When I was a little girl, I saw a cartoon based on Rudyard Kipling’s Rikki-tikki-tavi, the mongoose hero of The Jungle Book who defeated evil cobras. I didn’t like the cartoon, primarily because the villainous snakes terrified me; therefore, I watched it only once. One line, however, has stuck with me for thirty years. One of the cobras hisses to the human child it is threatening, “If you move, I will strike. If you don’t move, I will strike.” Scary, even now.

Maybe it is especially scary now.

For the past six years, our political, military and even religious leaders have been using the threat of another 9/11-like terrorist attack to promote their decisions. If we don’t invade Iraq, we’ll be attacked. If we don’t pass the Patriot Act, we’ll be attacked. If we don’t allow our phone conversations to be monitored, we’ll be attacked. If we leave Iraq, we’ll be attacked. If we don’t ban gay marriage, we’ll be attacked.

Now, Rudy Giuliani, hero of 9/11, has warned us: if we elect a Democrat to the Presidency, we’ll be attacked.

Please forgive me for my profanity, but that is bullshit. (Sometimes the most appropriate word happens to be a profane one.)

Here is what I must say to anyone who gives me the line again: it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t. Perhaps it sounds like a pessimistic thing to say. I certainly don’t like saying it, but I do believe it. Terrorists don’t care much about big-idea politics; I doubt many of them have any better understanding of the differences between Democrats and Republicans than President Bush has of the differences between Shi’ites and Sunnis. We can pass any law we want, or not pass it. We can monitor phone conversations or not. Leave Iraq or stay. Ban gay marriage or sponsor a cross-country gay pride parade. Doesn’t matter. Not at all.

These terrorists are like the horrifying snakes that gave me nightmares as a little girl. If they get the opportunity, they will strike. Period.

Most people don’t want to face the idea that there are things we cannot predict, cannot control, and cannot prevent. Most people want to cling to the idea that every thing that happens, happens for a reason; therefore, if we just make the right decisions, we can ensure that the right things happen. If you follow that impossible line of thinking, (as Voltaire did superbly in Candide – great book, you should check it out if you haven’t already!) then every baby whose father dies in the Iraq War, deserves to be fatherless. Every child born with cystic fibrosis deserves their pain. Every mother who loses a son or daughter to a drunk driver, deserves their tragedy. They made the wrong decisions.

These are hateful ideas. They necessitate the existence of an angry and unforgiving God who cruelly punishes every tiny transgression. They allow us to wallow in paranoia, fear and fury. They force us to walk on eggshells, second-guess our every move and sift through our own pasts to determine what we have done to deserve our fates.

Sadly, for most people, hate, fear, and anger come easy. The terrorists certainly know that. They feed on it.

Unlike President Bush, Dick Cheney, Rudy Giuliani and the many evangelicals running around screaming about terrorist threats and divine punishments, liberal Christians realize that God’s plan is unknowable. He doesn’t say, “Oh, Joe used my name in vain today; I’m going to give him cancer.” We also accept that true evil is not something we can prevent. It is; it always has been; it will be until the end.

So again, I say, it doesn’t matter. Stay in Iraq or get out. Elect a Democrat or a Republican or even an independent. It does not matter to the terrorists, folks. If we move, they will strike. If we don’t move, they will strike.

In the six and a half years that conservatives dominated our government, I have endured a lot of name-calling. Not directly, but constantly. And not just by politicians like George W. Bush and Dick Cheney or pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. But by people who profess to care about me. They send me e-mails and articles that have one basic message: if you’re not supporting the Iraq war, you’re an anti-American, atheist, pro-terrorist moron who is against our military and has no right to live in this country.

So let me explain my position, and perhaps people will think twice before calling me names.

I’m not anti-American. On the contrary, I love my country very much. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t bother speaking up about what I see as a grave and devastating mistake our government has made. I’d just go on with my life, eating at McDonald’s, shopping at Wal-Mart, watching American Idol without giving my nation’s future a second thought.

