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Show Wednesday, June 30, 2004 DAILY HERALD A7 Opinion LEONARD PITTS JR. Enough and no more said No more. was the subject I opened the I found myself gazing , upon a severed head held aloft by an anonymous hand. I had intended to spare my-- 1 self such images. Viewing them felt too much like submitting to terrorist manipulation. But I should have known better. Technology being what it . is, you don't have to seek stuff out. It finds you. "Enough, no more!" The exclamation point is an attempt to add emphatic force, like a fist slamming into an open palm. Mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. But wh6 among us doesn't feel that way by now? From the most ardent opponent to the most hardened supporter of George Bush's war, who could not make that same cry? Bombings, assassinations and now this. Videotaped decapitations become you hate to trivialize it with this word, but no other fits a fad among Islamic terrorists seeking to impress us with their raw brutality, their abject . . . otherness. Against which, cries of outrage or even defiance take on a faded air and a sense of impotence. Enough, no more? Yeah, right. Meaning what, exactly? Will a battle cry give the president pause? Will an exclamation point make the terrorists reconsider? And could either do so if they wanted? It seems unlikely. it By this point, these events move with a heedless momentum all their own, a runaway truck rolling downhill. And you sense that nobody, not the true believers in the White House, not the soldiers in the field not the people in the sanctity of their homes, knows what to do. Or what 'comes next. Meantime, that truck keeps plowing down the highway, smashing through roadblocks that once seemed inviolable. "Americans do not attack nations that have not attacked us." Smash "American soldiers do not abuse prisoners." Enough, " . Smash. "America would never consider using torture in its interrogations." Smash. "You can choose not to see a decapitation murder." Smash. I said it the day we invaded Iraq, I say it again today. The nation we used to be is gone, ended with the first bomb lobbed across the border. We are not as idealistic as we were, we are not as innocent, we are not as young. And who knows when we'll find our way back to what we used to be? Or forward to whatever it is we will become? For now, we are simply stuck in this ugly passage where people die grotesquely, our values are under siege and nothing feels certain anymore. "Are you shocked?" That was the first line of the . And you know something? I wasn't shocked. Looking at that gory picture, I was only sad, only filled with a fatigue older than oceans. I felt brutalized, profoundly soiled, as if someone had splattered mud on my very soul. And it occurs to me there's probably a lot of that going around. I mean, you have to be pretty brutalized yourself, pretty soiled, pretty alienated from your own humanity, to send a picture like this out to a stranger in hopes of publicizing your discontent about the war. "Enough, no more." It works as a cry of defiance against the terrorists, works as a cry of opposition to the war. But the more I ponder it, the more I hear it as a cry, period. "Enough, no more." Isn't that what you say when someone's been hitting you and you just want them to stop? When they keep hitting and you don't know how much more you can ' take? That's certainly how I felt I when I opened that felt as if evil had been hitting me for a very long time. So enough, no more. And Lord, have mercy on us all. I Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist with the Miami Herald. He can be reached at lpittsherald.com. RICH LOWRY Sudan is another 'never again' old well-meani- That "never again" might due for retirement. It is what we tell ourselves after every massive slaughter, whether it's the Holocaust or Cambodia or Bosnia or Rwanda. Now, with a new genocide building in Sudan hard on the heels of the 10th anniversary of Rwanda which brought pious expressions of regret that more wasn't done to stop the killing at the time we are about to prove ourselves perfectly ready to accept "again." Militias backed by the Sudanese government have forced roughly a million people from their homes in the western part of the country. In the North-Sout- h conflict that wracked Sudan for 20 years, the Muslim government's favored tool was genocide. war killed 2 The North-Sout- h million. At least 10,000 have died already in Darfur, and absent immediate relief, hundreds of thousands could die. "The U.S. has done more than anyone else in Darfur, and the Bush administration has done more than any other aclministration about Sudan," says Nina Shea of the human-right- s group Freedom House. The United States has pledged nearly $200 million in aid to the region. The European Union so far is kicking in a little more from all 25 than $10 million in the EU combined. countries ' It is the United States that is pushing hard for a tough UN. Security Council resolution that will call on the Sudanese government to end its support for violence and allow aid to flow into Darfur. This is consistent with the administration's history of involvement in