Occupation Watch Bulletin
4 January 2005
By Marjorie Lasky

OF THE TSUNAMI AND IRAQ

As a result of the devastation and deaths caused by the Indian Ocean tsunami, several commentators have reflected this past week on the two analogous yet divergent terrors: that occasioned by nature (the tsunami) and that produced by humans (the war and occupation of Iraq). How extraordinary that, even though we may never have the correct numbers, the last estimates of those who have died in both circumstances hover around 100,000-125,000. (See material on the Lancet study that conservatively estimated 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, after subtracting the numbers of dead from the Falluja assault, http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=7486).

In a profound and moving tribute to Susan Sontag, who died a few days after the tsunami occurred, Rebecca Solnit argues, "You can say in some ways that what has happened in Iraq is a tsunami that swept ten thousand miles from the epicenter of an earthquake in Washington D.C., an earthquake in policy and principle that has devastated countless lives and environments and cities far away – and near at hand, where friends and families of dead soldiers also grieve, and tens of thousands of those kids sent abroad to carry out a venal foreign policy are maimed in body and spirit."

Solnit connects Sontag, the tsunami, and the chaos in Iraq by reflecting on Sontag's perceptions about photography and representation and the ways in which those perceptions inform us while viewing the news about the tsunami and Iraq, in other words, "to realize how much imagery – or its lack – shapes our response to both disasters." While [t]he tsunami has been treated as an occasion when we should know as much as possible, see as much as possible, feel as much as possible,...[t]he Iraq war has been a strangely unseen war, or rather a war in which conventional and uncontroversial images are the standard fare – lots of pictures of us, few of them, images of blown-up military vehicles and uninhabited Iraqi ruins, but not in this country the images of the injured and the dead civilians we have been producing in such prodigious numbers, nothing like the images of the tsunami. But it has also been a war of images. There was the staged toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein as !
our invasion ended. There was the crisis opened up by leakage of photographs of Abu Ghraib torture...and more recently the American soldier shooting a wounded man in a mosque in Fallujah."
"Sontag and Tsunami"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8636

George Capaccio uses tsunami imagery to evoke events in Iraq during the past ten days. "Massive political plates in the depths of Old Foggy Bottom unexpectedly shifted this past weekend. Megatons of pressure, built up from decades of internal strife, sent gargantuan waves hurtling towards Iraq. The country's antiquated defenses quickly crumbled, leaving the Iraqi people at the mercy of forces beyond their control. Already weakened from twelve years of sanctions, two wars, and the cruelties of a monstrous regime, the people of Iraq are now suffering what some have called a crime against humanity. Entire cities have been leveled and tens of thousands left homeless as wave upon wave of tanks, hellfire missiles, helicopter gunships, and F-16s came crashing down from Mosul to Basra."
"The Phantom Furies: Tsunami Hits Iraq"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8591

Much has been written about the initial "stingy" response of the US President to the destruction of the tsunami. And much has been said about the contrast between President Bush's response and the exorbitant amount of money that the U.S. spends daily on the Iraqi occupation. After President Bush announced that the US would increase its contribution to the countries hit by the tsunami from $15 million to $35 million, Heather Wokusch responded in "Stingy? Not With WMD and War": "[I]t's unfair to say the Bush administration is stingy - it just has different priorities. The White House has so far requested roughly $100 billion for the occupation of Iraq in FY 2005, which translates to about $8.3 billion per month, or over $270 million per day (eighteen times more than the administration's first offer of help to tsunami victims). And that's only Iraq."
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8597

However, lest we think the US administration differs from its major partner in the "Coalition of the Willing," George Monbiot analyzes the generous response of Great Britain's residents to the tsunami disaster, a response that greatly contrasts to the British, and US, governments: "[t]he US government has so far pledged $350m to the victims of the tsunami, and the UK government Ł50m ($96m). The US has spent $148 billion on the Iraq war and the UK Ł6bn ($11.5bn). The war has been running for 656 days. This means that the money pledged for the tsunami disaster by the United States is the equivalent of one and a half day's spending in Iraq. The money the UK has given equates to five and a half days of our involvement in the war. It looks still worse when you compare the cost of the war to the total foreign aid budget. The UK has spent almost twice as much on creating suffering in Iraq as it spends annually on relieving it elsewhere. The United States gives just over $16bn in f!
oreign aid: less than one ninth of the money it has burnt so far in Iraq."
"The Victims of the Tsunami Pay the Price of War in Iraq"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8637

Christopher Deliso claims "[i]t is all too obvious that the US's relative disinterest in the disaster has to do with its cause: a random act of nature. Absent a human actor who can easily be held up to blame, an act of natural terror is not interesting for the powers that be, because it does not allow a reaction of the order of regime change or 'shock and awe' bombardment."
"War and the Tsunami"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8589

Several individuals have adopted a countervailing position -- that Americans, not necessarily the presidential administration, can more easily empathize with, rally around, and support the victims of an act of nature, seemingly divorced from human agency, than an act of war, where allegedly the forces of good (e.g. democracy) and evil (e.g. terrorist insurgents) clash. Of course, this argument avoids the root causes of much of the tsunami disaster--the perpetuation of poverty amidst minimal infrastructure, tourist resorts. etc.

Two hard-hitting pieces blame the media for Americans' seemingly duplicitous position in the face of tragedy. Reacting to the fact that "newspapers and TV's are plastered with bodies drifting out to sea, battered carcasses strewn along the beach and bloated babies lying in rows. Every aspect of the suffering is being scrutinized with microscopic intensity by the predatory lens of the media," Mike Whitney questions, "Wasn't Ted Koppel commenting just days ago, that the media was restricting its coverage of Iraq to show sensitivity for the squeamishness of its audience? [Koppel] reiterated the mantra that filming dead Iraqis was 'in bad taste' and that his American audience would be repelled by such images."
"The Duplicity of the Media -- Iraq vs. Tsunami"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8590

For Whitney, corporate interests determine media coverage, a view shared by Peter Phillips:
"Tsunami Disaster Highlights Corporate Media Hypocrisy"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8598

Given the two disasters--the tsunami and the Iraqi war and occupation, David Morse argues that the US needs to get out of Iraq, where it is not wanted, and go "where we are needed, where our ground troops and our massive logistical capacities can save innocent lives - where we can deploy water-purification plants, field kitchens, electric generating plants, and pontoon bridges. Where we can help keep civil order."
"Get Out of Iraq and Help Earthquake Victims"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8615

In the meantime, BBC News notes "While the world's attention has been on the disaster in Asia, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated so much that the insurgency has developed into near-open warfare."
"Blistering Attacks Threaten Iraq Election"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8638

As a important sidelight to the focus of this week's bulletin, we'd like to call attention to the reactions of some Fallujans who returned to their largely destroyed city this week:
Edmund Sanders
"Falloujans Get an Unsettling Look at Their City"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8576

Jordan Times
"Rage of Fallujah Residents Boils Over"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8585

Juan Cole
"Thousands of Fallujans Demonstrate"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8614

And this week, parents of US soldiers killed in the Iraq war, along with representatives of anti-war groups including Code Pink, Global Exchange and Physicians for Social Responsibility have just completed a trip to Amman, Jordan where the group delivered $600,000 worth of medical and humanitarian supplies for the victims of the Falluja assault.
Jim Lobe
"Bereaved Parents Lead Humanitarian Trip to Iraq"
http://www.occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=8552

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