It is very easy to give simple answers to difficult questions. Anyone can do it, even George W. Bush. Why do they hate us? Because we elect our leaders. Why Muslims kill Muslims? Because they hate each other. Why young Muslims turn into suicide bombers? Because they hate life. Why no progress in the Middle East? Because Arabs are born lazy and backward. Why Islamic terror? Because Islam inspires violence and condones terrorism. Where is the Muslim outrage? Don’t hold your breath! They all support terror.
Past victims included Jews, blacks and Native Americans. Jews were demonized to justify discrimination and extermination. The African brain was “found” to be less capable. Millions were enslaved, misused and killed because they were lesser humans. “The only good Indian is a dead Indian,” the invaders discovered. So genocide claimed the lives of millions of natives in North America.
Now it is the Muslims’ turn. Push them to the limit; if they fail it is because of their religion and race; if they react stupidly or violently, it must be their faith and genes. Either way, you win.
Since those who fight back follow the same faith or come from the same race, we are all responsible. We should not only dissociate and condemn them, but also fight them along with the invaders. Neutrality is no longer an option. The problem is if we do so our people will curse us, if we don’t the crusaders who are looking for an excuse to oppress us will find one.
The bottom line is we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.
American columnist Thomas Friedman, in a recent article, wants to know why Muslims are mostly mute toward suicide bombing. He fully knows why 1,300 million Muslims are angry, and he also knows that only a few thousand Muslims are in a violent mode. As an “Israel-First” American, he must have known that his uniformed terrorists in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan kill thousands of civilians for every enemy combatant they eliminate, and destroy towns and villages for every enemy cell they demolish.
The terrorists in nice suits and cool uniforms are the ones who drive young men and women to so much desperation that life equals death to them. Some find no weapons to fight back the superpowers of the day but their own bodies. In World War II, the European resistance fighters were called martyrs when they jumped the enemy’s guns. The Japanese, who did similarly, were called maniacs. In our case, they are called terrorists. Victor’s justice includes name-calling.
“Where is the outrage?” Friedman “innocently” asks. Answer: The public outrage due is against your wars on Islam and Muslims. Our terrorists fight us as much as they fight you, and we are fighting them back. Listen to our mosques and follow our media and you will find lots of battles, speeches, fatwas and articles against them — that is if you don’t limit your readings to Israeli MEMRI (founded and run by a former Mossad colonel).
This is our outrage, but where is yours? Where is the outrage against the US soldiers who randomly shot and killed 16 Afghan civilians on a highway in revenge for an earlier Taleban attack? Or against the Marines who raped innocent Iraqi women and killed family members in retaliation for a roadside bomb? Or against the killing, maiming and displacing of a million Lebanese civilians in response to the capturing of two Israeli soldiers?
We are fighting our terrorists, but are you fighting yours? Our bad and ugly are taken to court, humiliated and hanged; when are yours going to be tried and punished? We call our terrorists “terrorists,” you call yours presidents, prime ministers and patriotic “men and women in uniforms.” We don’t blame your religion and race for the crimes against us, but you blame ours to justify collective punishment.
Yes, we have our hate speakers and fear merchants, but they are mostly in caves and prisons, hunted and doomed. Yours, however, are members of legislative bodies. They lead legitimate governments, businesses, churches, synagogues and media organizations. Friedman is trying to compete with a league of villains like Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James C. Dobson, and Franklin Graham. Google them out and see what kind of hate speeches they make against Arabs and Muslims every day. Our extremists are civilized in comparison. If you want us to go out of our way to denounce our extremists, you should show us the way by denouncing yours. It takes two to tango.
3 comments:
Dr. Batarfi, you are absolutely correct, there is a very limited "free press" in the U.S. because it is controlled by immense corporate interests with an extremely incestuous relationship to our elites, our military-industrial complex, and their "perspective" on the world. If you have not read “Manufacturing Consent” by Chomsky and Herman, I would recommend it as an excellent overview.
Thomas Friedman is a superb example of how our elite journalists function. Did you know he is an immensely wealthy man who advocates neo-liberal “free trade” as the most wonderful medicine for everyone in the world?
And, of course, the innate benevolence of Israeli and U.S. elites and their societies is axiomatic in his thinking. Arab elites and societies, on the other hand, to the extent that they ideologically or violently resist the “good will” domination of Israel and the U.S. in the Middle East are “problems”.
The American Empire needs an enemy to justify its immense military expenditures, its invasions, occupations, and hundreds of military bases around the world. It needs an enemy to serve as a unifying propaganda model to control its own restless people. For most of 80 years, especially after the victory of the Soviet Union in World War II, communism served as that needed “enemy”.
Islam is now replacing communism as the “enemy”. Of course there are “good” Muslims and “bad” Muslims, but the rabid hatred you hear in the screed of Veronique V. is typical. There is immense contempt and hatred in that voice—both toward you and toward Islam. I’m sure you are subjected to a great deal of that treatment as you dare to question the motives and purity of your Christian and Jewish “superiors” in the West.
You have read Orwell’s 1984, I presume, and understand how hatred and propaganda and endless war can be used to control a society. Orwell, of course, was describing a totalitarian regime and the West is not totalitarian per se. Nonetheless, the same general techniques are employed as pervasive “marketing” schemes.
I have traveled throughout Iraq and Jordan—not as an invader but as a filmmaker—and I was treated with a good deal of respect and even kindness there. Of course, that was in the 1990s before the U.S. destroyed the Iraqi state and society in order to implement a client state program. (A project that is going poorly at the moment.) There are many aspects to the horrific war on Iraq, but I have begun to focus on one issue: I contend that the U.S. owes the Iraqi people, as a minimum, 500 billion dollars in reparations; for both its economic sanctions program throughout the 1990s, and its illegal invasion and occupation in March 2003.
I plan to make a documentary on exactly this question: does the U.S. and the U.K. owe the people of Iraq immense reparations for deaths and destruction unleashed by sanctions, and the invasion and occupation?
Good luck to you.
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