White House talks gibberish about Iraq
By NORMAN LOCKMAN
08/20/2003
In Guyana, a ripe mixture of African, Asian, European, Arawak and East Indian cultures expressed through English have produced some pithy slang. If you hear a Guyanian describe something as "cama lama and boogaloo," you may safely assume he is not paying a compliment.
It roughly means "bogus," but the nuances are richer. "Cama lama" is a derisive term for self-induced delusion, like belief in a phony monk. "Boogaloo" means ridiculous machinations performed to induce others to join the delusion.
So when I heard a Guyanian friend comment several weeks ago that he thought America had gone from shock and awe to cama lama and boogaloo in Iraq, I figured he was pretty astute. When the White House prefers to dwell on a list of 90 positive minor developments in Iraq while blaming escalating major terrorism on a few disgruntled petty thugs, the evidence of self-delusion is pretty convincing.
If disgruntled thugs -- or anybody else -- can blow up an oil pipeline to Turkey and a water main and bomb the Jordanian embassy and United Nations headquarters in downtown Baghdad, all within a few days, the positive developments begin to fade in the face of an uglier reality.
The dilemma faced by the White House and the Pentagon is that their good intentions are being stymied by a campaign of terror aimed not only at American soldiers but anybody and anything related to the American postwar efforts, even if it causes more pain and suffering for ordinary Iraqi people, whom we claim to have liberated from such horrors.
Overrun by chaos
What our leaders refuse to face is that our actions in Iraq, while decapitating a totalitarian regime, have left such instability that there is now more terrorism in Iraq, not less. Our inability to control Iraq has made it the prime destination for anti-American terrorists from all over the Arab world.
Terrorists linked to al-Qaida, Saudi jihadis and other fanatics have been pouring into Iraq undeterred for weeks because, although we have 150,000 troops in the country, coalition forces have been unable to secure the borders. The "victory" in Baghdad has created an opportunity for the bad guys that didn't exist before.
As the organized resistance strengthens, American troops have had to worry more about "force protection," which has them either hunkered down or mounting raids on suspected bad guys. That plays into the hands of terrorists, who are then better able to strike at unprotected "soft" targets because our guys are distracted and spread too thin.
It is classic low-intensity warfare, which doesn't require command and control centers because terrorist cells are primed to strike targets of opportunity rather than implement a formal battle plan.
If the Iraqi people see that the American-led coalition cannot prevent free-lance murderers from disrupting their lives, the reservoir of goodwill we expected will rapidly evaporate. Iraqis will turn to other sources for succor and it will almost certainly not be abstract principles of freedom and democracy, which are turning to ashes daily.
Meanwhile, the White House insists this is merely a little rough spot, that things are better than they were before, that it is only a matter of time until the good guys get things in hand, and in any case we are not to blame for sabotage against our efforts to implant the American dream. "We are on course and every day things get better," proclaims the White House.
If that isn't cama lama and boogaloo, then it must be its twin brother.
Norman Lockman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, can be reached at (302) 324-2857 or
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