In the Red Zone

LIBERTY BONDS

A late-night post on this, the eve of our second wartime Christmas.  After the buying and the decorating of the tree, the flurry of shopping and wrapping of presents, the eggnog and cards and parties, Warrior Woman and I found time to sit by the glow of a candle-lit creche and reflect on the passing year. And while my wife prefers medieval Christmas music, I go for the Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra style of holiday cheer; so it was this night that the voices of the early Kings of Pop filled our Manhattan apartment. 

One particular CD featured a 1942 recording of Crosby singing "White Christmas" on his radio program. After the final note of Irving Berlin's classic tune, he closes out the show by urging his listeners to remember that

the greatest gift we can give to our soldiers are War Bonds.  They're fighting for the day when Christmas dawns in a world of peace--so let's let them know we're behind them with everything we've got.

It's not the only recording I have like that--another has Der Bingle opening a version of "Silent Night" by telling the listening troops, Next year, pray God, all of you will be singing this at your own fireplaces, around your own trees.  At the end of the song, we hear ringing bells, and Bob Hope comes on. Hear that? he asks.

The bells of Christmas ring out clear and free around the world to you.  Listen to them. Their message is coming from the hearts of 132 million grateful Americans, peace on earth, good will to men--and Merry Christmas to all of you.

Different time, different war, different celebrities.  Still, there's not much one can add to those sentiments.  Despite sixty years and twice the population, what Bing and Bob said to the troops fighting across the globe holds true today, for soldiers ranging from Kabul to Baghdad and beyond.  The bells of Christmas are indeed ringing for these men and women, and a message is coming from the hearts of the American people.  Merry Christmas, God bless, stay safe, come home.

MEMO FROM MALIBU

Although its efforts have proven maladroit in the past, the United States is determined to provide Iraqis with entertaining "alternative" media to counter the effects of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia.  What follows is a State Department memo, given to this site by an anonymous source, detailing America's latest effort.  WARNING:  this is highly confidential, so those of you who cannot be trusted with state secrets, keep on scrolling.

Barry--

Hope you and the family are okay, and you're doing well after the gall bladder thing.

Just wanted to shoot the team at PDPA [Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs - ed.] an update on Operation Infinite Ratings.  We finally got a favorable ruling from Sheikh Raq-n Raul at the Brentwood Mosque--something about TV sitcoms being permissable as long as they remain "Islamically instructive," which Legal tells me should cover our tuchuses with any fatwa difficulties.

The Pentagon has green-lighted the first series, and the gang in Creative couldn't be more excited.  It's called "My Son the Shia," and the basic premise is this:  Abu Dulaimy, head imam at an ultra-orthodox Wahhabi mosque in Falluja, sends his son Ahmed off to engineering school in Basra, and after two years, Ahmed comes back home with Layla--his beautiful, but ditzy wife.  Problem is, Layla is Shia--and Ahmed has converted in order to marry her, driving Abu crazy!  Think "All in the Family" with Muslims.

In the pilot episode, it's just before Ramadan, and Layla hopes to impress her new in-laws by cooking her sure-fire mazgouf recipe, only she forgets that the Shia start the holiday later than the Sunnis.  Hilarity ensues as old Abu and his four wives try to maintain their fast, while trying to keep the city's religious police from dynamiting their house.  Marketing tested this with Shia viewers in Detroit and the approval rating was off the charts!

In future episodes, Ahmed gets so angry at Abu for telling his Wahhabi congregation that Shiism is a Jewish plot to undermine Islam that he tells the local American commander about the RPG stash hidden under the mosque.  Another has Layla baking cookies to celebrate Mohammad's birthday--Creative tells me the scene where she gets chased down the street by an angry mob threatening to stone her to death is a classic!

Over time we'll introduce characters like Abu's freeloading Bedouin relatives;  Sa'ad, the village drunk--who gets 80 lashes in the town square whenever he goes on a bender--and Abdul and his local insurgents:  think Sgt. Bilko and the gang in stocking masks.  We're also going to break out an American character--Major Bart Reynolds, a bumbling Psy-Ops officer who tries to "get down" with the locals, but speaks only classical Arabic and regularly gets his equipment stolen by Abdul's cut-ups.  (The Pentagon is going out on a limb for us on this one, but Marketing tells me the Iraqis will eat it up.)

