Racism at Core of Iraq Invasion [View All]

[BJ]

This is quite a long editorial column but one well worth the read.
Racism at Core of Iraq Invasion, by Firas Al-Atraqchi

2004-04-29 | The popular perception in the US is that Iraq is a country of uncivilized criminals and terrorists raised to hate America because common people hate freedom and liberty, “ragheads” and “sand niggers” who brought down the Twin Towers in New York City and attacked the Pentagon. US-based columnists have taken to calling Iraqis lazy and ungrateful. A few days ago, in a prime-time press conference, US President George Bush said the Iraqis must take control of their own destinies come June 30th.
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A full week after the killing of the four Blackwater employees, more than 700 people have been killed in Fallujah. There are more than 2,000 wounded civilians. More than 147 houses have been entirely destroyed. Four mosques have been damaged. Doctors are running out of vital supplies. The city is under siege, cut off from food, water, and medicine supplies. “We are resorting to collective punishment,” Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria told Chris Matthews on Hardball recently. He denied the official US position that fighters in the “Sunni Triangle” are dead-enders. He also claimed uneven-handedness in Iraq was feeding the “insurgency.”
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It is no surprise then when we hear that British commanders in Iraq were condemning the Americans’ heavy-handed and disproportionate military tactics in Iraq . According to The Telegraph's Sean Rayment, a British officer, “who agreed to the interview on the condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as 'untermenschen' - the Nazi expression for ‘sub-humans’.
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Link to column in its entirety