Dialogue: Convince me this war is worthwhile

By DIANA WICHTEL

The way today's war started left everyone gasping for words. Into that vacuum rode George W. Bush. "We will rid the world of evil-doers," declared Bush on September 16.

You did have to wonder whether he or his speechwriters had been exposed to too many episodes of The Lone Ranger.

By the time he started talking about bringing in Osama bin Laden dead or alive, there was no doubt. Still, dealing with such an ill-defined enemy, you could see the problem. He could have said, "We will rid the world of mad Islamic fundamentalists" but that might have been unwise.

Then there was that unfortunate reference to "this crusade", after which Bush was forced to do some fence-mending with Muslims.

The Administration has also had to back down or sidestep on the "unlawful combatants" issue. Taleban fighters among the detainees at Camp X-Ray are now covered by the Geneva Convention, although they are still not officially prisoners of war. Al Qaeda and other suspected terrorists are not covered. Confused? I think we're meant to be.

Even some normally provocative and articulate commentators sound as if they've gone mad.

Left-wing writer Christopher Hitchens achieved the difficult feat of making Bush sound eloquent with his "Well, ha ha ha, and yah, boo" to pacifists and other loony lefties who didn't support the war in Afghanistan.

From Guardian uber hack Julie Burchill, who doesn't go anywhere without her bust of Lenin, it was more a gleeful nya-nya-nya. "I told you so," she scoffed, reminding us that years ago she urged the West to back the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Apparently the Twin Towers would still be standing if only the world had listened to Julie.

To add to the confusion, there are the usual euphemisms and other forms of evasion thrown up by any conflict. In the end, they don't work. Bland terms such as "final solution", "concentration camp", "ethnic cleansing" and "collateral damage" soon acquire a far more chilling resonance than the words they were designed to sanitise, whereas much simpler words can be the trickiest.

On September 11, Bush referred to "those who committed these cowardly acts". Since then, the definition of "coward" has polarised opinion more than the usual division of left and right.

American late show host Bill Maher nearly lost his job for saying: "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building - say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." (I don't think there was much question of leaving the plane at that point, Bill.)

In the New Yorker, intellectual Susan Sontag said, "Whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards" and was comprehensively reviled.

Should they have said it? Absolutely. I'll defend their right to say that flying a plane full of innocent people into a skyscraper is brave. But I think they're wrong. When someone straps on a bomb, it's inevitably referred to as a suicide bombing.

What it should be called is a murder suicide. I can't see how you can ever call the cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians brave. Because any bombing is bad doesn't change that.

Is suicide brave? If it was that hard, the Government wouldn't be spending millions each year trying to stop people, particularly impressionable young men, from doing it.

Murder isn't that hard either. The only reason we can all live together, imperfectly as we do, is because we have some sort of tacit agreement that we won't spring at each other's throats with box cutters.

If the terrorists win, it will be because they have destroyed that bottom-line social contract. Without it, there's nothing but the law of the jungle.

I can't think of a more cowardly thing to do than giving up all responsibility for your own thoughts and actions to a fanatical belief system that allows no questioning.

I marched against Vietnam, as did Helen Clark. We thought we were right and history has pretty much agreed. This one seems much more complicated. Somehow it's hard to believe a regime that bans music, children flying kites and women's most basic human rights would have responded to diplomacy and negotiation.

The pronouncements of our own leader have been little help.

"We might have Hitler still sitting in Berlin if we'd been afraid of civilian casualties," said Helen Clark blithely last year. "It's almost inevitable someone will be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Well, it's a small step up from "yah, boo".

Wars always bring to mind Hannah Arendt's famous phrase about "the banality of evil". The way our leaders talk about this war raises questions about the evil of banality.

Bush is cranking up the "axis of evil" rhetoric for round two. Does opposing terrorism mean New Zealand staying in an unending and increasingly ill-defined war?

If Clark wants us in this for the long haul, she needs to put more energy into convincing us. If she has Bush's ear these days, she should at the very least be bending it with some tough questions on our behalf. Surely he won't mind. Isn't that sort of freedom what this war is supposed to be about?