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Gordon Cucullu- Contributor

Former Green Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now an editorialist, author and a popular speaker. Born into a military family, he lived and served for more than thirteen years in East Asia, including eight years in Korea. For his Special Forces service in Vietnam he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs at both the Pentagon and Department of State as well as an executive for General Electric in Korea. His first major non-fiction work, Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin, is based in large part on his extensive experience in Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and businessman. [website] [go to Cucullu index]

Lessons from Hell
The tsunami…
[Gordon Cucullu] 1/5/05

In the first days after metronomically dismal reports of the Indian Ocean tsunami beat upon us, each with increasingly higher casualty figures, I began to wonder, after the initial shock subsided, if there are lessons to be learned from such a cataclysmic event. While it is far too soon to think that we have gleaned all or even most of the lessons to be learned from the horrible disaster of the tsunami we have had sufficient time to discern a few early thoughts.

Perhaps the first point that emerges from the tragedy is that the will of God may seem wrathful or random but that it is not our part to question His intent, but to try to learn from the event itself the lesson that God wishes us to grasp. This is very difficult for most human beings to comprehend. Our inclination is to ask ‘Why did God let this happen?’ or ‘Why is God punishing these people?’ Rather than view it as a punishment or an expression of cruelty we need to view it as a test. What are we expected to learn from this terrible event that can help us humans grow and develop? The lesson is there if we are wise enough to determine it. This is not an easy accomplishment but for an event to this magnitude – literally Biblical in proportion – there must be something critically important for humans to learn from it, something that will justify the intensity of the study.

We must also use the tragedy to help us reinforce the value of human life. As the death toll estimates mount, knowing full well that we will never be able to determine accurately the total loss of human life, it is possible to predict that upwards to 250,000 may eventually be the cost of this remote earthquake and tsunami. The Soviet dictator Josef Stalin once said that ‘one person’s death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic.’ Sadly history has shown that cynical comment to be true. When death tolls approach these unimaginable levels it is almost a defense mechanism for us to shut down the centers of our brain that treats the losses as fellow humans and begin to lump them into a distant cluster unfortunates. Perhaps this is a way for us to deal with the magnitude of the loss rationally, but it risks de-humanizing the disaster, something we must carefully avoid doing. These are people just like us, caught by incomprehensible forces while going about their daily lives. Are we ready to go if faced by our own cataclysmic event?

The tsunami allows us to place other current events into perspective. In an eye blink 40 times more people died than all the US casualties incurred in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, plus the 9-11 attacks. Ninety times more people died than casualties on D-Day in Normandy, and five times more than are killed on US highways in an entire year. These comparisons are not meant to minimize any of those losses but to show how we tend to give weight out of proportion to certain losses compared to others. Our wartime losses are bitter but at least these men and women died fighting for a mission that they were dedicated to accomplish. It is considerably more difficult to find meaning in the losses of those swept away by giant waves. Regardless the meaning is there we must just look harder.

On a less philosophical, more hard-nosed national policy level there is a repeated lesson that has been shouted at us for the past few months: we are critically short of deployable military units - ground, air, and naval - and we need urgently to rebuild the military gutted in the GHW Bush-Clinton years. Forces that were headed to other hot spots were diverted to assist with this international emergency. It ought not to have been necessary but it was. This speaks volumes to how thinly our forces are spread.

It would be of less concern if there were not so many potential enemies and crises lurking in the shadows. Add to that the unpredictable disasters - weather, tectonic, and disease generated – and it quickly becomes clear that we need to increase numbers of ground units, naval vessels, aircraft, and support infrastructure. It needs to be a force that is integrated, functional, and tailored for 21st century threats and demands, not simply a revival of a Cold War force structure.

This has been a long-time goal of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld that was initially resisted by some of the Clinton appointed general officers in the Pentagon. Most of them have now retired or been replaced. Rumsfeld’s team is on the ground, the president has won reelection and it is time to implement some of these needs. The tsunami simply confirms what most observers considered a task crying for attention. Expansion of the military needs to be placed in a higher priority than other admittedly high visibility initiatives including Social Security, tax reform, immigration, and tort reform. The survival of the country depends on it.

One of the most interesting lessons learned from the tsunami has been that beyond governments and international relief organizations the basic goodness of people comes out. More than simply going to their wallets and checkbooks, people around the world are responding to a degree not previously seen. In the stricken areas foreigners – some residents but mostly vacationers – overwhelmingly volunteered their help to the devastated local populace. Other foreigners flew in to find relatives and when they saw the magnitude of the need volunteered for the relief effort. In just one of thousands of examples a Swedish couple who were resident diving instructors on Phi Phi Island off Thailand, barely escaped the tsunami on the island, made their way to Phuket and immediately joined a volunteer operation.

An American expatriate living in Phuket became the organizing force for the foreign volunteer effort. The Swedes were part of a group of foreigners under his direction that separated bodies at Buddhist temples – houses of worship pressed into service as storage areas for the dead. They, and others, performed such gruesome tasks as cleaning maggots from the faces of the dead so that they could be photographed for possible identification. The horror of these kinds of tasks, done on corpses after they have been more than a week in the tropical heat and humidity, defies description but speaks volumes to the dedication and selflessness of these volunteers.

Already US military units have deployed to the tsunami areas to perform relief work. They are ferrying relief supplies to areas closed by collapsed bridges, washed out roads, and impenetrable debris. They are medevacing out injured victims of the tsunami and bringing medical workers into the places where they are most needed. They are setting up food and medical supply distribution centers and working feverishly to provide clean water supplies, without which many thousand more are likely to fall victim to waterborne diseases such as dysentery, cholera, and typhoid. Along with the foreigners thousands of local residents and national military are participating in what will become the largest relief effort in history. This is turning into a fine hour for humanity in the face of one of humanities worst disasters. Perhaps we begin to see the lessons here after all. tRO

Gordon’s book Separated at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin became the Evil Twin, is drawing good comments. Gordon is scheduled to speak at the Flushing Library, Queens, NY on January 15 at 2 pm, public invited.

copyright Gordon Cucullu 2005

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