You probably heard about the snafus.  True, we had to move production from Baghdad to Burbank after someone e-mailed the production crew an anonymous warning--something about the "gates of Hell" and "endless geysers of blood."  That means SAG headaches and union costs up the wazoo.  Anyway, we're hoping to sign Eddie Olmos for Abu Dulaimy and Whoopi's committed to 15 weeks to play one of his wives.  We're thinking Ashley Simpson for Layla and that guy from American Idol, whatzisname--Clay Aiken--for Ahmed (I know, I know, but make-up can do wonders).

I can't say we haven't had disappointments. Ayatollah Sistani's people have DEFINITELY ruled out a guest appearance for next month's shooting; too busy with the upcoming elections.  Too bad, because we need a fill-in for Layla's father.  Anyone know what Omar Sharif is doing these days?

Also, we got orders from Rumsfeld's boys to scratch the episode where Ahmed and Layla take a trip near the Syrian border and accidentally uncover a buried Electromagnetic Isotope Separator and 150 al-Hussein missiles armed with Botulinum toxin and Bacillus anthracis spores.  Something about an on-going investigation.

We being rolling next week and hope to debut just before Ashura.  When does the festival start again?  I can never figure out that damn lunar calendar.

Hope to see you soon.  Malibu is great this time of year and the wife and kids all miss you.  We'll do lunch.

Happy holidays,

Sid

WHEN SUNNIS GET BLUE

Whistlin' Dixie

Like most newspapers, the New York Times'  editorials embody the "something must be done" school of analysis.  That is, they urge immediate action on some issue, in an Olympian tone that suggests the tragedy certain to befall if their views are ignored.  By the same token, these 10-point equivalents of an ancient Greek chorus rarely posit constructive advice, offering instead conventionalities and impractical prescriptions that only the dimmest politican has not already considered and either rejected or employed. 

Case in point is yesterday's lead editorial "Grim Realities in Iraq."  Its basic point to the Bush Administration was Don't alienate the Sunnis or you will put the elections at risk.  Now, given that young Sunni men are executing election workers in downtown Baghdad, this is pretty obvious stuff, hardly along the lines of say, advising the White House to drape Laura Bush in hejab in order to win Muslim hearts and minds.  (That day may not be far off, however.)  "There may be time for Washington to try to salvage the election," the Gray Lady rumbles, "but that would require paying much more serious attention to legitimate Sunni grievances and showing an openness to postponing the election for several months."

With voting set five weeks from now, even 43rd Street knows the election train has left the station, with the once-oppressed Kurds and Shia at the throttle.  What's most interesting is the editorials' advice for Bush to attend to "legitimate Sunni grievances."  These, argues the Times, originate in the dismissal of the old Sunni-dominated army, the exclusion of "former" Baathists from government posts and the dearth of "Sunni nationalist politicians" in the interim government.  Lastly, of course, there is the damage the American "counter-insurgency" operations have wreaked on "densely populated towns like Falluja."

This analysis chills me. To understand the implications of the Times' position, imagine this editorial appearing during the Reconstruction of the post-bellum South.  Matters aren't going well:  confusion and uncertainty reigns; democracy seems hanging by a slender thread; masked "guerillas"--the Ku Klux Klan--are terrorizing the population in hopes of re-establishing the fallen Confederacy. What's the advice of the Times, and others with similar views?  Pay more attention to the "grievances" of deposed plantation owners, slave-traders and ex-Southern officers.  Put more pro-slavery leaders in the state legislatures.  Make amends somehow for the damage done to Atlanta, Vicksburg, Nashville.  And, most important, consider telling the millions of blacks that we wish to delay the process of your emancipation so as not to alienate the people who once kept you in bondage.  (The fact that last turn of events actually did occur only highlights the wrongheadness of the editorial.)

