5,000 Drunken White Men

Attacks on two towers by people of Mid Eastern descent start rumors flying. Retaliation is demanded and organized with sophisticated communication devices. An overwhelming force gathers and moves with lightening speed and ferocity, but against the wrong target: the convenient and innocent neighbors of those responsible for the initial attacks. The twin towers of the World Trade Center, Iraq and the US Army? No…two lifeguard stands on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, the Lebanese suburb of Carringbah, and 5,000 drunken, text-messaging white men.

It does remind of the Bush foreign policy in a reductionist nutshell. We are saddled with a foreign policy that has all the forthought, subtlety and nuance of 5,000 drunken white men. One might argue that there is after all diversity in the Bush administration, but for the purpose of this analogy, let’s just consider, based on their performances, that Colin Powell, Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzalez are serving as honorary drunken white men.

More to the point, however, this shocking race riot in Australia exposes the corrosive effect on those at home from a foreign policy built on fear and hate. Prime Minister John Howard, recently re-elected for a second term, is a staunch supporter of the War On Iraq, and has instituted, in response to terrorist attacks on his citizens and their interests in Indonesia, draconian negations of civil rights within his own land. Unwilling or unable to deal with the real sources of terrorism , he has instead exacerbated the climate of fear, and a race riot is the direct result.

Tony Blair has taken Britain down the same path and it led to the disaffected "lads from Leeds" and their subway bombs. Was that the end of it? Not likely. What about America? Without a sizeable Islamic population to lash back, perhaps the mendacity, repression and incompetence of the Bush administration will draw its own fire. Whenever I think of what’s been done to Iraq, or of the Patriot Act, or of the federal neglect of New Orleans, I feel like 5,000 drunken white men.