"This is 9/11 in the United States." – Adel Abdul Mahdi, one of Iraq’s two vice-presidents.
Many a day I’ve rolled my eyes at the number of times George Bush can work the word "terrorists" into a sentence, as often as not one having nothing to do with terrorism. Sometimes the sheer, mindless repetition of it is comic, despite the serious danger of having a president who lumps every opposition to him into the category of evil. The use of the word, however, never made me hissing angry until now.
Yesterday morning I read with some apprehension Juan Cole’s post on the al-Askariya shrine bombing, which he described as "very, very bad, in a way that most Western observers will miss." The London Times has a very good piece on the significance — and apocalyptic symbolism — of the shrine.
The response wasn’t hard to predict. Dozens of Sunni mosques have been attacked. Six people, including three Sunni clerics, have been killed. Three journalists working for Al Arabiya were also killed. Boding even worse for the future, Christopher Albritton points out that this event probably ends any meaningful participation by Sunnis in the Iraqi government. The main Sunni bloc has already withdrawn from negotiations over forming that government. Even Ayatollah al-Sistani, while calling for peaceful demonstrations, had these ominous words:
In what could be interpreted as a threat, al-Sistani said in a statement that "the Iraqi government is invited today, more than any time before, to bear its responsibility and stop the criminal actions that target the holy places. And if their security forces are unable to provide the necessary protection, then the believers can do that, with God’s help."
Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of SCIRI, was more direct. He blamed Ambassador Khalilzad for giving a "green light to terrorist groups" when he recently said that the United States was not going to spend money on Iraq’s security forces if those forces were "sectarian" — in other words, if it was about nothing but giving Shiites the tools to attack Sunnis. I love the New York Times’ wide-eyed innocence on this:
The Shiite leader, Abdul Aziz al Hakim, said he thought Mr. Khalilzad’s public comments on Monday, in which he drew attention to apparent death squads operating within Iraq’s Shiite-led Interior Ministry, were a provocation to the bombing. He did not explain how.
If you live in America, you know that the whole point of blaming people for encouraging the enemy is that no one will ever be so rude as to ask you to back up the statement. I believe it’s in Chapter 1 of Miss Manners’ Guide to Demagoguery.
Khalilzad’s was a stupidly provocative statement, no doubt, and a hollow one. You don’t spend billions on bases if you plan to pick up your ball and go home. Still, although it’s difficult to criticize this administration and be wrong (pick a vice, any vice…), Hakim’s comments were an absurd slander. Telling the Shiite-controlled government that it should not make torture and death squads its policy for dealing with opponents, however hypocritical on Khalilzad’s part, is hardly giving aid and comfort to "terrorists." It’s a stupid formulation, designed, in much the same way the bombing was, to increase divisions. And, of course, it works both ways.
So guess who plugged in to the same stupid formula?
"The terrorists in Iraq have again proven that they are enemies of all faiths and of all humanity," Bush said.
Who, exactly, are the terrorists here? The Sunnis (presumably) who bombed the shrine? The Mahdi Army, brandishing AK-47s and vowing revenge? And is there another source of terrorism in Samarra?
Five days after the grenade attack, Lt. Call and his men from the 2nd platoon were planning an afternoon "hearts and minds" foot patrolto hand out soccer balls to local kids.
As Call sat in the schoolhouse, preparing to go out, he heard two loud bursts from the .50-caliber machine gun on the roof.
Specialist Michael Pena, a beefy 21-year-old from Port Isabel, Texas, had opened fire. Boom-boom-boom. Boom-boom-boom.
Call and his men dashed out the front door. Pena had shot an unarmed Iraqi man on the street. The man had walked past the signs that mark the 200-yard "disable zone" that surrounds the Alamo and into the 100-yard "kill zone" around the base. The Army had forced the residents of the block to leave the houses last year to create the security perimeter.
American units in Iraq usually fire warning shots. The Rakkasans don’t.
A few days later, Call said his brigade command had told him, "The Rakkasans don’t do warning shots." A warning shot in the vernacular of the Rakkasans, Call said, was a bullet that hit one Iraqi man while others could see.
"That’s how you warn his buddy, is to pop him in the face with a kill shot?" Call said incredulously. "But what about when his buddy comes back with another guy … that and the other 15 guys in hisfamily who you’ve made terrorists?"
It’s all a sad lesson in something painfully obvious: The term "terrorists" describes nothing meaningful when all involved parties are playing variations on the same theme.
The simplistic denunciation of terrorism was not Bush’s only statement on the bombing:
"I ask all Iraqis to exercise restraint in the wake of this tragedy, and to pursue justice in accordance with the laws and constitution of Iraq. Violence will only contribute to what the terrorists sought to achieve," he said.
Surprisingly wise words coming from a man who could think of nothing but violence and revenge when his own country faced a similar tragedy, and one who continues to have contempt for our laws and constitution. If he had followed his own advice four and a half years ago, it’s unlikely he’d have to be giving it today.
Saddest of all, I doubt that even now he has the slightest comprehension of his own words’ meaning.