Lincoln urged the North to be "magnaminous in victory"--and for the Kurd-Shia-American alliance to grind the Sunni into the mud of defeat is indeed a prescription for catastrophe.  Like most Southerners, who did not own slaves, most Sunnis were not Shia-and-Kurd oppressing Baathists, and the vast majority today wish to see a terrorist-free democracy take hold in the country. 

But delaying elections in order to placate Sunni grievances is another road to disaster, one that also risks creating incentives for the Sunnis to remain a perpetually alienated minority in western Iraq.  Besides, as I noted in the excerpts of ITRZ which recently appeared on the National Review Online, the root of their "grievances" lay beyond the reach of political remedies, involving factors such as tribal honor, abhorrence of shame and an adolescent resentment that seeks to insure the destruction of Iraq itself, rather than see it emerge from Sunni/Baathist domination. 

Recently, Jawad Hashim, a former advisor to Saddam Hussein during the 1970s, told me he remembered the dictator telling him, "If my regime goes down, I will make sure that not a stone of Iraq remains after me."  This mindset is shared by his "guerrilla" followers, the radical imams and drugged-up assassins promulgating their ideology of death.  No appeasement, no addressing "legitimate grievances" beyond the scope of upcoming elections, no placating the resentment of the Sunni terrorists will stop their violence.  At most, it will only delay the arrival of emancipation and justice for all Iraqis.

Allawi to Introduce Myself

With this in mind, it's interesting to watch interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi's campaign strategy.  In a recent op-ed, the invaluable Amir Taheri argues that Iraqi attitudes toward Iran have divided the country's political elite into two camps.  One, dominated by the Shia, is attempting to walk a fine line between Tehran and Washington, realizing that once U.S. attention toward Iraq wanes, Iran will exert the greatest effect on Iraqi interests.  Advocates of the other camp see

Iran as Iraq's strategic enemy and hope to counter it with a discourse of pan-Arab nationalism. They deem the United States a tactical ally in helping Iraq rebuild a state, an army and a security service, leaving in place not a democracy but a "lite" version of Arab authoritarian rule.

Allawi falls into this group.  Recenlty, he announced that in November he'd held "a lot of" meetings in Jordan with leaders of the paramilitary gunmen seeking to topple his government.  He'd also held sit-downs with tribal leaders and other Sunni panjandrums in hopes of coaxing their votes for his slate.  He evidently aims to appeal to the Sunnis yearning for a "Saddam-lite" (indeed, many times in the Sunni Triangle, people told me they'd like to see a "new Saddam, only more democratic").  As the New York Times' John Burns noted on December 21, Allawi seeks

to portray himself as an indispensable strong man and a secular antidote to the influence of religious parties...

Allawi is further arguing that

as a former member of the governing Baath Party of Saddam Hussein, he [is] best equppied to defeat the insurgency and to entice its members to work for democracy in Iraq.

In his Jordan meetings with "insurgent" leaders, Burns continues, Allawi

had spoken to them as a former Baathist and a conspirator in the 1968 coup that brought the party, and eventually Mr. Hussein to power.

Indeed, to cement his nationalistic credientials, the Financial Times notes, Allawi has repeated criticisms of the U.S. for driving out "low-ranking" Baathists from power and for disbanding the Sunni-led army.  Lest we suspect the Primine Minister of crypto-fascist leanings, he evidently told reporter Burns that "Baathism is dead, it's finished, it's something like the ex-Soviet bloc."

Interestingly, Allawi is Shia, but he's part of a joint Shia-Sunni slate of candidates that might pose the most serious opposition to the Shia's United Iraqi Alliance slate.  Turning up the heat on Shia candidates, Sunni leaders have suggested that the recent blasts in Najaf and Karbala were carried out by Iranian agents who are using the Shia religious leaders as stalking horses for their own ambitions in Iraq.  (However, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, revealed on Iranian TV that the bombings were actually the work of the U.S. and Israel as a "plot aimed at distracting Iraqis so they miss the election.)

Whatever Allawi's strategy might be, Iraq owes this man a huge debt of gratitude for remaining at the helm of the country during this period of instability and violence.  Personally, I favor the United Iraqi Alliance, because of my interactions with the Shia in Iraq, but also because their victory will bring the kind of justice that America denied blacks after the Civil War.  It's fascinating to note that in their comments--which parallel in many ways those of Allawi and his "nationalist" camp--the brahmins of the New York Times apparently do not agree.

