Where I Stand — Brian Greenspun: Give us some answers

Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2003 | 8:48 a.m.

MAYBE IT IS just a bad connection.

I think I just spent the last week on another planet. For a golfer, spending a few glorious, sunshiny days playing in the AT&T Pebble Beach Golf Tournament is about as good as it can get. For the thousands of fans and celebrity-gawkers who line the fairways and fill the stands around the greens, it is a time when all else is forgotten for those few short hours and the incredible combinations of luck, skill and some wild sartorial splendor consume the conversations. And for the rest of the folks who watched the television coverage and enjoyed not only the golf but also the wild antics of Bill Murray and company, it was time well spent.

Well spent from what, you ask?

From life, of course. And, in this case, from the difficulties that our impending war with Iraq is creating both here and abroad. Reality, though, sinks in fast as it did when I returned to catch up on the newspapers and the news. Life for the world didn't get any better this past week, which confirmed one thing in my mind. What I do or don't do has little effect on President George W. Bush's decision to pull the trigger on Saddam.

But I can have an effect on those I love. And therein lies the problem of this bad connection thing I have been writing about the past few months.

It doesn't matter that our longtime allies and newfound friends differ greatly with U.S. policy toward Iraq. In the end, the president will do what he wants, with or without them. Nor does it matter much what our thawing out-relations think about our threatened actions. China, Russia and the rest just have to get used to the idea that we are the biggest dog in the pound and we will do things our way, not theirs. It wouldn't hurt, though, if we included them in on our thought process because it is, as we all know, a big, interconnected world in which one action could have some incredibly unforeseen reactions. As a simple matter of good manners and good planning, listening to our friends might teach us something, one would think.

And let's not forget the other problems we face for which our friends and allies might be helpful, if they are still our friends and allies once this mess is over. What about the biggest threat of all -- North Korea? Talk about your rogue nation with nuclear (that's NOO'-klee-er) weapons and the paranoid tendencies to either use them or sell them to other nuts with death wishes for us and our friends.

And what about what's his name? Osama bin Laden, that's it. The United States is on the next-to-highest alert status and it is safe to say that the threat is not coming from Iraq. It is Osama's gang and we are no closer to "rooting" him out than we were when we had him surrounded in Afghanistan. If you listen to the experts, he is still Public Enemy No. 1. So, what happened?

But forget about all that bad stuff and let's get to the part that scares me. My daughter called Sunday night to ask us if we had a plan. Having just returned from the never-never land of Pebble Beach, I didn't know what she was talking about until she informed me that the administration was urging Americans to come up with a plan in case of an emergency. What kind of emergency, I asked. A nuclear strike? Chemical weapons? Biological hazards? Another airplane attack?

Of course, she didn't have the answers. She was, like every other American today, looking for answers from a place where none have been forthcoming. And that is the biggest reason for the disconnect about George Bush's war. Nobody is talking to us!

But we shouldn't feel alone. All those countries I mentioned earlier have the same feeling that nobody is talking to them, either. At them, to be sure, but not to and with them. And that could be the reason why close to half the people in this country still don't support President Bush going it alone against Saddam. Most people want the United Nations to give its blessing before they will back this president.

And many Americans want to know just a little bit more about what to do in case of fire -- or bombs -- or plagues, pestilence or whatever else might come our way. We want some answers so we can prepare ourselves and our families for the worst.

After Sept. 11, the president told us to go about our lives, go shopping and keep flying. A year and a half later, there is no money to shop with and the airports, well, we all know about them. So the only thing the rest of us can do is find ways to protect our families. It is too late to build bomb shelters and safe rooms, so what is the next best thing?

Please, Mr. President, tell Tom Ridge to give the American people a heads-up. Give us some good ideas about what we can and should do so, at the very least, we can answer our kids' most appropriate question.

Do we have a plan?