The New Hope Journal

Larry L. Dill's
New Hope Journal
Personal Essays and Public Opinions since 1979
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Welcome the latest edition of the New Hope Journal. The following essay was written in a slightly different form for publication in my local newspaper in Waynesville, North Carolina, The Mountaineer, and was prompted by a column by Ted Kirby, a retired newspaperman, published in the Mountaineer on January 24. In the interest of clarity I have published Mr. Kirby's column in its entirety along with my response.

Tsunamier than thou: a response

by Larry L. Dill

I don’t know. It just seems mean spirited to me to use the tsunami tragedy as one more opportunity to brag about how much more civilized we Americans are (especially those of us who are of the Judeo/Christian tradition) than those “heathen” Muslims. The embarrassing display of self-righteousness by George Bush and Colin Powell following chastisement by a UN spokesman of the US government’s paltry initial relief efforts, is eloquently chronicled by Hendrik Hertzberg in the January 17 issue of the New Yorker magazine. “We’re a very generous, kindhearted nation,” he quotes the President as saying. “And so we are,” Hertzberg agrees. “But it is unseemly to boast about it at such a moment.”

Ted Kirby writes recently in the Waynesville, North CarolinaMountaineer under the headline “Muslim response to the disaster in Asia worthy of note,” that “We are citizens of the world’s greatest nation, but because our nation is relatively young—barely two centuries old—it is difficult for us to relate to peoples who regard events of 500 years ago as having occurred only yesterday, but that is a defining characteristic of the Islamic faith”. I have no idea where Mr. Kirby gets the notion that the Muslim faith is keener on historical memory than the rest of us but let’s assume for purposes of argument that he’s right. It might explain, for example, the selective memory of Americans like Mr. Kirby about the atrocities we “Christians” have committed in our short history: slavery in the American south, genocide of the native populations who were already here when we arrived and the colonial empire building in the Americas and the Pacific that most recently can be illustrated by US military and diplomatic support of the Indonesian government’s savage slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children in East Timor over the last 30
years.[1]

The point though of Mr. Kirby’s essay, apart from just being a bald-faced example of American self-congratulation is that, as he puts it, “the United States has led the [tsunami] relief effort financially and logistically.” He is evidently unaware that the governments of Australia, Germany, and Japan (not to mention the European Union) have all contributed more money to Tsunami relief than the U.S. government.[2]   To spin this reality check in his own favor the President is quoted by Hertzberg in the New Yorker article as saying, “The greatest source of America’s generosity is not our government—it’s the good heart of the American people.” That’s an ironic truth. But it is also true, as Hertzberg points out, that “in a democracy a government’s generosity is an expression of a people’s heart, not something separate from it.”

I don’t mean to single out Mr. Kirby personally for his lack of respect for other cultures but his essay is a textbook case of nationalistic jingoism. When the first Europeans arrived in the Americas they justified their genocide of the indigenous peoples here by claiming that the natives were not really human. Now (500 years later) we find Mr. Kirby (with 35 years experience as a newspaperman) explaining current events to his small town community by cynically suggesting that Muslims world wide can not only not be trusted to pitch in when natural disasters occur, but they are all actually out to kill us God-fearing Judeo/Christian infidels if we don’t convert to their faith. Hence, he seems to imply that we need to kill these savages before they kill us (another example, I suppose, of American enlightened self-interest). I’m certain he wouldn’t personally want to go that far. But his language is incendiary and fosters an anti-everybody-else-ism that has become all too common in American discourse.