THE REAL DEAL

I’ve been on the radio a lot lately publicizing ITRZ.  Many of the interviews exhibit a similar echt-American format:  rock music leading out of a station break, a keyed-up (usually male) announcer introducing the book and its author—then usually ten to thirty minutes of quick questions and short, hopefully pithy answers.  The interaction between host and guest is theatrical, stagy, less a conversation than a performance intended to hold the attention of listeners in their kitchens, offices, cars. 

One interview, however, was different.  After rapid-fire questions in a rich baritone, the host of a Midwestern radio station ended the segment in a minor key.  “Steven, I want to ask you something personal,” he said in a subdued tone.  “My son is serving in Iraq and he's stationed in Mosul.  Can you tell me anything about that place?”

Suddenly the dynamic of our conversation changed.  The host was no longer a morning drive-time personality easing his audience through the daily commute, but a concerned father worried about his son in a combat zone.  In that moment, we seemed to cease being on the radio, but rather holding a private discussion.  Equally subdued, I had to tell him that, unfortunately, I never made it to Mosul during my travels through Iraq and thus couldn't provide him with any information.  He thanked me, the technician podded up the rock and roll, the station break came and I was off the air. 

I thought of that interview yesterday as news of U.S. personnel killed in a mess hall in Mosul came over the wires.  I hope for the host’s sake that his son did not number among the casualties. But there are 22 families today who did not have such luck, and hundreds of additional ripples of tragedy are unsettling the surface of wartime America.

Two days after my discussion with the radio host, I found myself interviewing a lawyer for a magazine story about a topic unrelated to Iraq.  As we wrapped up our phone conversation, he mentioned that his son had volunteered for the conflict and was about to ship out.  Soon after that, I began receiving e-mails from people responding to ITRZ or this blog, telling me about their children or spouses who are in Iraq.  Like the radio host and the lawyer, the attitude of these correspondents was identical:  a mixture of patriotic pride, familial concern and unspoken prayer. 

For me, the moment of recognition came a few days ago when I received an e-mail from a woman that included a photograph of her son stationed in Iraq.  To my wife I said, “You know, it’s finally occurred to me:  this is the real deal.  This is war.”  By that I meant, Iraq is not the relatively quick campaign in Afghanistan, the painless (for us) assault on Serbia, the casualty-light liberation of Kuwait.  I would say this is more like Vietnam, but as I remember that conflict, those who were not soldiers either protested U.S. involvement or tried to forget the war even existed.   

No, rather I think of World War II.  Of course, the country mobilized far more citizens then, at a greater cost in blood and treasure.  Today, however, we see thousands of National Guardsmen whom the conflict has plucked from daily life and hurled into a combat zone, leaving behind holes in the social and emotional fabric of American communities.  If only for this reason we cannot, like Vietnam, ignore or forget our soldiers; their safety worries us each time we turn on the news. And the large number of families affected by the conflict reminds us that GIs are not anonymous figures on TV screens or abstract numbers on a casualty list, but sons and daughters and spouses taken from the heart of our nation to obscure and dangerous battlefields. 

I wonder if a Northerner during the Civil War might not also have recognized this moment.  Then, too, sons and fathers went to war in far-off places (most had never left their farms) to fight for a cause that was at once inspiring, ill understood, controversial and, at times, seemingly not worth the cost.  Then, too, strange names like Gettysburg, Antietam and Chickamauga became as familiar as Baghdad, Falluja, Mosul are today.  Then, too, in thousands of homes, people found their prayers had been answered with relief and joy, or sorrow and loss.

This Christmas season, as holiday lights blaze from the eaves and doorways of American houses, they are joined by smaller, more somber lights in darkened windows, burning for men and women who will not return from Iraq.  Relative to other wars, there are not many of these memorials, and God willing, may it remain so. But this should not diminish the enormity of events.  America is engaged in a struggle whose goals are uncertain, even as its demands increase upon communities large and small.  For each family from whose windows the candles shine, payment has been high.  Whether we agree with this conflict or not, let us remember, and thank these people, for their sacrifice.  For them--for us--this is war.  This is the real deal.

