From: aldabbag@sal-sun107.usc.edu (Maad Al-Dabbagh)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.arabic
Subject: Re: American attitudes toward the Gulf War
Date: 14 Apr 1992 15:06:57 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
Reply-To: aldabbag@sal-sun107.usc.edu (Maad Al-Dabbagh)
NNTP-Posting-Host: sal-sun107.usc.edu


In article <1992Apr12.161852.77@mtechca.uucp>, foster@mtechca.uucp (self.attribute:=major_arcana[0].name) writes:
|> 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). :-)
                           ^^^^^^^
Are you implying that being a muslim or having some different ideology is a
crime ?!

where is the freedom of choice then ?!

|> 
|> 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