insist that we wait for the U.N. to act, which is the same thing.
U.N. Could Use Ted Bundy
That’s the same U.N. that just named Libya to head its Human Rights Commission, and Iraq — Iraq! — to head its Disarmament Conference. Too bad Ted Bundy’s dead — he would make an ideal chairman for its Commission on the Status of Women. And how about Jeffrey Dahmer to head the Food and Agriculture Organization?
The U.N. is regressing from the ineffectual to the ridiculous. But pacifists and leftists still love it. Perhaps they love it because it’s ineffectual.
Pacifists never want to oppose evil. They can’t even recognize it — except in hindsight. They grudgingly admit that especially horrible evil may be opposed with force if absolutely necessary. But these examples are always in the past.
Pacifists in the 1930s opposed rearmament, despite the rise of Hitler, pointing out that no Genghis Khan was at the gates. Pacifists in the 1980s opposed rearmament, despite the growth of the Soviet empire, pointing out that no Hitler was on the horizon. Pacifists today oppose rearmament, despite the rise of global terrorism, pointing out that the Soviet empire is no more.
Pacifists recognize evil only when it’s too late, and somebody else has fought and bled to destroy it. That is, pacifists are mere spectators in the struggle between good and evil, and often they cheer for the wrong side.
Pacifists and leftists insist we must wait for a "smoking gun." Over a year ago, anthrax was spread in our country. Despite hard work by experts, we don’t know who spread it, much less its origin. Suppose another biological warfare attack occurs. Suppose thousands die. Will we be any more successful in discovering who is guilty?
The anthrax "gun" was smoking, but we still don’t know who fired it.
Or suppose the worst happens. Suppose a nuclear bomb goes off in Los Angeles, Houston or Manhattan. Suppose hundreds of thousands die. What then?
The bomb squad can’t examine pieces of the bomb to determine its origin. There are no pieces of the bomb, or the truck it came in, or anything else in the area. Everything and everyone there was vaporized. Oh yes, there’ll be a huge crater and a mushroom cloud, but no smoking gun.
The best we could do is analyze the radioactivity to get a clue as to the origin of the uranium or plutonium. But Saddam probably isn’t producing these himself. Suppose he bought the nuclear material from the Russian mafia. We would blame Russia, not Iraq. That could lead to a disastrous nuclear exchange between America and Russia, while Saddam remained safe — unless he laughed himself to death.
The world might descend into a nuclear nightmare, but the pacifists would remain smugly self-righteous, denying to the last that they had prevented us from putting out the fire before it became a conflagration.
We had a chance to stop Hitler when he was still weak. But we didn’t. So we had to stop a genocidal psychopath after he grew strong, and more than 40 million died.
We had a chance to stop North Korea before it built nuclear weapons. But we didn’t. So now we have to deal with unstable megalomaniacs armed with the most powerful weapons ever devised.
We have our last chance to stop Saddam Hussein before he obtains enough weapons of mass destruction to blackmail the world into accepting his takeover of Kuwaiti and Saudi oil fields, so he can strangle the world economy. We have our last chance to stop him before he supplies these weapons to terrorists, if he hasn’t already.
But will we? Or will we just wait? Who knows? Maybe the cancer will go away by itself.
The next time pacifists or leftists repeat their platitudes, try this:
Ask them who got rid of slavery: Harriet Tubman or Ulysses S. Grant?
Ask them who got rid of Hitler: Gandhi or the Allied armies?
Ask them what precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire: Jimmy Carter’s appeasement or Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup?
Ask them who freed Afghan women from Taliban oppression: radical feminists or American soldiers?
Ask them who is dismantling al-Qaeda: obstructionist Democrats or the U.S. armed forces?
Then ask them who will remove the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction: Kofi Annan and Sean Penn, or George W. Bush and Tommy Franks?
Dr. Stolinsky writes on political and social issues. He may be contacted at dcstolinsky@prodigy.net. |