THE SHAPE OF DAYS IN THE RED ZONE

Jeff Harrell asks me the big questions about Iraq—you can catch it here.

COMBINED ARMS

It's a rather dispiriting press conference when the President defends Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and criticizes the Iraqi army, but so be it.  The more important issue, at least in the short term, is what Bush termed the Iraqis' "mixed success" in fighting paramilitaries without  U.S. support.  Indeed, other than the peshmerga soldiers of Iraq's 36th Battalion, the Iraqi army has proven dismal in combat.

The problem, in Bush's view, is leadership:  "They've got some generals in place and they've got foot soldiers in place. But the whole command structure necessary to have a viable military is not in place."

If history is any guide, Bush is correct.  During the Korean War, African-American soldiers served with distinction; two, in fact, received the Congressional Medal of Honor:  William Thompson and Cornelius H. Chaelton (posthumously).  But their unit, the 24th Infantry Regiment, had a less laudable history.  According to renowned war correspondent Joseph Galloway, during the first days of the conflict "entire platoons and companies of the 24th evaporated from their foxholes and had to be rounded up at Regimental or Division Headquarters."  The "bug-out" resulted in negative stereoptyping of black soldiers as being unable and unwilling to fight.  But as Galloway notes, a 1996 Army study of the unit entitled Black Soldier, White Army shows that the regiment's main problems consisted of the general panic which gripped all U.S. forces at the time, combined with racism and low expectations among white commanding officers and "deficiencies in leadership, training and equipment."

Another segregated unit, the all-Puerto Rican 65th Infantry Regiment, also had a troubled record during the war, largely because of "language problems and inept leadership in a few key positions." 

What can we learn from this?  While segregated units fought well in World War I and during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, by the Korean War the best use of minority soldiers was to integrate them in the American army.  (This was the view of Eighth Army commander Matthew Ridgeway, who replaced Douglas MacArthur in 1951.)   Integration proved successful in proving black soldiers' fighting mettle and laying to rest many of the pernicious stereotypes that afflicted them.

Today, Iraqi forces dealing with U.S. troops do not suffer from racism or--one presumes--shortages of equipment.  Instead, their problem seems to be the leadership they are receiving from Iraqi commanders.  The solution may be to coordinate the operations of Iraqi troops even closer with their American counterparts.  This idea was recently broached in a New York Times op-ed piece by Andrew Borene, a law student and Iraqi War vet.  Borene argues that the Marine Corps should expand its "combined-action program" that dates back to the Vietnam War. 

The concept behind the program is that if American and foreign troops operate together, each will gain knowledge from the other as to the best way to counter an insurgency. 

American soldiers, Borene observers, "were expected to live in the [Vietnamese] villages they were assigned to defend" and this in turn gave them valuable familiarity with the people. 

This helped to humanize the American presence and reduced the passive support many civilians had been giving to Vietcong guerillas.  For many, their respect for (or fear of) the communists guerillas waned, and they broke their silence about intelligence leads.

In Iraq, the First Marine Division has begun utilizing this program "to aid poorly trained Iraqi National Guard and police forces."  In results that correspond to the general improvement of African-American troops in an integrated army,

reports from the military and the news media suggest that the Iraqis in the combined-action program perform better in combat, have higher morale and are considerably more reliable than their regular Iraqi military counterparts.

It's not surprising.  When soldiers of even the most disparate backgrounds share the same food, experiences and danger, they tend to bond together as brothers-in-arms, leading to a virtuous cycle where the best and bravest set the example for all the rest.

UPDATE:  Reader Brian H. alerts us to an interesting article about Arab deficiencies in modern warfare.

TRIBAL ISLAM WATCH II

Cleared for Takeoff

 The skies have gotten friendlier for women--at least for one Saudi Arabian.  This photograph, by Ali Jarekji of the Reuters news service, introduces us to a young woman who--well, let's let the London Times' Michael Theodoulou tell the story, if nothing else than to enjoy his mordant lede:

Hanadi Hindi will not be allowed to drive to the airport, but when she gets there she will be able to fly jet aircraft.

