Madness in Iraq continues unabated

Gene Lyons



Posted on Wednesday, January 5, 2005



URL: http://www.nwanews.com/story/adg/103931



It may have taken an earthquake, a tsunami and a human catastrophe of 

unimaginable proportions, but George W. Bush finally changed his mind. 

In so doing, the president helped Americans show the generosity, 

compassion and know-how for which we’ve long been admired around the 

world. "I’d much rather be doing this than fighting a war," a 

helicopter pilot, Lt. Cmdr. William Whitsitt, told The Associated Press while 

flying victims from demolished Indonesian villages out to the USS 

Abraham Lincoln for medical treatment. Too bad there’s so little 

evidence that Bush has the capacity to learn from the experience, 

because in Iraq, it’s his near pathological inability to admit error 

that keeps American soldiers trapped in a nightmare entirely of the 

administration’s devising. Unless he develops the moral courage to 

change a disastrously misconceived policy, that nightmare can only 

continue, isolating the U.S. from its allies and sowing hatred that 

breeds terrorists like dragon’s teeth. At first, it appeared that the 

administration would handle the Asian tragedy as it handles everything 

else: with minimum regard and maximum political spin. Bush’s initial 

response appeared niggardly and grudging. Vacationing at his Texas dude 

ranch, the president emerged to express halting condolences only after 

his silence had evoked worldwide consternation. 



Bush’s initial pledge of $15 million in disaster relief came to roughly 

a third of what he intends to spend celebrating his own inauguration. 

Some puppy in the White House even made a sneering reference to Bill 

Clinton’s feeling everybody’s pain. Jump-started by an inaccurate 

Washington Times headline claiming, "U. N. official slams U.S. as 

‘stingy’ over aid"—Norwegian-born Jan Egeland, undersecretary-general 

for humanitarian affairs, had spoken of wealthy nations generally, not 

the U.S. —GOP robo-pundits launched an ideological assault upon the 

international organization. In short, it looked like business as usual 

in Republican Washington. 



To be perfectly fair, however, most of this happened before the extent 

of the disaster in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India became 

widely apparent. Partly because it happened at Christmas, when Western 

media organizations were operating with skeleton staffs, partly because 

the half-dozen corporations that now own the national news media no 

longer think it cost-effective to maintain foreign bureaus, it took 

several days for the press to emerge from" Supermodel Nearly Swept Away 

by Tsunami" mode to convey the extent of the devastation. 



When that happened, the White House upped its aid offer to $35 million, 

then to $350 million. Evidently, somebody—most likely Secretary of 

State Colin Powell—informed Bush that Indonesia is the most populous Islamic 

nation in the world and that the stricken separatist province of Aceh 

has the highest proportion of Muslims in the country (not to mention 

plentiful oil and natural gas). 



Along with their humanitarian mission, U.S. aircraft carriers and 

helicopters have more potential to enhance the Muslim world’s opinion 

of the United States, thus building resistance to terrorist extremism, 

than all the "shock and awe" campaigns the Pentagon could muster. 



Because, yes, we see the victims of nature’s wrath as fellow human 

beings exactly like ourselves, precisely as al-Qa’ida propaganda 

assures them that we do not. Bush’s magnanimous gesture of asking former 

Presidents George Bush and Bill Clinton to lead a campaign for private 

donations, perhaps the first genuinely non-partisan action of his 

presidency, served to underscore the point: We Americans, all of us, do 

feel their pain. A reported $163 million in private donations to 

international aid organizations spoke eloquently. 



More’s the pity, then, to see the madness in Iraq continue unabated. 

"There is only one traffic law in Ramadi these days: When Americans 

approach, Iraqis scatter," reads an account in the Economist. "... 

Every vehicle, that is, except one beat-up old taxi. Its elderly driver, 

flapping his outstretched hands, seems, amazingly, to be trying to turn 

the convoy back. Gun turrets swivel and lock on to him, as a hefty 

marine sergeant leaps into the road, levels an assault rifle at his 

turbaned head, and screams: ‘Back this bitch up, [bleeper]!’" The old 

man should have read the bilingual notices that American soldiers tack 

to their rear bumpers in Iraq: ‘ Keep 50m or deadly force will be 

applied.’ In Ramadi, the capital of central Anbar province, where 17 

suicide-bombs struck American forces... the marines are jumpy. 

Sometimes, they say, they fire on vehicles encroaching with [in] 30 

metres, sometimes they fire at 20 metres. "The Economist account quotes 

a" bullish lieutenant" as saying, "If anyone gets too close to us, we 

[bleeping] waste them. It’s kind of a shame, because it means we’ve 

killed a lot of innocent people.... It gets to the point where you 

can’t wait to see guys with guns, so you start shooting everybody." Before 

his impending retirement, maybe Colin Powell should try this simple 

argument on Bush: Regardless of good intentions, to the besieged Iraqis we 

Americans are becoming the tsunami. 



• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient 

of the National Magazine Award. 



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