I’m not an atheist. I’m a Christian. As a Christian, I try to follow the teachings of Jesus, such as “turn the other cheek,” “love thy neighbor,” and “blessed are the peacemakers.” Hmm, no mention of “get revenge,” “hate anyone who doesn’t believe the way you do,” or “bomb the s$@* out of your enemies.”

I’m not pro-terrorist. I am just as angry as any pro-war conservative that these people blew up our World Trade Center and murdered thousands of our innocent citizens. Relying on my Christian faith, I searched my heart to find forgiveness for the terrorists. It is not easy. But I also realize that attacking their lands will not defeat them; it will perpetuate their hatred. Like cutting the head off a hydra, we are multiplying the terrorists for our children to fight later.

I’m not a moron. If high test scores, good grades and multiple college degrees can be considered proof, I am well-educated and intelligent. I have given much more thought to this whole situation than most pro-war folks I’ve spoken with who seem capable only of repeating what they hear on Fox News. I have listened to multiple perspectives; I have watched broadcasts by the opposing side with an open mind and seriously considered the possibility that I may be wrong. Only a moron believes he is infallible.

I’m not against our military. As a teacher, I have many students and former students who have served or are serving in our armed forces, and I admire their courage and dedication to our country. I have contributed to care packages that our university sent to the troops. I have e-mailed a former student who is now on his way to Iraq to tell him my prayers are with him. I love our soldiers, and I hate to see them put in harm’s way for a lost cause.

I have a right to live in the country of my birth. I have a right to free speech. The right to criticize the government helps keep this country great. Just ask the Cubans or the Chinese or the North Koreans. Our troops are defending our rights, so denying them to anyone seems far more anti-American than disagreeing with a temporary government’s policy.

I’m not in the minority. While there are pockets of strong support for this war, the majority of our nation’s people has realized that the war was a mistake. And the number approval ratings for both the war and this president are dropping steadily as more and more U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians die, and no progress is made toward democracy and peace.

So please consider carefully the next time you decide to forward an angry, spiteful, pro-war e-mail. Name-calling is not an effective way to prove your point. Unless you’re on a playground.

Supporters of the war in Iraq are quite fond of comparing it to the “Just War,” World War II. If they can only find enough similarities with the war against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, they can justify the horrific mistake made by the Bush administration in going to war in Iraq. They’ve been doing this for over four years now, and fewer and fewer people are buying it.

The logic runs thus: Saddam Hussein = Adolf Hitler; Iraq = Germany; Kurdish Iraqis = Jews. These comparisons, however, are simplistic, shallow and ideological. In short, the United States’ war in Iraq bears very little resemblance to World War II.

1. World War II lasted 1,348 days. As of March 23, 2007, the Iraq War has lasted 1,466 days. For those of you counting that’s 1,348 days between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in on December 7, 1941 and VJ Day, August 15, 1945. In that time, the United States managed to defeat Japan, Germany, and Italy in two oceans and on three continents. In Iraq, however, our modern, all-volunteer, professional military cannot defeat or even subdue a single country of 26 million, where the “enemy,” even by the military’s own accounting, numbers less than 2,000 foreign fighters and terrorists, and less than 50,000 insurgents.

2. “There were armies to fight in World War II,” said Owen Cote Jr., associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program in Cambridge. “It was a traditional war. You basically have a struggle between two armies, and the one that gets defeated gives up.” The United States is fighting a counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq – rather than a standard military conflict such as World War II – which makes it a tougher conflict to win, Cote said.

3. In World War II, American civilians knew the names of their heroes. We knew General Patton in North Africa. We knew General Eisenhower in Europe. In the Iraq War, commanders have been turned over as frequently as steaks on a grill. A profusion of units and commanders have rotated in and out of the country every few months; even close observers can hardly remember their names.

4. Religion plays a role that wasn’t seen in WWII. Now that Iraq is occupied by the United States and has a new government, religious sectarian violence among Sunni and Shiite Muslims has increased. After the WWII, we did not see German Catholics gunning down German Lutherans. Once religion is involved, it is nearly impossible to convince the enemy that they are wrong.

