Iraq and the race card

[elfs]

One of the interesting placards I saw during the protests accused George Bush of "racism." The assumption seems to be that if we go to war against Iraq, we'll be going to war against Arabs. In fact, during the haj this week the Muslim speakers made the same point: they claimed that the U.S. was preparing a war against all Muslims everywhere.

I was pleasantly surprised to see David Pryce-Jones turn that assumption on its head:

Behind the demonstrators' slogans lies the assumption that Arabs should be left alone: they don't mind being brutalised, tortured and murdered by a fascist thug like Saddam. Where they come from, it is the natural order of things.

Do I believe this is true of the protestors? No, not really-- at least not of most of the protestors. I am sure that there are those who hold this belief, but most would vehemently deny it.

But it does illustrate that the race card, when played, is a dangerous one. It can easily be turned against the person playing it.

Comments

[damiana-swan.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question, and any really effective answer is pretty complex.

For instance, Bush & Co. have been very busily conflating Al Qaeda and Arabs and Iraqis and Muslims every time they open their mouths. However, while Al Qaeda is mostly Arab (I think), most Arabs are neither members nor supporters of Al Qaeda. Also, if I remember my geo-political history correctly, Iraqis are actually mostly Persian, not Arabic, and most of the world's Muslims by far are not Arabs.

So, it could be argued that this "War on Terra" isn't racist at all, because it's against people of at least a couple different races.

However, that argument assumes that Bush & Co. know and/or care that there's a difference ... which brings up an interesting question. If Bush is convinced that the people he's intent on making war against are all Arabs, and that it's okay for him to kill the ones who aren't responsible for 9/11 or any other act of terrorism because Arabs all have a not-so-secret sympathy for terrorists and are providing them with at least emotional support .... does that make his actions racist against Arabs, even though most of the people who are on the receiving end aren't Arabs at all?

Or does it, as I suspect, just mean that he's a dangerous idiot who suffers from sociopathy, ADD, severe dyslexia, and quite likely FAS as well?

Questions to keep one up at night .....

[tacit.livejournal.com]

Both statements, I think, miss the point.

Bush claims he doesn't hate Muslims, and in this rare instance, I agree with him. I don't think he wants this war with Iraq because he wants to eradicate Muslims from the face of the Earth; I think he wants this war because he wants to eradicate Saddam from the face of the Earth--for largely personal reasons. (I have to wonder if Bush Junior would be so adamant about taking on Saddam if Saddam hadn't tried to assassinate Bush Senior. I suspect he would not. For Dubya, it's not about politics; it's personal.)

The idea that Arabs "don't mind being brutalised, tortured and murdered by a fascist thug like Saddam" also misses th mark--not because Saddam isn't a fascist thug (he is) or because he does not burtalize, torture and murder his own people (he does). Rather, it misses the mark, because it has at its core the unspoken idea that it is America's job to confront those who brutalize, torture, and murder others.

This is not, and cannot be, America's role in the world. Not because it isn't a just role or because it isn't a noble impulse, but because it isn't possible. We simply can not take on every fascist thug in the world. Even if we were to dedicate all our resources and all our might to doing so, we could not. It's not realistic. There are too many fascist thugs and too few of us. It would consume all of our attention and all of our strength, and eventually it would consume us completely, and there would still be monsters in the world.

You simply can not battle all the monsters that exists. It can't be done. It's a fool's quest; there have been monsters since the beginning, and there will be monsters until the end.

Now, I would argue that we have no business arming, financing, training, and equipping monsters, as we have done for decades--we've done it in Iran, we've done it in Iraq, we've done it in Haiti and Columbia and everywhere else a monster who conveniently hates whatever we happen to hate. It's demeaning to the dignity of humans everywhere; it's embarrassing, for a nation that prides itself on democracy and egalitarianism; it's expensive; and ultimately it creates more problems than it solves.

But neither can we declare war on every bad person on the planet. Such a campaign must always be ultimately doomed.