Much is being said this week (March 21, 2004) about disturbing a hornet’s nest. There was Richard Clarke’s charge that the Bush Administration was so obsessed by Iraq, that it paid no attention – or minimal attention to Al Qaeda. The hornets or wasps stung people all week with the Commission on September 11, 2001 now holding public hearings.
On Monday, we find that Sheik Ahmed Yassin, allegedly the head man of Hamas, was killed by rockets coming from Israeli helicopters. He was coming from morning prayers. The Sheik had been a quadriplegic since the age of twelve. The Israeli murder set off demonstrations in virtually every Arab country as well as denunciations by European governments. On Monday morning, March 22, Miss Rice, the National Security Adviser in the Bush administration, said that Sheik Yassin was a terrorist and more or less, deserved his fate. By the afternoon, the administration, taking note of the reaction in the rest of the world, had amended its reaction. It now said that the assassination of the Sheik by Israel was “deeply troubling.” There will be far flung reactions to the assassination of Sheik Yassin with Israel and the United States as primary targets.
According to learned journals, hornets and wasps are winged insects of the order Hymenoptera. They are carnivorous and the female hornets have stings which paralyze their prey. Humans have died from hornet and wasp stings, but usually the sting is only greatly painful and uncomfortable. So every school kid should know that a heavy price is to be paid when a hornets nest is disturbed.
All of this is brought to mind by a speech Bush made to a collection of nations friendly to the United States in the East Room of the White House on March 22nd. He was marking the first anniversary of the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.
You may recall that prior to the start of military action against Iraq, the Bush crowd said it had no need for the United Nations to be involved. We would handle Iraq in an exclusively American fashion. Europe was disparaged. Rumsfeld called France and Germany part of “Old Europe.” The “New Europe” must have been England and Poland and perhaps Spain and Italy. It must have come as a shock for the Brits, Poles, Spaniards and Italians to discover their newness.
After a time when the American war set off an Iraqi insurgency and we began to lose our troops, the Bushies appealed to the United Nations and said in effect, “Where have you been?” In the beginning, the war was advertised as a purely American venture. When the going got tough with our killed at 579 military people, the administration is now demanding to know where is the United Nations. The Bush people clearly started something they can not finish.
In the March 22nd speech, Bush says at this late date, we are all in this Iraqi mess together; therefore, all other nations must contribute money and troops to the war effort. Now, a year later, Bush says we are all in this together, forgetting that it was, in the beginning, a completely American effort. We were going to pull this off without anyone’s help. The British helped, but always in a subordinate capacity.
Not only were we going to do this by ourselves, but a concomitant disparagement of everything French or German took place. Do you remember Republicans in the House of Representatives voting to rename the “French Fries” in the dining rooms as “Freedom Fries”?
Well, those glory days are gone now. We badly need help. From anywhere. Do you think the head man of Libya, Muammar el-Qaddafi, can spare some of his Arab troops? They would be most welcome.
When Bush delivered his State of the Union speech on January 20th, our toll of military people killed stood at 505. Two months later, 74 names have been added to the death lists. Yes, we needed help before engaging in this pre-emptive invasion of a country that posed no threat to the United States. But those days are gone now. Today, this country now says we are all in this together. It would have been helpful for us all to be together for the take off, rather than at the crash landing.
There is a dermatologist in Summit, New Jersey who is widely respected. When some of my bumps and protrusions were shown to him, he carefully examined each one and pronounced them benign. Then he said, “If you want me to cut them out, that could probably be done. If they are not troubling you, my professional opinion is that they ought to be left alone. If we don’t attack them, they probably will not attack you.” In 25 years of consultation with this doctor, he has never been wrong.
All of this happened with the dermatologist weeks before the Clarke’s book was published and before Sheik Yassin was murdered. There is a lesson here in what the good doctor had to say. We have plenty of hornets to deal with in Haiti, the presidential election, Spain pulling its troops out of Iraq and the proposed constitution for the Iraqis. Then there is the matter of safety in rail travel and the abject failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It seems to me that we have plenty of hornets or wasps right now without stirring up other nests around the world. Remember what the Summit dermatologist said. “If we don’t attack them, the probably will not attack us.” There is much to be said for that approach just as there is much to be said for Bush trying not to disturb the Iraqi hornets in March, 2003. All of us got stung. 579 deaths of American troops cannot be blinked away.
Once Sheik Yassin was murdered, Ariel Sharon’s government said that his death was only the beginning. Sharon’s people said we’ve got Hamas people “in our sights” and in effect, they will all suffer the same fate as Sheik Yassin. It is doubted that Sharon or his people read the King James Version of the Bible. If he were to look at this version of the Bible, he would find in Matthew, Chapter 26, Verse 52, that Matthew warns against killing enemies. Matthew says, “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword”. Another version of what Matthew said is, “Live with the sword; die with the sword.” A third version has Matthew saying, “Put up thy sword into its place; for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” In any case, Sharon – and George Bush – each may find that his latest policy of stirring up a Hamas hornets nest with the sword of war is very bad business.
Finally, as we said in the first sentence of this essay, the hornets nest analogy is much in the news right now. As this essay was being completed and ready for typing, the Newark Star-Ledger published a cartoon by Drew Sheneman, its regular cartoonist. It is included as an attachment because it has to do with hornets and as such, is very much on point.
E. E. CARR
March 23, 2004
~~~
Happy New Year! Current death total resulting from Iraqi Freedom is 4,424 KIA, 32,000 wounded. On the subject of hornet’s nests and provocation, one of the most scary parts of Trump for me is how easily he can be taunted, and how dependably he can be counted on to react. He goes out of his way to pick fights with everyone, and then freaks out at people who attack him back. I’m pretty sure that this combination of dangerously over-inflated ego with an utter inability to process criticism is going to keep me on edge for four long years. Who will he provoke, or be provoked by, tomorrow?