From: foster@mtechca.uucp (self.attribute:=major_arcana[0].name)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: American attitudes toward the Gulf War
Date: 13 Apr 92 00:18:52 GMT
Organization: MAINTECH, A division of Volt Delta Resources, Inc. Orange, CA

In article <2467@creatures.cs.vt.edu>, Ahmed Bouzid writes:

> The Gulf War afforded the US a golden opportunity ... to prove that 
> it is the present untouchable master of the world. And such are the 
> ways of the mighty: didn't the United States do the exact same thing 
> when it dropped the Atomic Bombs over a Japan that, as it has turned 
> out after all, was on its way to capitulating anyway? The Atomic Bombs, 
> history has now shown, were not necessary to stop the war. But they 
> were necessary for another thing: to show the other nuclear power in 
> the world that the US not only had the bombs, but that it was ready to 
> use them.   

The ~other~ nuclear power? Which one was that? The only other powers of
any kind were Britain, Germany, France, USSR, Japan, China. These seven
comprise the first five members of what would become the UN Security 
Council (only big powers invited) and the two main Axis powers. On 8 
August 1945: 

     Germany had already been occupied and rendered powerless;

     France was liberated but in no condition to develop A-arms
          and was a US ally anyway;

     Britain was also in no condition to develop A-arms and was a
          US ally anyway;

     The USSR was nowhere near developing anything useful along
          these lines, rather they were busy feeding and
          rebuilding themselves, and occupying Estern Europe;

     China was busy fighting Japanese occupation and was too poor
          to care about A-arms; and

     Japan "was on its way to capitulating anyway".

So whom was the US trying to impress?

[I have edited the following passage slightly. Forgive me if I distort
Mr Bouzid's message; it is not intentional. - JF]

> The callousness of the US in the Gulf War is a fact. Little concern was
> shown for civilian life: the US was gripped in a fit of madness, it 
> became blind--and your people behaved even more despicably than your 
> military: you sat and watched, without feeling, absorbing what you were 
> fed, incapable of imagining (since no pictures were given you--and without 
> pictures, how on earth can anything be real!) for yourself the horror 
> your own money was inflicting on innocents--read that carefully, INNOCENTS. 
> Like fools, all of you Americans repeated--"well, we don't like Wars, but
> we will stand behind our troops, lest we again err and call those who 
> kill assassins and those who rob thieves." What a fine display of the 
> principles that you hold sacred to you heart was your conduct during the 
> War. The American people deserve nothing--absolutely nothing-- but contempt 
> for how they behaved during the War. While people were being massacred, 
> what did your fine nation do? You waved your yellow ribbons.

No one waved yellow ribbons. They waved flags. Yellow ribbons were tied
around trees, radio antennae, telephone poles and other upright objects. 

This whole passage is odd. Ahmed Bouzid write excellent idiomatic American 
English, by which I assume he lived in the United States for several years, 
and I suspect he still does. Mr Bouzid's intelligence is obvious, but I 
wonder about his observational skills. I never heard anyone, not even the 
most rabid hawk, say what Mr Bouzid claims "all of you Americans repeated". 
I am not even sure what the sentence means, and I know for certain that very
few Americans, especially of the uneducated war-supporting classes, use the 
words "err" "lest" and "assassins" in their normal discourse. Could Mr 
Bouzid please give a source for this quote?

There were many Americans, not a majority but at least enough to make Mr 
Bouzid's statement "all you Americans" an error, who did not support the
shooting war. Right-wing columnist Patrick Buchanan, of all people, opposed 
it. He is not noted for his tender feeling to non-whites and foreigners,
both of which groups include Arabs. Read any issue of _The Nation_ or
_Mother Jones_ during this period and you will find even more opposition. 
Listen to Bette Midler's "In the Distance," which was a major crossover 
radio hit in late 1990-early 1991.

The real reason most flag-wavers and yellow-ribbon tyers did so was so that
the troops would not feel unloved and suffer the unpleasant problems that 
still plague Viet Nam veterans. We sent the soldiers gift boxes, letters, 
special foods and other goodies mostly to expiate our national guilt at 
having ill-used our troops in Viet Nam. We were not going to lose one more 
soldier to anomie, apathy or despair, regardless of the justice of the war
the soldiers were fighting.

One may argue that the Viet Nam War was injust and the Gulf War as well. 
One would probably be right. But anyone who thinks that most Americans 
~ever~ take into consideration the poor and suffering of other nations
is remarkably ill-informed about the US. The majority attitude is even 
worse if the other nation in question has committed crimes, such as being 
Communist (Viet Nam) or Muslim (Iran) or invading our turf (Iraq). :-)

One refreshing thing about Mr Bouzid's article is that he never once
suggested that the American people are Israeli stooges or Zionist puppets
or crypto-Jews. It's good to know that we have our own faults and that we 
can treat Arabs badly on our own terms, and that at least one Arab can
call us to our own task and not Israel's. I thank Mr Bouzid for that.

Jeff Foster