“It has been suggested to me that you could use a little help…”
“Help? What kind of help?”
“You know. A different way of looking at things. Some perspective.”
“Oh. That kind of help.”
Joyce Underwood, who allows me to call her by her first name because I once won a minor concession from her in a political argument, strikes those who know her as devastatingly intelligent. She was one of the first female reporters to cover international politics, and she has been to more foreign countries than most members of the Press Club can place on a map. Her grasp of political relationships is considered second only to the Prime Minister, who has the advantage of dozens of aids who can explain intricate situations to him.
I had met Joyce a few times, and found her to be relentlessly cynical about human beings organized in groups larger than two; we hit it off immediately. (Paradoxically, she was a great believer in the power of rational thought and people’s ability to do good works. Nobody’s perfect.) We had had no real contact outside of social situations until one recent evening when, out of the blue, she called me at home.
“You seem to see actions only in terms of themselves,” Joyce told me, “in terms of simple causes and effects.”
I wasn’t following, but I respected Joyce too much to have shown it. “If actions can’t simply be viewed as actions,” I asked, “how should we look at them?”
“As messages,” Joyce answered.
“Actions speak louder, eh?” I said, dubious.
“Are you making fun of me, boy?” Joyce countered.
“No, ma’am. But, well, maybe an example might clarify matters.”
“Okay. Take the recent American military action against Libya. ON the surface of it, you see air raids on military targets in Tripoli and Benghazi, an American attack on Libyan terrorist training centres, defenses and communications installations. Right?”
“Umm, is there any other way to look at it?”
“Of course. The American were sending a message to Libyan leader Muammar Khadafy that they were not going to accept his continued support for terrorist attacks on American targets in Europe.”
“Isn’t sending bombers and jet fighter planes into a country a…an extreme way to send a message? I mean, wouldn’t a telex have accomplished pretty much the same thing without the loss of so many lives?”
“Oh, Ira, don’t be silly! Diplomacy today has evolved beyond the exchange of nasty notes in diplomatic pouches! You might as well wonder why we no longer use smoke signals! Politicians rarely listen to each other any more because they’re all posturing for favourable media exposure. How better to get your point across than by destroying some buildings and killing a few people?”
“But, I thought this attack was a response to the bombing of a West Berlin nighclub in which an American soldier was killed.
“Well you might see it that way. But, of course, the Berlin bombing was also a message.”
“It was?”
“The Libyans were telling the Americans that they would continue to support terrorism despite the American attack on Libyan targets in the Gulf of Sidra.”
“So, when President Reagan sent the Sixth Fleet past Khadafy’s ‘line of death’ in the Gulf, he was really sending a message to Libya, right?”
“Exactly.”
“Hell of a way to carry on a conversation. So, what was the message in that action?”
“That the United States didn’t want Libya supporting terrorism.”
“The same as the recent American message?”
“That’s right.”
“So, how come the Libyans didn’t get it in the first place?”
Joyce sighed. “It’s possible that the Americans didn’t word it strongly enough,” she explained. “But, I suspect that the Americans and the Libyans are simply not speaking the same language…”
“Does that mean that they might continue to send messages to each other in the future?”
“That is a distinct possibility, yes.”
“But, what happens if the two countries decide to stop communicating and start fighting in earnest?”
“Ira, let’s hope we never have to find out…”