Moreover, a deep gulf separates Arab culture and civilization on the one hand from the United States on the other, and in the absence of any collective Arab information and cultural policy, the notion of an Arab people with traditions, cultures and identities of their own is simply inadmissible in the United States. Arabs are dehumanized, they are seen as violent irrational terrorists always on the lookout for murder and bombing outrages. Beyond that there is no feeling at all, for instance, for the dreadful suffering of the Iraqi people, whose identity and existence have simply been lost sight of in the present situation. In some way also, anything positive about the Arabs is seen in the United States as a threat to Israel. In this respect pro-Israeli American Jews, traditional Orientalists, and military hawks have played a devastating role.
Moral opprobrium is heaped on Arab states as it is on no others.
Turkey, for example, has been conducting a campaign against the Kurds for several years, yet nothing is heard about this in the United States. Sanctions against them are far harsher than against any other countries in the history of U.S. foreign policy. In the case of Iraq a number of further extenuations make the United States even more repressive. Burning in the collective American unconscious is a puritanical zeal decreeing the sternest possible attitude towards anyone deemed to be an unregenerate sinner. This clearly guided American policy towards the native American Indians, who were first demonized, then portrayed as wasteful savages, then exterminated, their tiny remnant confined to reservations and concentration camps.