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A Vast, Frightening Conspiracy

If you don't read right-wing columnists, you might be surprised to know that antiwar individuals are labeled, as a group, in some of the unkindest, twisted-logic terminology.

BY DEBBY MORSE
The Examiner 

    "IF YOU'RE NOT with us, you're against us."

    So goes George Bush's black-and-white reasoning on all manner of issues fraught with varying shades of gray. We've come to expect that from Bush, this man who calls himself "a uniter, not a divider."

    Bush has the country -- the world, even -- divided over how to deal with Saddam Hussein. Even that's to be expected: Iraq's leader is so damn insane, but whether he's an immediate threat is unproven.

    Some favor Bush's call for a preventive strike, maybe using nuclear force, on a sneaky and corrupt despot who was a sneaky and corrupt despot 20 years ago. Some favor negotiation and containment while allowing U.N. inspectors to weigh the urgency of the situation.

    Understandably, those who favor a wait-and-see attitude, who deplore the thought of the United States launching an unprovoked invasion and fear the global consequences, are called antiwar. But that's not all they're called.

    If you don't read right-wing columnists, you might be surprised to know that antiwar individuals are labeled, as a group, in some of the unkindest, twisted-logic terminology.

    No less a luminary than William Safire wrote a piece for the New York Times after Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. Security Council last week. Here is the second paragraph:

    "Defenders of Saddam Hussein demanded absolute smoking-gun proof of illegal Iraqi possession of terror weaponry. Contrary to U.N. Resolution 1441, which demanded active Iraqi cooperation in demonstrating disarmament, Saddam's protectors place the burden of proof on the U.S." (I added the italics.)

    When did resisting a rush to war become equated with supporting Saddam?

    Safire ought to be above that kind of linguistic dishonesty: In addition to being a political columnist and former speechwriter for President Nixon, he writes a column for the Times' Sunday magazine, "On Language," discussing issues of grammar, etymology and usage, including the political power of language. If he were to apply his usual good standards of linguistic scrutiny to those remarks, he'd have to shred himself.

    Safire is not alone. One of the more prolific sources of tricky invective against the left is James Taranto, who posts collected columns and news articles along with his own comments in a daily online blog for the Wall Street Journal. For Taranto, the correct term is not war. He calls it "the liberation of Iraq" (Jan. 30), condemns antiwar activists as "pro-Saddam" (Feb. 5) and concludes that, "The 'antiwar' left's (position) seems to stand only for the proposition that the enemy of my country is my friend" (Jan. 30).

    That wacky, blonde, stand-up pundit for the right wing, Ann Coulter, has spouted so many inanities about the left that it's practically shooting fish in a barrel to quote her -- but here goes. In her Feb. 6 column, Coulter is not so much redefining antiwar sentiment as she is presuming to know what liberals feel about the demise of the space shuttle Columbia:

    "The idea that liberals feel the shuttle explosion was a tragedy is patent nonsense. They were jumping for joy at this new excuse to denounce the 'march to war.' The nation is marching to war at such breakneck speed, it will be two years from 9/11 before we attack."

    Would you want this person as a spokeswoman for your political agenda? Jeepers. I didn't feel the need to add any italics to this ugly excoriation, but I can't let go unnoticed the fact that Coulter apparently equates war in Iraq with the terrorist acts of al Qaeda. Um, didn't the United States already bomb the crap out of Afghanistan over that, Ann?

    In her new book, "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism," Coulter writes: "The Democrats' jejune claim that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to our security presupposes they would care if he were. Who are they kidding? Democrats adore threats to the United States."

    I'd call that slander, but Coulter already used the term for the title of her previous book, subtitled "Liberal Lies About the American Right." I guess there is some honesty there, however -- the right is very liberal with the lies.