Barry Farber
Friday, Nov. 2, 2001

One non-human enemy is what I call the Devil's Slide Rule. In sports, at least, the Devil's Slide Rule doesn't have a chance. If the New York Jets beat the New England Patriots 44 to 6, for example, that's it – irretrievably, irredeemably it.

Nobody can pretend it was 34 to 6, 14 to 6, or a tie. Or a New England victory. They can't even pretend it was 45 to 6. Or 43. They can't pretend anything other than 44 to 6 after a month passes, a year, a century. That score will always be universally acknowledged as 44-6. That's why sports will always be more popular than world affairs.

In world affairs we have to fight the Devil's Slide Rule. In 1956, after Hungary's valiant fight to rid itself of Soviet occupation, 200,000 Hungarians escaped to Austria and freedom. That was a stinging rebuke to communism. Two hundred thousand darted through that short-lived little hole in the Iron Curtain before it could be sealed again with Soviet might.

Then what happened? After the 200,000 were welcomed and resettled around the world, about 200 of those refugees got homesick, fell out of love with their spouses, had a fight with their strange new bosses, didn't like the accommodations, missed goulash and paprikash, or got bored.

For whatever reason, 200 of them asked to be allowed to go back home to Hungary. The government of communist Hungary was jubilant. (There's suspicion, which I share, that the AVO, the Hungarian Secret Police, actually SENT paid agents out of Hungary with the outgoing refugee flood with instructions to demand return as loudly as possible after a few months!)

And for what purpose? So the Devil's Slide Rule could be harnessed to prop up communism. The news coverage of those few hundred who returned did not exactly equal the news coverage of the 200,000 who left. But it came devilishly closer than the figure of two hundred is SUPPOSED to come to 200,000!

So, Hungarian communist media could trumpet, and the world media echoed, the impression that "Well, a lot of Hungarians LEFT. And THEN a lot of Hungarians went back."

Kind of a "wash," don't you see?

Today the Devil's Slide Rule is serving evil even better than in 1956. On Sept. 11, 2001, over 5,000 innocent people were deliberately murdered in America.

In the Pentagon, military personnel were intermingled with civilian employees. In New York there wasn't a single soldier among the victims except some who may have been coincidentally traveling on one of the hijacked planes or visiting inside the World Trade Center.

The overwhelming majority of victims were civilians. All the victims were deliberately targeted.

Then we started the air campaign against the terrorists and their Afghan protectors. The Taliban predictably claimed hundreds of civilians were killed. We admitted to a vastly lesser number of civilian casualties and expressed regret. Nobody can credibly claim we deliberated targeted civilians, simply because it would be so hideously counterproductive to do so.

Got it, world? Five thousand innocent people in America killed deliberately. A few dozen innocent people in Afghanistan killed accidentally. So, how come the fractional few killed in Afghanistan accidentally get increasingly more emphasis in the media – including OUR media – than the 5,000 killed in America deliberately?

The Devil's Slide Rule slides and the Devil's Slide Rule rules, snipping away, incidentally, the fact that not one bomb would have fallen on Afghanistan had the Taliban merely handed over Osama bin Laden.

Don't bother asking any wobbly coalition leader to explain why 5,000 deliberate fatalities brought him INTO the coalition and now a few dozen accidental fatalities are about to wobble him OUT! The Devil's Slide Rule made him do it.

Human Enemies

"The terrorists killed a lot of people in America," the wisdom goes, "and now the Americans are killing a lot of people in Afghanistan!" Of our inhuman enemies nothing here need be added. Let's move on to some of our "human" enemies.

I include those members of the press corps – White House, Pentagon, State Department and Justice Department – whose caterwauling at press conferences reminds me of the old lady with vertigo who was tricked by the village sadist into getting aboard a roller coaster.

All who remember Pearl Harbor will agree that the mood of the media – and just about everybody else – was a measured, resolute "We're in a war."

What I hear from many in the press corps today sounds a lot like "What are you, the authorities, doing to protect us NOW, having failed so miserably to do so on September 11?"

