AN OPEN LETTER TO BOB HERBERT

(New York Times)

 

I always enjoy your articles, Bob, and usually agree with what you say.  With your article "Shooting to Kill" I agreed with what you wrote, but didn't enjoy the article.

You complained that “Now, in the dawn of the 21st century, when this nation above all others is supposed to be a model of progress and fairness and justice and due process, the U.S. military was to be given the high sign to start shooting Iraqis like dogs in the street.”

"Something's amiss," I thought.  Our servicemen and women look at Iraqis, not as dogs as you suggested, but as vermin, in exactly the same way that the cop who shot your friend Billy Furr looked at his target.

About the shoot-the-looter plan, you wrote, “ The president, the secretary of defence, military authorities and anyone else in a position of command should know that a policy of shooting looters on sight is wrong, and if it was being considered it needed to be stopped in its tracks.”

The reality of the situation, Bob, is that Arabs, in most Americans’ minds, are as expendable as most blacks have been in America.  Civil rights?  Ha!  Joke!  America's attitude toward blacks has merely evolved from "kill the niggers" to "lock ‘em up".  For what?  Smoking a couple of joints?  Stealing a hubcap? 

 

"Them thar criminal types are better off in jail than on the streets.  Either way we gotta support the lazy bastards."  If you haven't heard that running Klan song, Bob, you've been out of touch with reality.  It’s been marching for generations, and nobody’s stopped it in its tracks.

 

Back to gunning down Iraqis.  Why would the same bigoted mentality that reigned over blacks in the worst of America’s past accord any Arab, Iraqi looter or otherwise, any better treatment?  Haven’t you realized that Arabs are as expendable as blacks in America have been?  Have you ever wondered why?

 

Jack Shaheen wrote two books, well worth reading, Bob: The TV Arab and Reel Bad Arabs.  Both deserve a good read.  "Hollywood," Shaheen wrote, "has projected Arabs as villains in more than 900 feature films."  This has been going on since the cameras started cranking.

 

“Some viewers applaud Marines gunning down Arabs in war dramas,” observed Shaheen, “not necessarily because of cultural insensitivity, but because for more than 100 years Hollywood has singled out the Arab as our enemy.”

 

Elsewhere, he notes, "One constant factor dominates all the films: Derogatory stereotypes are omnipresent, reaching youngsters, baby boomers, and older folk."  Does that sound familiar, Bob?  Stereotypes?  Remember Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man?

 

Have you looked recently at the attitudes of Americans toward Arabs generally, Bob?  Check the polls.  Check the voting records of the Congress on issues of Palestine and Israel.  Look at how easy it was to get American agreement on the invasion and occupation of Iraq on presentation of the flimsiest non-evidence.

 

Eighty-seven percent of Americans of military service age didn't even know where Iraq was according to the National Geographic.  Yet those same Americans have been brainwashed to hate Arabs. 

 

Why, hell, Bob, the status of Arabs is lower than "niggers" in the modern American mind.  Why bother about killing a few Arab looters during the anarchy and chaos America created?

 

I'm afraid we need more than a call for moderation and for keeping the use of deadly force as a last resort.  Americans need to do more than take "a long hard look in the mirror."  They need to be severely rapped on the knuckles for their interminable habit of scapegoating.

 

Paul Balles