5. Another major difference between the two wars was the cooperation of other nations in World War II versus the unilateral effort of the United States in Iraq. The Bush administration went to war without a serious international coalition. In World War II, the U.S. had committed allies working with us. Many nations came together. In Iraq, we have a few countries that sent a few troops essentially because they wanted to remain in the United States’ good graces. As their own populations have expressed their disapproval, those foreign governments have withdrawn their support.

6. Public support for President Roosevelt remained high during World War II. In early March 2007. President Bush’s approval rating hovered around 36% according to Wall Street Journal. Public support for the war also dropped below 50 percent – a major factor that ousted Republicans from Congress in the mid-term elections, according to exit polls.

7. In World War II, the American public was well aware that we were at war. We bought war bonds, participated in paper, rubber, and metal drives, and rationed their daily goods. The Bush administration is trying to have it both ways. They continue to encourage Americans to spend, spend, spend and enjoy their lives of plenty. It has little to build solidarity on the home front. The fact that the war is very unpopular is a direct result of that. In Iraq, the vast majority of Americans hardly notice we are at war on a day-to-day basis.

8. In WWII, the government spent what they had. They scraped the bottom and sacrificed to earn security. Iraq, on the other hand, is a credit card war. We spend $8 billion a month to fight in Iraq and no one makes a financial sacrifice. No one even notices.

9. In WWII, an estimated 3 million European Jews were murdered in the Nazis’ pogroms and extermination camps. Another several hundred thousand gypsies, homosexuals, political dissidents and mentally or physically disabled people were also murdered by Hitler’s forces. Saddam Hussein’s forces are accused of killing approximately 200,000 Kurdish dissidents. All these numbers are devastating, but they are not comparable.

10. Another major difference between World War II and the Iraq War is also seen in the death tolls of the American military. In World War II, more than 400,000 U.S. military personnel were killed, according to military reports. Since the Iraq invasion more than four years ago, almost 3,000 U.S. men and women have been killed in Iraq.

The last point may sound like a positive, but consider this final difference between the current war and WWII. Our grandparents, the “Greatest Generation,” could feel good about their accomplishments in WWII. They eradicated a great evil with their tremendous sacrifices. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration has started a fire they cannot hope to put out or even contain. Neither the U.S. government nor the American people are willing to sacrifice much for a war they know they cannot win. So the bill will have to be paid tomorrow – by our children or our grandchildren. We will never convince these people that their religion is wrong, that their culture is wrong, that their way of life is wrong. After all, could they convince us that we’re wrong?

Citations – Arkin, W., Washington Post, Early Warning, 11/27/2006; McGonigle, B.. Boston University, Iraq War Surpasses Time Span of U.S. Involvement in World War II, 11/28/2006; Murray, M., NBC News, Sex scandal, Iraq book take toll on Bush, GOP, 3/6/2007; United States Holocaust Museum, 3/9/2007; Associated Press, Saddam Hussein’s genocide trial resumes, 12/18/2006

Although this blog has been quiet for a while, I have been thinking about some things I’d like to discuss. One thing I’ve been deliberating on lately is the notion of politically correct speech. I’ve heard some of my right-wing friends and family criticizing the concept recently, and I was considering writing a blog entry on it, but it didn’t seem all that relevant right now.  How ironic that in the midst of my contemplation on political correctness, Ann Coulter would step up to give me something to which I could respond. I suppose I should thank her, but since good manners are lost on her, she would not appreciate the gesture.

Prior to Ms. Coulter’s nasty comments on March 2^nd, I had been thinking about why so many conservatives have a problem with politically correct speech. One thing I’ve noticed is that they just dislike the term. “Politically correct” suggests some kind of federal consequence for saying the “wrong thing.” The idea is unpleasant, like something out of Orwell’s 1984: Say the wrong word, and Big Brother will come for you!

