Steve Young

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Pride More Precious Than Lives?
Sean Hannity is the right man to reverse the maddening trend
By Steve Young

Nov. 10, 2003 -- LOS ANGELES (apj.us) -- Seems lately there's no worse transgression than embarrassing another.

Last week, syndicated talk show host Sean Hannity screamed holy horror about a Democratic staff memo leaked to him from the Senate Intelligence Committee. It seems the Democrats felt that embarrassing the Bush Administration would strengthen their political position. Hannity, with his self-admitted fondness for the President, felt that the attempt to embarrass the present administration and the president's prewar strategy would hurt the war effort.

Is embarrassment that dangerous? Is image that much more important than substance? A "yes" is no shock when speaking of Hollywood, and though it might be annoying, few lives are lost to that credo. Souls perhaps, but body bags? Never. But when you apply the same notion to politics and Washington, the result could be deadly.

On ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos, Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute fellow and former chairman of the Defense Policy Board (the Pentagon's advisory panel prior to the Iraqi war), said that prior to the invasion, an offer from the Iraqis was not seriously pursued -- because if the part of the offer which mentioned oil concessions got out, it would embarrass the United States.

Excepting that the administration could have said "no" to the oil concessions, is it better that our men and women have been and continue to be killed because we didn't want to take a chance of being embarrassed?

Perhaps Hannity's ire would be better served if he would scream about the administration's seeming concern that the POSSIBLE indignities of preemptive negotiation are of more consequence than the deaths of our young men and women.

I wonder how much embarrassment the heartbroken parents of children coming home in boxes would be willing to absorb to see their sons and daughters live again.

A staffer's memo on the strategy for getting to the bottom of handling intelligence about Iraq versus an administration that chose to ignore an attempt to abort a deadly war.

Which one seems more urgent, more vile, more dangerous to you?

Sean, where's your outrage? Why have you chosen not to alert your millions of fans to this administration's horrific crime of choosing vanity over lives, of fearing embarrassment over fearing war? It certainly can't be partisanship! Not you! It couldn't be fear! Not a person who stands up to the threats you claim that Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) launched in your direction (though with attorney Mark Levin in your corner, perhaps you might want to make sure you have plenty of raw meat with you).

I know that you're not the type of person who would tap dance or rationalize the Iraqi offer as just another delaying ploy by Saddam. I just couldn't believe that my Sean Hannity would want to show up at the door of a slain soldier's grieving mother to tell her that the chance of this particular offer being just another false hope was not worth her child's life. Not the Sean Hannity I've come to know and respect

I'm sure it's just that haven't gotten around to dealing with it yet. Hopefully you will this week because you, Sean, are the perfect person to get the world to take notice of this insult to every soldier who puts his life on the line. People trust you. Don't let this opportunity to demonstrate the real patriotism that lives within you. And when you speak out with as much wrath and vinegar for what Richard Perle has admitted to with as much vitriol as you did about the leaked memo then I will be sure that you are more than just another political operative hiding behind a pretty face.

Go get 'em, Sean!

Steve Young is an award-winning television writer, director/writer of "My Dinner With Ovitz"", and author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful" (Tallfellow Press -- check out the web site at http://www.greatfailure.com). He writes a regular column for Jewish World Review" and is a film correspondent for BBC radio.