That was the banner headline of the Mexico City newspaper Ovaciones, over pictures of a New Orleans marked by "starvation, refugees . . . and helicopters under fire." See a must-read piece in the LA Times by Hector Tobar describing reactions around the world to Katrina and its aftermath. In many other countries audiences are seeing or hearing the reactions of their compatriots who are still trapped in various places and begging for help.

There has been an extraordinary outpouring of offers of assistance from countries all over the world, including Sri Lanka, which Condoleezza Rice has had the sense to accept gratefully, unlike her boss, who suggested that we could take care of ourselves. But Karen Hughes' job just got harder. For now in addition to the horrific images of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, of Fallujah and the streets of Baghdad, of dead families killed by stray American bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, will be added the images of poor black people whom no one thought to help evacuate in advance and who weren't even getting food and water more than four days after the hurricane passed.

There will be a huge amount of domestic finger-pointing and introspection about where our relentless tax-cutting and focus on only the most privileged in our society has led us, as well as the implications of an extremely expensive foreign policy when our domestic health, education, and physical infrastructure is crumbling. But all of this takes place in a global fishbowl, where the watching world is likely to see these images -- worth more than all our words put together -- as yet one more example of how far short we fall of the ideals we preach to others.

Check out Timothy Garton Ash, one of my favorite political commentators, writing in The Guardian last week. He begins:

"If you want to know what London was like in 1905, come to Washington in 2005. Imperial gravitas and massive self-importance. That sense of being the centre of the world, and of needing to know what happens in every corner of the world because you might be called on - or at least feel called upon - to intervene there. Hyperpower. Top dog. And yet, gnawing away beneath the surface, the nagging fear that your global supremacy is not half so secure as you would wish. As Joseph Chamberlain, the British colonial secretary, put it in 1902: "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of his fate.""

Click on the link and read the whole thing, but don't miss the punchline!

For all you East Coasters, check out the L.A. Times cover story on the Iraqi constitutional negotiations -- for a view that there are in fact still negotiations ongoing. On the other hand, I was very struck by Kevin Drum's piece in the Washington Monthly on what the real trend lines are in Iraq (thanks to Ben P's comment to my original post on Getting It Done). The people we really need to hear from are the Iraqis, as to whether or not they think democracy has a chance and whether or not our continued presence hurts or helps. Any Iraqi readers or readers with links to Iraqi sources, please weigh in.
     For a broader and poignant and powerful take on our problems in the Muslim world, see a piece from the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles sent out by Judea Pearl, father of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, on the views of several Muslim journalists brought to the U.S. as Pearl fellows. One says that if you asked 12 of his friends whether they wished Israel "would go away," all 12 would say they do. Yet the other points out that Pakistanis viewed Indian Hindus that way until a determined decision by the leadership in both countries to lead their people down a different path. Worth a read.

This just in from Ray Close, a retired CIA Station Chief in Saudi Arabia and a very acute observer of Middle East affairs (and a careful reader of both articles and op-eds).

"The article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs magazine entitled "How to Win in Iraq", by Andrew Krepinevich, is a "must" read.  But it is even more important to study the following commentary about that article, written by the highly respected conservative columnist David Brooks, found today on the op-ed page of the Sunday New York Times (28 August 2005).  Brooks summarizes the main points of the Krepinevich thesis very accurately and succinctly, and adds his own personal agreement that the present U.S. strategy for "winning" the Iraq war that has been pursued from the beginning by Bush, Rumsfeld & Company, is fundamentally flawed, and must be completely revised.  Point taken. If "winning" the war is still a rational and reasonable objective, then the Krepinevich method should indeed be employed, and I commend David Brooks for his persuasive advocacy of that point of view.  But please note a critically important point:  David Brooks fails to acknowledge the all-important caveat contained in the last paragraph of the Krepinevich essay.  I have appended that last paragraph for all of you to read at the end of the David Brooks op-ed piece.  After thinking about what Brooks has to say, read Krepinevich's final summation, and then ask yourself if his new formula for "How to Win in Iraq" is a strategy to which you yourself would subscribe if the decision were yours today.  And finally, after doing that, please take a few minutes to formulate in your own mind an explanation of exactly what you understood were our reasons for launching a war of choice against Iraq in the first place.  Exactly what were our goals and expectations then?  Are any of them still realistic today?"

Ray Close

 

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