Sudan. Negotiations between the North and South had been bumping along ineffectually for years, until President Bush appointed former Sen. John now the U.S. repDanforth resentative to the United Naas his special envoy to tions Bush the country. High-leveofficials were engaged in the peace talks on a daily basis, was and finally a cease-fir- e forged this May. The Sudanese government has repeatedly proved itself susceptible to international pressure throughout the years, which is why if there is hope for Darfur bothered be can world the only to create the pressure. There as yet is no "CNN effect" in Darfur, the sense of urgency that comes from international media attention. The press has mostly been AWOL, with the exception of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof , whose searing reports n have made him a The Muslim world has reserved its outrage for the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, even though a spoonful of the same condemnation applied to Sudan could help save hundreds of thousands of Muslim lives. As for the United Nations, it recently welcomed Sudan onto the U.N. Human Rights Commission, where, with China and Cuba, it will have lots of nasty company. lowed to be delivered. If "never again" is to mean anything, it must mean something now. I Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review. He can be reached at In Darfur people are being pushed from their homes and raped and brutalized by death squads, the They are huddled in makeshift camps that will become dens of death as the rainy season begins, if the Janjaweed isn't called off and if adequate humanitarian supplies aren't al OCCUPMIONift CNHft... BETTER CS IN, BCHS, FOR U5 HNJU." JACK ANDERSON & DOUGLAS COHN Turnover not superficial The turnover of power Iraq was not a super ficial event. True, the U.S.-le- d coalition forces continue on as the primary peacekeepers in the country, but now as the invited guests of the Iraqi government rather than as occupiers of a de- -' feated nation. The U.S. administrator, L Paul Bremer III, turned the reins of government over to Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi and departed the coun: try. While Allawi was handpicked by Bremer and his associates, the hew prime minister moved quickly to assert his independence even before the turnover. It was a move designed to signal to the Iraqi people that an Iraqi was in charge. The real signal of change will come when Iraqi troops and police take over the duties of maintaining law and order. That shift will determine if Iraq can actually join the family of nations and if the number of U.S. troops will increase, decrease or remain the same. It will also divine whether or not Iraq can remain a unified nation. The first attempt at creating Iraqi security forces collapsed this spring when most of the recruits refused to take up arms ' against fellow Iraqis. There was disobedience, desertion and even mutiny. Equally difficult is the ongoing attempt to keep the political entity intact. Kurds in the north Wl f have created an autonomous state under U.S. protection. Will they now be willing to give up that independence to return to ethnic minority status in a country dominated by Sunnis and Shiites? And will the Sunnis who held power during the Sad-'daHussein era accede to Shi-it- e dominance? Will Kurds and Sunnis form a coalition as a counterbalance to Shiite power? If they do, it would be a marriage of convenience because it' was the Sunnis who proved to be the Kurds' tormentors in the past. Meanwhile, pressure will mount in this U.S. election year to bring the troops home. We believe this is already under of way. But the the Iraqi army will be the determining factor, If our troops depart before the Iraqi army is ready, a new nightmare will follow. If our troops remain, their ongoing nightmare will contin- . ue. All of these concerns place Allawi in the tightest of tight spots. If he is viewed as a U.S. puppet who maintains power only through U.S. military support, his government will lack legitimacy and fail. And failure could mean rebellion, civil war or invasion. The rebellion already exists. The Iraqization of government, however, could d. (TvOjTWTCTn CLA' ;jfek JjjbS TWE FAST FREE TOWING GREAT TAX DEDUCTION RUNNING OR NOT WE DO ALL PAPERWORK Shiites break apart; Even worse, if the Iraqi army is unready and most U.S. troops depart, Iraq could fall prey to an Iranian or Syrian invasion. " So who can prevent these is nightmares? Who the most important man in Iraq today? Allawi? No, the most important official in Iraq is still an American, Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, 51, the man charged with creating a new Iraqi army. The fu- ture of Iraq is in the hands of this highly decorated, highly regarded West Pointer. Every day it takes for Gen. Petraeus to turn the Iraqi army into a viable arm of the Iraqi government is a day that witnesses more American casualties, and a day that detracts from the credibility and acceptability of the new Iraqi government. His success or failure will be Iraq's success " or failure. It is a daunting task. It may even be an impossible mission. 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