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The
tsunami left little standing in Aceh, Indonesia
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The
swaths of South East Asia worst hit by the tsunami on December 26
and subsequent days have long been analogous with everything cheap:
cheap laborers, cheap raw materials, cheap tourist destinations, and
yes, much cheaper life.
The
whole episode was utterly horrific. But what was it exactly that
most of us found so horrifying as we watched people being swept away
by the murky waters? Was it the lost lives that were washed away in
a flash? Was it the innate fear that often accompanies natural
disasters wherever they strike? Or was it the unstated guilt that
our privilege necessitated their servitude and misery in this life?
What
I found inexcusable however, was much of the media’s narrative -
our visionaries, commentators and thought-provokers - in response to
the unprecedented tragedy in Asia. In Western media, priorities were
stacked based on the value of racial importance. Thus, the obvious
concern was over the safety of the European, Australian and North
American tourists. Once that was settled and everyone was accounted
for, the Asian multitudes, 126,000 of which have been confirmed dead
since the drafting of these words, turns into a statistical issue,
with futile and untimely philosophical questions being raised, and
affording politicians an opportunity to show off their kinder,
gentler side. Hogwash.
Martin
Kettle of the British Guardian found it most suitable to ask
“Are we too cowed now to even ask if the God can exist that can do
such things?” while striking a comparison between the courage of
18th century intellectuals – Voltaire, Kant and the like – and
today’s obviously spineless logicians. While many writers around
the world had no suggestion on how to help the estimated five
million people roaming the havoc-struck towns of Indonesia, Sri
Lanka, Thailand, the Maldives, and others, seeking food and shelter,
they had plenty of blame to pin on God, demanding answers for
nature’s catastrophes.
Every
number associated with the earthquake and Tsunami and their
aftermath was distressingly high. The wounded have been estimated to
be at least four times as many as the dead. World Health
Organization Director Lee Jong Wook spoke of hundreds of thousands
of people sustaining serious injuries. Health officials warned of
numerous diseases caused by exposed and floating bodies and
contaminated water; dysentery, cholera, typhoid, malaria, and dengue
fever are only a few.
But
the most disturbing figures by far were the dismal pledges of aid to
the inhabitants of the disaster areas. Finally emerging from his
Texas vacation after days of silence, President Bush promised a
paltry aid package of $15 million, which was later upgraded to $35
million, and then to “10 fold as much as the earlier aid
contribution,” an astounding $350 million.
Regardless
of whether the aid reaches the most deserving or not, or whether
there is a political price tag to pay, I think it’s rather
interesting to indulge in a few more statistics.
Western
media priorities were stacked based on the value of racial
importance. |
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According
to the National Priority Project and based on official estimates,
the US government’s war in Iraq has thus far cost a whopping
$147,611,513,432. That’s nearly $148 billion. The war was
unnecessary by all accounts, save those of President Bush and his
henchmen-intellectuals. According to NPP, the cost of the war could
have housed 1,329,102 families in the United States alone, or could
have fully funded worldwide AIDS programs for 14 years. Instead, the
money was funneled into the war machine, the Pentagon, defense
institutions, and various companies and contractors, to subsidize a
catastrophic war which has claimed the lives of over 100,000 Iraqis,
and well over 1,000 American soldiers.
The
United State’s final aid contribution to the tsunami victims would
hardly sustain the Iraq war for more than 36 hours, with daily
spending estimated at $270 million. In fact, the cost of one F-22
Raptor fighter jet is around $225 million, well over half of the aid
offered to the millions of victims of the disaster in Asia.
For
many, pinning the blame on God is the best possible scenario, for it
absolves us of what should’ve been an obligation toward fellow
humans. It’s rather a charity, a donation, and a matter of choice.
But how much of a choice do we have when our tax money is used to
finance the dropping of napalm on sleeping families in Basra, or to
“aid” Israel’s most ingenious endeavor to fence off
Palestinians in an open-air prison in the West Bank? Wouldn’t most
Americans rather contribute a meager half million dollars from the
Pentagon’s $1.5 billion-a-day budget to purchase two early warning
systems – tsunami meters – to be placed in the Indian Ocean,
which could’ve possibly saved thousands of lives? According to the
US-based International Action Center’s estimates, “for what the
US is spending for less than one second of bombing and destruction,
it could construct a system that could have prevented thousands of
needless deaths.”
And
because it’s God’s fault anyway, then no need to alter war plans
for the sake of miserable Asians. According to the New York
Times’ Jane Perlez, three Navy vessels carrying more than
2,000 additional marines being shipped to Iraq from San Diego to
sustain the US war could be diverted to help in the aid efforts. Yet
the decision was “yet to be made,” since it’s a
“political” decision after all. While the diversion of the
vessels could indeed save many lives, the compelling need to blow up
more Iraqis makes the decision all the more difficult.
It’s
interesting, albeit disheartening, to observe the world’s relative
level of preparedness for war versus for aid efforts. For example,
during the US-British war on Iraq, US B-52 bombers made daily
flights from their bases in Western Europe, bombarded military and
civilian installations in northern Iraq, and arrived safely back to
their bases the same night. Yet, journalists managed to make it to
the worst hit areas in Aceh, Indonesia, and reported from there for
days before aid even began arriving, and when it did, it was hardly
comparable to the cost of the bombs that annihilated entire Afghani
and Iraqi towns and villages.
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Aid
has only recently started to trickle into the worse-hit
areas
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The
death toll in Asia is expected to grow; faceless victims have been
swept away, with many more left to fend for themselves, fighting for
the little food that will be dumped for them from speeding trucks.
As far as economics is concerned, there are little calculations to
be made; most of those who perished owned close to nothing to begin
with, and it is likely the survivors will continue to be used as
exploitable cheap labor. Meanwhile, the Bush administration bought
itself a few days of good coverage, squeezed into the space not
occupied by the big philosophical questions of our time: “Why does
God allow this to happen,” “How can religious people explain
something like this?” and of course, the biggest of all: “Does
God exist?”
Once
the floodwater subsides and the corpses are buried or burned, there
will be nothing else to obstruct our daily normality of killing each
other and funding the war machine’s exorbitant costs. It’ll be
time to resume our “man-made disasters,” which we have learnt to
accept with blissful disinterest and without much intellectual
chattering about God and 18th-century philosophers. How pompous and
full of condescension we humans are.
Ramzy Baroud is a veteran
Arab-American journalist. A regular columnist in many English and
Arabic publications, he is editor-in-chief of PalestineChronicle.com
and heads Aljazeera.net English’s Research & Studies
Department.