I guess some people have forgotten the genesis of the term. “Politically correct” originally applied to politicians who have to be worried about offending voters. Like many words and phrases in the English language, however, it evolved, adopted by the general public which co-opted it to mean “any expression that might be considered inappropriate or insensitive.” Perhaps we should simply change the term to something more suitable, say “human decency,” “cultural sensitivity,” “social awareness,” or even “Christian morality,” after all Jesus would never have called anyone nasty names.

No matter what you call it, though, rudeness and inappropriate language has historically been and should continue to be punished. When I was little, there was a kids’ show on the local TV station that ended with Cowboy Bob reminding us all, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” And the message was reinforced in elementary school. I got in trouble once for getting mad at my playmates and calling them “faggots,” and I remember being confused when the fifth-grade boys got in trouble for playing a game called “Smear the Queer.” They were allowed to continue playing the game, but they weren’t allowed to call it by that name anymore. Since I didn’t really understand the words “faggot” or “queer,” these situations seemed very strange to me. That was 1981, years before anyone ever spoke of political correctness, but we were still facing unpleasant consequences for calling people rude names.

Now, I grant that our government should not punish us for being rude. We cannot make words illegal. Freedom of speech is too important; however, the First Amendment of our Constitution does not exempt us from being polite; it simply means the government cannot make us be polite. Sadly, no one else wants the job either these days. Parents and society don’t police language much anymore. Cursing in public seems to be far more prevalent than it used to be. In fact, for all the whining and worrying about the dangers of politically correct speech, people seem to be saying whatever they want more than ever. With the advent of cable TV, satellite radio and the Internet, we have infinite outlets for our freedom of expression. Anyone can say anything and get an audience. And they are often rewarded for being rude or outrageous. (See also Rush Limbaugh, South Park, Jerry Springer, Anna Nicole Smith.) Pushing the envelope of acceptable language and behavior has become the great American pastime.

Still, as a society, we do get rankled now and then about something one of our celebrities says. Mel Gibson’s chauvinistic and anti-Semitic tirade got him a lot of bad press and lost him thousands of fans as did Michael Richards’ now-infamous “n-word” rant. Grey’s Anatomy star, Isaiah Washington, faced a similar firestorm for calling a gay co-star a “faggot.” (Sorry, gay friends.) Gibson, Richards and Washington all went to rehab because when a celebrity gets caught being stupid, hateful or criminal, the fashionable thing to do in Hollywood is to go into rehab to show remorse. (See also Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.)  It seems American society does still have a little common sense when it comes to name-calling. Freedom of speech or not, it’s still rude. Just like we learned as kids.

Enter Ann Coulter. As might be expected from a woman who makes her living with hateful language, Ms. Coulter takes issue with people being held accountable for rude speech. So on March 2^nd at the American Conservative Union’s Political Action Conference, she used her prodigious linguistic powers to kill several birds with one stone. In one fell swoop, she managed to be insult liberals, Democrats, homosexuals, John Edwards, Hollywood celebrities, advocates of cultural sensitivity, and anyone with good manners. Pretty slick.

But I have a bit of advice for her and all those who denounce political correctness: Be careful of whose team you’re playing for. Do you really want to speak like a bigot? Like a chauvinist? Like a homophobic gangsta rapper? Like a 10-year-old playground bully? People who defend Ms. Coulter’s right to use the f-word, who support Mr. Richards’ use of the n-word, who bristle at the public reaction to Gibson’s anti-Jewish speech need to beware of the company they are keeping.

Of course, Coulter is not going to change. Like so many people who take freedom of speech to its ridiculous extremes, she’s mean-spirited, greedy, and self-serving. She chose her words very carefully to take on the many groups she hates so much. She does not believe that Edwards is gay. (After all, he has more evidence of his heterosexuality than she has since he is married and a parent, and she is neither.) She wanted to shock people, garner more attention, sell more books. She claims to be smart, and one would assume she must be since she has a law degree and several published books to her credit. With such language skills, one would think she could come up with something more clever than resorting to name-calling that I can hear from any bad-mannered little punk on the street.