Mr. Kirby tries to tie all this xenophobia together by suggesting that the International Red Cross tsunami relief efforts were laudable while the “parallel” Islamic Red Crescent organization was “conspicuous by its absence.” He is apparently unaware that since 1919 the Red Cross and the Red Crescent have formed one international organization called (since 1991) the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (the largest humanitarian organization on earth) and that only one of the two flags (cross or crescent) is traditionally flown over relief efforts in a given country at a given time. Logistics are coordinated from Geneva, Switzerland.[3]   Mr. Kirby forgets in his tirade against Islam that in Iraq where the American Invasion of 2003 has resulted in an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths, and untold numbers of casualties and displaced peoples, the Red Crescent Society of Iraq was until very recently (after an international outcry), blocked by the American military from delivering life saving food, water and medicines to suffering victims of the man-made tsunami in cities like Fallujah.[4]

Moreover, Mr. Kirby fails to mention that the national Red Crescent organizations of the Middle East are not only reeling from their enormous responsibilities and overwhelming obstacles in Iraq today but from their ongoing efforts to rehabilitate the survivors of the 2003 earthquake in Iran with less than twenty percent of the financial relief originally pledged by the world community but never delivered.[5]   Mr. Kirby goes on to criticize Saudi Arabia and Kuwait for their miserly contributions to tsunami relief (with reasonable justification, I agree) but he does so in a context that suggests their miserliness is a Muslim trait without acknowledging that both these oil rich countries, rather than Islamic states are secular tyrannies with strong ties to the U.S. government and its corporate oil interests. Like George Bush, Mr. Kirby seems not to understand that Middle East politics which includes a mix of feudal monarchies, brutal dictatorships, diverse religious institutions and modern democratic impulses is as complex as anything going on in the west and that to lump everything you don’t like about the Middle East under the rubric “Nation of Islam” (a puzzling reference by Mr. Kirby to Louis Farrakhan’s black empowerment organization based here in the US) is irrational and counterproductive to anything we might call world peace.

Ted Kirby’s Muslim-bashing essay has, I’m sure, already been recycled by most of the good folks here in Haywood County, itself still digging out of a devastating flood only a few months back. Just more water over the bridge. Small town newspapers (to their credit) usually provide plenty of space for local citizens to express themselves. What is really tragic though is that somehow Mr. Kirby (his good intentions notwithstanding) has attempted to divert his readers from their own grief and responsibility for tragic events here at home and worldwide by driving another ideological wedge between the holy “us” and the evil “them.”   I’m inclined to say that such demagoguery is un-American, Mr. Kirby. But maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is all too sadly as American as apple pie. I saw a bumper sticker the other day with an American flag, the words “American and proud,” and a picture of a man with a halo over his head (a kind of cartoon illustration of Mr. Kirby’s position, I thought). American and proud? OK. Of course we have a lot to be proud of. But the halo? That seemed a bit unseemly.

It is neither anti-American nor an endorsement of radical Islamist terrorism to recognize that there are Muslims and secular Arabs of good will and democratic spirit throughout the Middle East and right here in the USA. If our President didn’t believe that, how could he feel so strongly that democratic institutions are possible there? Come on, Mr. Kirby. Write a retraction and align yourself with peace loving people everywhere, not just your Christian friends here in the Great Smoky Mountains. And turn off that Fox News channel and get some exercise. They say it’s good for the soul.
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Footnotes:

1. “In 1999, Indonesia escalated the atrocities in the territory they had invaded in 1975, killing perhaps 200,000 people with the military and diplomatic support of the US and Britain.” Noam Chomsky, “Hegemony or Survival,” Henry Holt Publishers, New York, 2003, p.53.

2. See the Hertzberg New Yorker article mentioned above and also the January 8, 2005 issue of the Economist, p. 24.

3. See the website of the International Federation of Red Cross Red Crescent Societies, www.ifrc.org.

4. Elizabeth Rosenthal reports in the New York Times October 29, 2004, “An Estimated 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect result of the March 2003 United States-led invasion, according to a new study by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.” And an Article dated November 24, 2004 on the Nation magazine web page by Miles Schuman outlines what the Red Crescent Society of Iraq calls the “catastrophic” health conditions caused by the war in Fallujah.

5. Economist cited above, p. 27.

Go here for Ted Kirby's original Mountaineer Column, "Muslim response to the disaster in Asia worthy of note."

Go here for previous editions of the New Hope Journal including essays, poetry, photography, and Larry L. Dill's book length work in progress, "What did you do in the war,daddy?"

February, 2005