The safety of tsunamis

The lack of a political angle on the Indian Ocean disaster has allowed the West, unaccustomed to dealing with politics, finally a chance to react to the dangerous world.

by Kevin Potvin <kpotvin@republic-news.org>

In late October last year, the Lancet, an authoritative medical journal from England, estimated that nearly 100,000 Iraqi civilians had perished in the 18 months since the US invasion of that country, which began in March 2003. The figure was not seriously disputed. The vast majority of the deaths were attributed to US air strikes, an assertion that also went mostly unchallenged.

Add a few more months and hike the average deaths per month to take into account the generally higher level of violence all around Iraq lately, and the number of civilian deaths in Iraq might today be around 150,000. Whatever the number really is (and it may never be known, since the American occupying army chose early on not to bother counting), it is close enough to the number of civilians killed by the infamous Indian Ocean tsunami to bear close comparison.

A lot of fanciful similarities and striking contrasts immediately suggest themselves when these two events are put up side-by-side for examination. But the most revealing aspect is the international reaction to these sudden deaths, in particular among the wealthy Western nations where there is a choice available about whether to react at all, and to what degree.

On the one hand, there is nature's fury, about which we can do absolutely nothing aside from issue timely warnings where time exists. On the other hand, there is political fury, about which we can, generally speaking and in theory, do everything, since by definition political events (such as war) are completely within the control of at least some humans.

It would be bad taste to say something like, “It was necessary, or at least acceptable, that the tragic victims of the tsunami had to die.” The statement sounds on the face of it cold and insensitive. But, given that earthquakes are a fact of life on this planet, and given that undersea earthquakes cause tsunamis sometimes, and given that it is absolutely necessary for humans to live and work near the edge of the sea where much food and transportation is found, it is inevitable and hence acceptable that occasionally many will die in sudden monster waves. The only way to avoid this particular hazard is to upset beyond measure the economy of much of the world by moving everyone away from all oceans' edges, a solution that would cause more misery and hardship than a hundred tsunamis.

By comparison, how many times have we heard variations on the statement claiming that civilian Iraqi deaths on the same order of magnitude as the tsunami are necessary, or at least acceptable? Just this week, US President Bush, after admitting there never were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, said that the war, and by implication its many civilian casualties, was anyway necessary and he would do it again even without false intelligence about the weapons. There was no significant reaction to this statement.

It is between the surprising outpouring of world reaction to the tsunami tragedy and the equally surprising ambivalence of the world to the Iraqi tragedy where clues to the state of humanity today lay hidden. Admittedly, many people are concerned about the casualties of this war. But there is no CBC-orchestrated gala celebrity event to raise relief funds for surviving Iraqis using the voice of Canadian celebrities like Tom Cochrane to leave messages on phone machines, nor do I see Wayne Gretzky or any star-studded cast on TV. My son's school is not organizing hot chocolate sales to raise cash for victims of American “shock and awe.” The UN and Red Cross, for all their efforts in Iraq, have not so far been handed one-one hundredth of the $12 billion they have been handed to deliver relief to tsunami victims.

Three facts stand out: the tsunami tragedy is one of those events about which there is no possibility of a political angle. Lately, even natural disasters can often be laid at the door of global climate change, which traces back to reckless industrialization, capitalist greed, and ultimately democratic subversion. But not this one: the earthquake is just the planet being itself, and so was the resulting tsunami.

The second fact is the overwhelming and quite likely unprecedented level of concern, focus, and charity that has poured out of wealthy nations in reaction to the tsunami tragedy. The third fact is the pointless, horrifying, and confusing wave of wonton destruction unleashed all over Iraq.

Could it possibly be that, having been forced to witness the killing of about 150,000 innocents in Iraq and not really doing much about it, even though we know that there probably is something we can do to stop it, a great deal of pent-up frustration and guilt finally found an entirely safe, non-political, outlet?

The tsunami, a catastrophe conveniently equal in magnitude to the Iraqi War catastrophe, seems tailor made to absorb mounting Western nations' guilt about not really doing anything about the one tragedy they can actually affect. This is why all political leaders of all stripes, leading celebrities, television networks, newspapers, local schools, churches, bank branches, neighbourhood retail stores, and even an on-air sex advice columnist, have all jumped up to raise money, show concern, learn about, and get involved, even though the killing is pretty much all done in this case, and there is virtually nothing anyone can ever do to stop it happening again.

The fact that we can actually do something about the other tragedy, in which the killing is far from over, is what ironically has hamstrung the wealthy nations into doing little: no leaders, no networks, no newspapers, no schools or churches or bank branches, no local stores, and certainly no sex-advice columnists have raised a dime to relieve victims in this case, let alone raise funds to help those trying to stop the killing, like the Iraqi resistance. There is little of the spirit of showing concern, learning about, or getting involved when it comes to Iraq, compared to the fury surrounding the tsunami.

This is not to blame, cajole, or accuse those who live in wealthy Western nations. We have come to an age when the presence of politics in an issue scares everyone off from making firm, identifiable positions. The tsunami is, as everyone can agree, a bad thing, and we can all agree because, since no human agent was involved in creating it, there is no politics in this issue. The war in Iraq is also a bad thing, but because it is the product of human agency, this issue is saturated in politics.

The presence of politics does not seem to scare off people in non-wealthy Western nations. Bolivians again last week turned out in the streets of the capital in huge numbers to force the government to cancel private contracts in the water industry. Venezuelans lately took hugely significant political action en masse to re-install their elected leader who had nearly been spirited away in an aborted US-orchestrated oil company coup. All around the world, except in the pampered West, people raise money, show concern, learn about, and get involved in political, as well as non-political, events.

They seem to even take the political more seriously than the non-political—a sensible approach given that the non-political is by definition something no one can do much about. This shocks us: now our Western media reporters, still stumbling around in awe at the devastation, express their mystification at the locals, who seem already (nearly a month on!) to have put it behind them and are rebuilding. What did we expect? To see them, like us, luxuriously marinating in the images and the emotional reality of it all? By contrast, we no longer linger over images and the emotional reality of Iraq, if we ever did.

I blame Western media. It used to be that the dinner table was the place never to discuss religion or politics. Now, because of an intellectually drained cadre of professionalized journalists averse to stating any minority notions for fear of being cast out of work and home by a thoroughly monopolized ownership structure, the newspapers, the TV, the radio, and ultimately, the sidewalk, the café, and the workplace, are now the much expanded space where politics and religion must never be discussed. Where, I want to know, is politics ever really discussed anymore? Is politics by now completely privatized inside the meeting halls of political parties?

****