Anti-Arab racism and ongoing imperial savagery
Killing on Tape and the Broader War Criminality
by Paul Street
Dissident Voice
November 18, 2004
Why do they hate us? Because “we” are, among other things, war criminals. If you are Arab and/or Muslim today, chances you have been watching, hearing about, discussing, and feeling deep rage over some terrible film footage. It’s been the story of the day on Al-Jazeera, played and discussed and denounced over and over again.
The white imperial Marines walk into a mosque in ravaged Fallujah, where the bodies of dead and injured resistance fighters lay prone on the floor. We hear one Marine speak to another, talking about one of the wounded: “He’s f**king faking that he’s dead.” Response: “yeah, he’s breathing.” The American release video goes black but we are permitted to hear a rifle shot. “He’s dead now.”
The Arab-release video is more graphic, showing the full imperial snuff job. The American corporate state censors — the masters of imperial war propaganda — might have helped construct an Orwellian and therefore officially amnesiac society but they are not entirely ignorant of history. They don’t want to repeat the notorious imagery of 1968, when American television viewers watched a “Viet Cong” resistance fighter fall to the ground with blood spurting out of his head after being crudely executed by a “free world” South Vietnamese officer.
Sorry Semper Fi: that’s a war crime.
But probably not all that out of the ordinary… probably closer to standard operating procedure in a bloody occupation that has designated key parts of Iraq as de facto “free fire zones.”
What’s out of the ordinary is that the atrocity has been caught on tape and released for partial public view.
The action we see is certainly consistent with the training and rhetoric handed down from the higher-level military authorities, from the much bigger war criminals, who speak of the Fallujah “enemy” as “Satan” (never forget that this is a “new crusade,” as Rahul Mahajan says). The bigger mafiosi tell the smaller US military personnel that they are avenging 9/11 in Iraq (despite the fact that Iraqis and 9/11/al Qaeda had nothing to do with one another). The big dons certainly encourage the GIs to kill as many “sandniggers” and “ragheads” as they can.
Anti-Arab racism is critical to this ongoing imperial savagery, making it possible for the White House and the military authorities to easily blend Osama and Saddam, al-Qaeda and Iraq, 9/11 and Baghdad in the first place and providing the essential moral lubricant of dehumanization that makes it possible for supposed moral agents of “freedom” and “democracy” to kill more than 100,000 of their fellow human beings in a distant land. These damaged men and women, these hit-men of American empire, will return home as dangers to themselves and others, bearing evil inner demons that will carry a considerable cost in the imperial “homeland” (lovely word that).
Submitted by Zanjabil on Mon, 2009-02-02 19:08
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Having war planes flying over the super bowl wasn't enough , the degenerate corpritst needed gen. petraus to join the festivities on the field , hey I guess that's were they got the name Field Marshal from .
Of course Arabs are not " worthy victims " or any victims of U.S. foreign policy , be it the attack on Somalia the U.S. media censored , to the hundreds of villages blown up around the world , and the accounts are always suspect , unless it comes directly from the Pentagon .
It's what they don't say that's more damaging , the destroyed mosques , hospitals , the aid Israel stops at sea from several countries , not an issue with the complicit "news " media .
But of course Hollywood laid the the groundwork with much of the racism against Arabs from Golan Globus cheap stereotype movies to ignoring Gaza for years and ignoring Palestinian suffering , but I guess CBS "news" is too busy reporting libraries are used as job centers or some other useless , meaningless garbage about some old entertainer .