The 26-year-old Saudi is to become the kingdom’s first accredited woman pilot after signing a contract with the fleet of Prince al-Walid bin Talal, a billionaire Saudi businessman and nephew of King Fahd.

According to Theodoulous, Forbes magazine rates the reform-minded Prince as the world's fourth-richest man, with a net worth of over $21 billion.  Perhaps he could place some of that lucre at the service of his Kingdom's 4.7 million women--who make up more than half the number of Saudi university graduates, although only 5.5 percent of them are employed.  Meanwhile, our good Wahhabi ally bans women from driving, voting or traveling except when accompanied by a male relative. 

Apparently, Captain Hindi still has some flight instruction to finish in Jordan, after which she'll be taking wing sometime in the middle of next year.  What I want to know is, how are they going to fit a male relative in those crowded cockpits?

Berlin's Bartered Brides

With the prospect of Turkey's membership in the European Union--and the shockwaves of Theo van Gogh's murder still roiling the continent--many observers are taking a fresh and unsentimental look at certain age-old traditions common in the Muslim world.  Case in point, Richard Bernstein's December 19 article in the New York Times about "Jasmin," a Turkish girl in Berlin hiding from people who seek to murder her.

She is 18 years old, living in a shelter whose address cannot be disclosed, having...escaped from her Turkish-born parents.  The reason, she said, was that they were threatening to kill her unless she agreed to marry a man from Turkey whom she had never met.

"I had a German passport, and that made me very valuable," she told Bernstein, who continues,

She said her would-be betrothed in Turkey was wealthy and therefore able to pay a big price for a bride by which he could gain a German passport and German residency. 

Bernstein quotes a former commissioner for foreign affairs who argues that the number of girls fleeing arranged marriages in the country is a small percentage of Deutschland's overall Turkish population.  But Jasmin and social service workers disagree, claiming that "oppression and control of ethnic Turkish girls are widespread, perhaps even dominant."  Worse, Turkish men prefer arranged marriages over unions with German women. 

"The attitude of families is that a girl from Turkey will be innocent and pure and will just stay home and have babies," Jasmin said.  "Turkish girls who grew up in Turkey don't know German laws, so they don't know how to protect themselves, even if things go badly."

Fortunately, Bernstein observes, many Germans are rethinking multiculturalism--or "multi-kulti" as they call it.  In Jasmin's case, her German employer refused to turn her over to her parents, but instead found her sanctuary in a shelter which since 1986 has assisted 1,000 girls fleeing arranged marriages.

CHRENKOFF'S GLAD TIDINGS

For those of you who complain that the MSM does not report positive stories about Iraq, Arthur Chrenkoff's invaluable two-week listing of good news from the Land Between the Rivers is up.

NOUS SOMMES TOUS IRAKIENS?

NOTE:  Nothing I, or anyone, can say about this issue can equal the AP photographs circulating around the world today [December 20].  Criminal thugs pulling election workers out of their car in Baghdad traffic and executing them in the street.  What we see in this atrocity are not "insurgents" "resisting" foreign occupation, but fascists attempting to subvert and destroy the birth of democracy. 

For a deeper and more eloquent analysis of the significance of these photographs go to Belmont Club.

The second war to liberate Iraq has begun, pitting election campaigns against terrorist campaigns.  While we hope and expect politics to win, its enemies are exacting a bloody cost from the Iraqi people. 

Today, two car bombs exploded an hour apart in the Shia-dominated cities of Najaf and Karbala.  According to the AP, the blast in Najaf occurred amidst a funeral procession in Maidan Square, killing forty-nine and wounding 90.  The attack in Karbala, 45 miles northwest, took place near the city's bus station:  13 dead, 30 injured.  This was the second terrorist attack to strike Karbala this week.  On December 15--the opening day of the election campaign--a blast struck the Imam Hussain mosque, killing seven.

In Baghdad today, 30 gunmen armed with grenades and machine-guns ambushed a car carrying five employees of the Election Commission of Iraq, killing three.

