Stoopid Stuff

Maggies Drawers

As we watch our nation continue to make stupid, counterproductive decisions in it's self-described "war on terror", every now and then we get a glimpse of the reason there are so many people in the world who hate us enough to die trying to force us to just leave them in peace. Certainly, America's activities in the rest of the world, even in those rare occasions when her motives were pure, have consistently been arrogant, ham-handed and culturally insensitive, and have very often resulted in alienating and angering the very people they were intended to help.

It's a tragedy how poorly the US government has targeted the actual aggressor, and in many cases have actually knowingly responded to external threats by attacking the wrong target. The greatest example of this is Iraq. How is it that, once attacked by a Sunni Egyptian/Saudi organization, the greatest minds in America retaliated by invading Secular Iraq? Clearly, these were not actually our greatest minds.

So now we have Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, visiting New York. The frantic, hateful response to his expressed desire to go to Ground Zero was far beyond embarrassing, to the point of being cringe inducing. And yet, from every corner, all walks of American punditry, all you hear is voices raised in concert, decrying the very thought of such a loathsome possibility.

Why would this be? The Iranians did not attack us. And whatever hostility they may show toward America, perhaps at least some of it might be explained by the fact that our government is having an debate, right out there in the open, about attacking them without provocation. If another nation, say Brazil, had a fleet of warships off our coast, was occupying Mexico and was openly discussing whether it would be a further excellent idea to bomb our nuclear reactors, I wonder if we might feel something less than brotherly love for them?

But the hue and cry raised against this "outrageous" visit to that sacred ground in lower Manhattan is representative of so much that has gone wrong with American society. Apparently we have become so fragile, we cannot allow a head of state to visit ground zero, taking from it whatever he might, saying what he might. It is especially odd that we still allow the Ku Klux Klan to march, we allow white supremacists to sell records full of hate, but we do not have the cultural fortitude to allow a visit by the Iranian Head of State, and perhaps have our feelings hurt by what he might say. And it saddens me that our venal, criminal government has been so effective in demonizing a people who are not, or at least should not be, our enemies.

The only people who should not be allowed to visit that sensitive memorial to our losses on that day would be bin Ladin and Zawahiri. And for that matter, were they in custody in America, I would like to take them in irons down to that site and rub their nose in the death of innocents. I believe that in spite of whatever bravado they might show, what humanity they have would recoil from the thought of the horror they caused on that summer morning.

It isn't just Americans that harbor such generalized, ignorant racism. Certainly, in places as widely separated as Germany, France and China, the people hate the "others", people who are not like them. But somehow it is Americans who have perfected a kind of insouciant racial hatred, a sense that they can't be bothered to learn the difference between Persians and Arabs, Japanese and Chinese, Mexicans and Salvadorans. It is sad that we live in a nation that can make the calculation "Muslims attacked us, Iranians are Muslims, therefore Iranians are our enemies". Or even more simplistically, "Muslims attacked us, we need to kill all Muslims". This racist, militarist mindset will ultimately bring America down, because you cannot sustain eternal warfare against half the world's population, but to so many Americans, purity of hatred may not be watered down by pragmatic concerns over morality, economics or the judgment of history.

posted by mikey @ 2:58 PM