Still, I wish we could disarm hate-mongers like Coulter and Limbaugh, Gibson and Richards by ignoring their words. Words do, after all, get their power from those who hear them, not those who speak them. There is nothing intrinsically evil about the sounds “fa,” “g” and “ot.” We use the sounds in lots of decent words like “fashion,” “goblin,” and “hut.” But when we string the sounds together and add a lot of personal baggage and cultural experience, we end up making the resulting word into a potent expression.

When my son was two years old, he started quoting entire speeches from the movie Toy Story. One of his favorite lines was “My ship!” Unfortunately, he had trouble discerning the hard “P” from a hard “T,” so it came out “My shit!” People would gasp and look suspiciously at my husband and me, and we would have to explain it to them. We hesitated to correct our toddler, though. We didn’t want to embarrass him, or, worse, alert him to an inappropriate attention-getter. We just kept repeating it back to him properly, emphasizing the “P” sound at the end. I wish we could do the same with people like Ms. Coulter. Contrary to her behavior, however, she is not two years old.

If we could ignore people like her, if the hearers could pretend words don’t matter, she and the other name-callers would have no ammunition.  But no matter what the little ones say on the playground, words can hurt even more than sticks and stones. Those of us who were lucky enough to have good moms and dads, though, were taught that “If you can’t say anything nice…” I guess Ms. Coulter missed that lesson.

I had an epiphany the other day.

I was lecturing to my students about checking their sources. In the professional writing course I teach, we talk a great deal about checking the accuracy, authenticity, objectivity, credibility and currency of sources, especially those that come from the Internet. In an effort to exemplify the objectivity I was describing, I used “The Daily Show” as an example. “If you don’t pay attention, if you don’t realize that it’s a satire rather than a real news show,” I explained, “you could be taken in and end up getting your facts all wrong. You have to know your source.”

At that point, one of my students raised his hand and said, “So how do professional journalists screw up so often? Don’t they check their sources? Those idiots at Fox News must really not be paying attention. They make so many mistakes.” This comment got quite a laugh and stirred up some discussion about the erroneous Barack Obama story perpetuated by that network.

And then it hit me.

I’ve been complaining on this blog for some time about my conservative friends’ and family members’ baiting me over my liberal views. They make these wild claims and then accuse me of being too young and naive to realize how wrong I am. And these folks are quoting bad sources, biased sources, uncorroborated sources.

My friend’s grandmother - the woman who gave me the anti-Muslim rant and insisted Obama is a terrorist - she was quoting a Fox News story that was later recanted (very subtly recanted, I might add).

My uncle - who insisted that our forces DID find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - he was quoting Fox as well. As a matter of fact, I can’t find any reliable source that confirms Iraq’s possession of WMD’s. They had some nasty stuff, but most of it was old and none of it was deliverable to the United States. Fox News, however, neglected to give the complete details. Of course.

Even my very sweet and well-meaning mother - who had decided to hate the Colts because “they” were selling Super Bowl tickets for $15,000 each - she had not checked her source either. The Colts were most definitely NOT selling Super Bowl tickets for that much. The story had come off the Internet, and it was an eBay seller who had jacked the price so high, not the Colts organization.

So who’s naive? I may be young, but I in this world of instant news, web bloggers and 24-hours cable news networks, my relative youth is an advantage: I don’t trust everything I read or see on TV. Unlike my older friends and relatives, who grew up believing every word spoken by trustworthy journalists such as Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, I have spent most of my life in the electronic age. I know that e-mail is not to be trusted because people just forward stuff without even checking it. I know that no cable news show is completely reliable because they’re in such a hurry to break the story before everyone else that they publish first and check later.

My sincere hope is that, as the Baby Boomers leave us, the more techno-savvy and source-cynical younger generations will grow weary of this slipshod reporting, and Fox News will die a painful death. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?