Making Nice With Our Enemies

Columnist Suzanne Fields has an interesting point of view about the American penchant for underestimating many dangerous things. Following is a short whistle-wetter:

Since it's not nice to think ill of others, even of the others who yearn to behead us, we become increasingly defenseless against enemies determined to destroy our civilization. The yearning to be regarded as nice is surely the point of the growing opposition to the war in Iraq, which is morphing into opposition to doing anything about terrorists, those abroad and those among us. If we think nice thoughts, maybe they will go away.

We "make nice" when we make excuses for the tiger's violent behavior, seduced by the idea that we should correct the "root causes" of his search for dinner at our expense. We think we can change the nature of the enemy if only we understand what makes the enemy violent, foolishly imagining that we can repeal the law of the jungle with our own good intentions. We can afford to make nice once we get the tiger in a cage, but in the wild he's a predator, and we have to be aware that he's stalking us.

Suzanne Fields