Let us pause to consider these events.  Here is a country struggling to stage the first democratic elections in its 3,000 year history.  Meanwhile, paramilitary death-squads are attempting to delay, de-legitimize and destroy the process, even as they prod the country toward civil war.  The values millions of people profess to hold dear--democracy, peace, stability, tolerance, women's rights--are at risk.  And yet the world remains largely silent.

In the 1930s, men volunteered for units like the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in order to fight Fascism in Spain.  Today, their tenured sons and daughters sit in comfortable academic seminars where they denounce the "empire" and its nefarious designs on the planet.  (See my "The Empire and Laurie Brand" in the archives.)  Or they create websites like "Iraq Body Count," which tallies the number of civilian deaths--without, however, discriminating between those killed by U.S. troops, fascist paramilitaries, disease, crime or tribal disputes.  Judging by its home page image of a Stealth Bomber dropping its payload, every death is America's fault. 

At least Iraq Body Count is acknowledging and registering the dead; the rest of the world just turns away.  As the New York Times' Thomas Friedman noted last week, the European Union, NATO, the Arab League - all stand to gain from stability in Iraq, yet none are contributing much in the way of manpower or resources to assure that outcome.  The columnist writes,

"We in Iraq have a lot of disappointment with many of our neighbors," Ghazi al-Yawar, Iraq's interim president, told me the other day while he was visiting Washington. Al-Yawar described Iraq's neighbors as sitting on a fence "dangling their legs and munching on pistachios," while "the forces of darkness" try to rip Iraq to shreds. "We do not understand why a vicious suicide bomber who claims the lives of innocent civilians is a terrorist in one country and in Iraq he becomes a freedom fighter," added al-Yawar, a bright and decent man.

As for the U.N.'s treatment of the Iraqis--let us pass over the Oil for Food program scandal and Kofi Annan's description of their liberation as "illegal.  Rather, let us contemplate on the fact the organization plans to send 25 election monitors (perhaps a few more), far less than the 300 it dispatched to East Timor in 1999. 

Why?  According to the Daily Kos, the reason the world ignores Iraq is because

No one, but no one, trusts the Bush Administration on anything.  BushCo is malevolent, untrustworthy and incompetent.  Consider for a moment the risks involved in cooperating with BushCo.  They remain as high as ever.  Especially in the surroundings of a controversial election that is sure to fuel considerable violence.  And what are the potential rewards?  A successful election in Iraq?  And this guarantees what exactly? 

In other words, it's all Bush's fault.  It doesn't matter how many brave Iraqis die in an attempt to move their country to a better place, it doesn't matter that their enemies are the same type of creatures who operated the killing fields of Cambodia, the gulags of the Soviet Union, the concentration camps of Nazi Germany--who have, in every generation throughout history, found the light of human freedom too painful to withstand and so sought to darken it forever.  No, it's Bush's fault.

God knows the current administration has done much to earn such opprobrium.  But I wonder if there aren't other factors at work in the world's seeming apathy to the Iraqis.  Europe calculates that its advantage lies, as always, in letting the U.S. do the heavy-lifting security work while its ministers stand on the sidelines carping at American policies.  The Arab League is too obsessed with anti-Semitism to act in any constructive manner.  And the Left?  Their multicultural, anti-capitalist, anti-globalization impulses have put them in tacit sympathy with the very forces which retard progress in Iraq, in the world and throughout history: tribalism. 

When a group of Islamofascists killed 300 people in Madrid's train stations, Spaniards declared the event was their "9-11."  When a single Muslim extremists killed one man--Theo van Gogh--the Dutch claimed that event was their 9-11.  By that estimation, the Iraqi people suffer the equivalent of numerous 9-11s every week.  Where is the world's sympathy, its outrage, its offers of assistance?  Nous sommes tous Americains, Le Monde famously declared after the real 9-11.  Nous sommes tous Irakiens?  The answer is, distressingly, no.

ADDITIONAL INFO:  Jeff Harrell at shapeofdays.typepad.com alerts me to iraqelect.com.  For more information about the elections (plus a great tutorial on the fascist paramilitaries), go to Iraqi Bloggers Central.