MOVEMENT ON EARS

By CALVIN TRILLIN

Iraq is finally cooperating well enough with United Nations monitoring to be allowed to sell oil for food and medicine. Hearing that news, I couldn't help wondering whether I should have been able to predict some movement toward flexibility in Baghdad when I noticed an Associated Press item last March that began, "Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has ordered an end to the practice of cutting off the ears of army deserters and draft dodgers."

At the time it was tempting to respond to Saddam's change of heart on involuntary ear removal the way my Aunt Gert might have responded: "Well, that just goes to show you that there's some good in everybody."

Thinking back on it, I suppose my first reaction was gratitude for living in a democracy in which the cutting off of ears would never be countenanced by the courts, even though it may have been suggested once or twice, in the heat of debate, as a punishment for listening to talk radio.

I might have even wondered which politicians would continue to find the tough-on-crime position irresistible if this country did have a serious debate on the question of whether deserters should have their ears cut off. With Bill Clinton using an election-year strategy called triangulation--roughly defined as "the answer lies somewhere in between, unless the polls show otherwise"--I could imagine the White House pursuing a one-ear policy.

But if I were one of those anonymous State Department analysts we're always reading about, maybe I would have recognized that item from Iraq last March as the first sign of flexibility in Saddam Hussein.

This was at a time, remember, when Saddam had been demonstrating complete intransigence. While the Iraqis were complaining that they had no money for food and medicine, Saddam was building new and more lavish palaces for himself. Was he leaving the Jacuzzi out of the downstairs loo of a palace now and then as a subtle signal that he was a man who, in the end, knew the meaning of the word compromise? There was nothing in the newspapers to indicate that.

Then came the news--released with no fanfare--that deserters were going to get to hang on to their ears. I tried to picture myself at the State Department that day, in the morning meeting of the Gulf-region task force. "Looks like we're getting a little movement from Baghdad," I say.

I know enough about these things to refer to governments by their capital cities. When I'm discussing affairs of state, I always refer to Russia as Moscow and France as Paris; the exception I make is Honduras, because even a student of foreign affairs can run into trouble now and then trying to say Tegucigalpa. A high school friend of mine back in Missouri who had once hoped to go into the Foreign Service taught me that it also helps to use the word movement a lot. He still says things like, "Getting any movement from Jefferson City on that motor-vehicle renewal?"

My friend back in Missouri also believes that anyone who wants to sound knowing in one of these discussions should use the word signal now and then. "I think Baghdad might be signaling us on this one," I can imagine myself saying at the Gulf task-force meeting. "He's showing us that he's willing to rethink his entire ear-amputation policy."

The man who's running the meeting looks impressed. "Tell the intelligence boys to check the palace bathrooms," he instructs his deputy. "We may be on to something."