Essay: Saddam Made Me Do It

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The practice may have begun at a private school in Washington on Jan. 18, when a group of tenth-graders did poorly on a math test. When the results came back, the class asked the teacher for a makeup exam, explaining how unfair it was to quiz them on the morning after the first missile attack of the war. They had lost too much sleep watching CNN the night before.

Children were among the first to sense the possibilities in blaming Saddam. They were encouraged by Mr. Rogers, who left his beautiful neighborhood to reassure the young during prime time that it was okay -- indeed, it showed a certain precocious sensitivity -- to be upset about the bombing in Baghdad. All this hand-wringing makes it seem that children have not managed to get through wars before and that death is something that can be understood, if only enough network anchors and child psychologists take to the airwaves to explain it. Fortunately, the average child, who sees more explicit violence viewing Saturday-morning cartoons, is not likely to remain alarmed too long over anything that justifies increased television-watching privileges and provides air cover for a variety of mischief.

Soon, the possibilities in "the Scud ate my homework" spread to those old enough to know better. True, war is hell for those who fight it but can be a handy excuse for those who don't, and adults began invoking it with an ingenuity and appetite that their offspring could only dream about. The situation in the Persian Gulf was invoked as a cause of the recession -- or as President Bush is fond of calling it, the temporary interruption in the longest economic expansion in history. Likewise for the two-week closing of the Folies-Bergere in Paris, John McEnroe's dropping out of a tennis match in Milan, the pricing of the video release of Ghosts at $100 instead of $19.95, and the New York Giants' refusal to take part in Mayor David Dinkins' Super Bowl victory celebration.

The widespread appeal of blaming Saddam for everything is partly explained by its one-size-fits-all quality. But it also has other attributes prized by veteran excuse makers: it's simple, requiring no complicated, tongue-tying explanation, universally understood, vaguely virtuous and hard to check. War, as the talking heads point out, has unintended consequences, and having to pay almost twice as much since late January to fly from Chicago to Miami may be one of them. What corporation worth its public relations department would want to be heard temporizing with an old saw like "The check is in the mail" when a fresh, Desert Storm excuse is handy? Trans World Airlines, plagued by high debt and slow traffic since it was purchased in 1986 by Carl Icahn, cited the Persian Gulf in announcing that it would not be making $75.5 million in scheduled payments to bondholders in February. As for the dismal performance of retailers over Christmas, who would imagine that thigh-high hemlines or sticker shock over $100 cotton sweaters and $200 tennis shoes rather than combat jitters could have held consumers back.