"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away
from
those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter
noses than
ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too
much. "—"
Heart of Darkness,
"Joseph Conrad
Anybody whose jaw didn’t drop at those photos
of Saddam Hussein’s portly
younger brother taking charge in Fallujah in
his crisply pressed Republican
Guard uniform must have a weaker sense of irony
than a dairy cow.
OK, so Maj. Gen. Jassim Mohammed Saleh isn’t
actually kin to the deposed
Iraqi dictator, although they definitely appear
to share the same mustache stylist.
But Saleh’s history in what TV invariably called
Saddam’s" elite Republican
Guard" is real enough. He played a key role in
brutally repressing a 1991 Shiite
rebellion, so after four days of strutting around
as commander of the all-Iraqi
"Fallujah Brigade" replacing U.S. Marines there,
he got replaced by Gen.
Mohammad Latif, an intelligence officer formerly
imprisoned by the regime.
It remains to be seen whether fedayeen gunmen
celebrating the American
retreat will accept Latif’s authority.
Ahmed Chalabi, the longtime Iraqi exile and convicted
embezzler ticketed
by Pentagon "neo-conservative" theoreticians
to run the country, argues that
giving Baath Party members a role in the new
government is like turning
Germany over to ex-Nazis in 1945. But with Newsweek
reporting that
Chalabi himself has been leaking U.S. secrets
to his Shiite pals in Iran,
it’s unlikely he’ll get the final say-so, either.
Watching this ghastly comedy of errors, I wondered
if Americans shouldn’t
stick to what we know best and hire FOX to produce
a reality TV program:
"Iraqi Idol, the Search for a New Strongman."
The theme song selects itself: "Won’t Get Fooled
Again" by The Who.
I can’t imagine how Pete Townshend’s caustic
anthem would sound to Iraqi
ears, but the concept would definitely translate
to Arabic: "Meet the new
boss/Same as the old boss."
But enough desperate jokes. Finding the right
tone to write about Iraq is
very hard. Only today, I read about the funeral
of Capt. Arthur "Bo" Felder
of Little Rock, a 36-year-old gentle giant, his
mother said, who taught
troubled adolescents and served as youth director
at his church.
Felder left behind his fiancee and two children,
Jaelun, 8, and Amari, 4.
He was one of five Arkansas National Guardsmen
killed in Iraq last week.
By way of reassurance, CNN reports that Iraqi
combat deaths in April
outnumbered Americans almost 10-to-1.
Only a couple of weeks ago, all the GOP warrior-professors
argued that
the U.S. needed to demonstrate resolve by cracking
down against Sunni
insurgents in Fallujah and Shiite extremists
in Najaf.
Writing in The New York Times, British historian
Niall Ferguson chided
Americans, President Bush among them, for their
naivet頩n "denying
that America is in the empire business."
Ferguson offered lessons from his country’s experience
in Iraq. "Putting
this rebellion down," he wrote, "will require
severity. In 1920, the British
eventually ended the rebellion through a combination
of aerial bombardment
and punitive village-burning expeditions. It
was not pretty.
" Even Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible
for the air force,
was shocked by the actions of some trigger-happy
pilots and vengeful
ground troops.... Is the United States willing
or able to strike back with
comparable ruthlessness?"
Well, we all know what a brilliant success the
Brits made of the Middle
East. At roughly the same time Iraq was being
pacified, a young Etonian
named Eric Blair joined the Indian Imperial Police
half a continent away
in Burma. Writing under his pen name, George
Orwell, he later immortalized
that experience in "Shooting an Elephant," one
of the great essays in the
English language.
Having decided that imperialism was "an evil thing,"
Orwell described
himself "stuck between my hatred of the
empire I served and my rage
against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried
to make my job impossible.
With one part of my mind I thought of the British
Raj as an unbreakable
tyranny, as something clamped down... upon the
will of prostrate peoples;
with another part I thought that the greatest
joy in the world would be to
drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts."
Such emotions, which Orwell calls "normal by-products
of imperialism,"
don’t entirely explain those degrading photos
of American MPs and
contract workers torturing and sexually humiliating
Iraqi prisoners. But
they’re a beginning. Meanwhile, somebody needs
to remind the Professor
Fergusons of the world that much has changed
since 1920. Thanks to the
communications revolution, gentlemanly "village-burning
expeditions" can
no longer be conducted in discreet good taste;
hence, the U.S. Marines’
wise restraint in Fallujah. Disturbing images
from the Abu Ghraib prison
are broadcast instantaneously across the Muslim
world, evoking a
maelstrom of defiance and making mad Osama bin
Laden look like a
prophet. The tragedy of Iraq is that, ultimately,
Americans have no
appetite for empire.
• Free-lance columnist Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient
of the National Magazine Award.