Excuse me. Are they "journalists," "correspondents," or participants in the earlier steps of a 12-step program against cowardice?

I brand as a "human" enemy that reporter at the Pentagon briefing after the Special Forces raid on a Taliban headquarters, which we admitted yielded little intelligence of value. He asked the admiral, "In procuring those documents from Taliban headquarters, how many men did you have to kill?"

Study that for a second. To me it says, "Admiral, even we of the holier-than-everybody press corps might countenance a few enemy casualties if the material thereby seized were of sufficient value to warrant such violence. However, how can you justify such killing in pursuit of such slim pickings?"

If the soul of Gen. George Patton were to hear that one, it would shake the world into a whole new Halloween!

And how about the famous news channel anchor who led off his newscast in late October with "And tonight we'll look into the stalled campaign against the Taliban."

Back to sports again. We can agree to look into that touchdown, home run, three-point shot, or hockey goal. Those are all real. A "stalled" campaign, however, gets born, lives, and dies in the perception of the one who expected things to happen quicker.

Funny. I don't recall any "stall" complaints of the Marine conquest of Guadalcanal. Or the breakout from Normandy or the Belgian Bulge. Or the sloggingly slow advance up the Italian boot. Or the Russian counterattack at Stalingrad. Or, for that matter, Gen. Douglas MacArthur's famous "return" to the Philippines.

And hey, fellows, as this is being written, the terrorist attack itself was JUST LAST MONTH! And not even EARLY last month. It was in the MIDDLE of last month!

So, they talk about the "stalled" campaign and then, after a commercial or two, they analyze the "defeatism" infecting American and world opinion.

As columnist Pete Hamill frequently says, "BEAUTIFUL!" They're the boy who killed both parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he's an orphan. They generate the "defeatism" themselves. Then they "analyze" it.

The final "human" enemy that space permits me to deal with now is the one who thinks somehow we have a choice. "The terrorists think we hurt them. Now they've hurt us. Let's stop and see if we can end it here!"

"Give peace a chance" indeed has a holy ring to it. Those who think we have such a choice are the ones who sincerely believe that every ant, fly or roach in the house is really only looking for a way out.

When the Sept. 11 attack was being planned, America was busy saving the lives of Moslems in Bosnia and Kosovo, having liberated the Moslem nation of Kuwait, and brokering a deal fulfilling over 98 percent of the Palestinian demands.

The defeatism generated by much of the American media is the national equivalent of striking matches into the vapors of the gasoline hose as it pumps into your tank. Media-manufactured defeatism can filet our spine right out and embolden those who seek our demise.

I'm not saying deny defeats we genuinely suffer. I'm saying quit manufacturing defeats that aren't there.

Do those who say our campaign has "stalled" suppose the bombs falling during this stall are strengthening the Taliban? Fortunately, the "Good-God-we've-stalled" campaign doesn't even work in Pakistan, which is a lot closer to our alleged "defeat."

Our inhuman enemies have convincingly shown their desire to kill as many of us as they can arrange to kill. Do you think they'll be LESS eager to kill us if we do nothing? Do you suppose they'll be LESS able to kill us if we let it all rest a while, or if we just forget about it?

I was a bit too young to be useful in World War II and, thus, a bit too old to be useful now. I do, however, recall the spirit that energized us then, and I lament the dimmed-down version we witness today.

Comic Jackie Mason summed it up in one of his jokes years before Sept. 11. A man in New York gets hit by a bus while crossing a street. He gets hit pretty hard. Even though he's broken in five places, three of them important, he inches and elbows his way to the curb on his belly, rolls up on the curb,and tries to worm his way across the sidewalk.

A cop blows his whistle and shouts, "Stop! Freeze! Lie there! Don't move!"

"Please, officer," the injured man implores, "I DON'T WANT TO GET INVOLVED!"

Barry Farber's daily radio program is heard on more than 65 stations across America on the Talk Radio Network.

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