20.10.03
On "Arabophobia"
The Guardian runs an article on what the writer calls "Arabophobia", but what you and I would call "racism".
Some excerpts:
The Guardian runs an article on what the writer calls "Arabophobia", but what you and I would call "racism".
Some excerpts:
"I read TE Lawrence before I came here," a British officer was quoted in the Mail on Sunday. "A century ago he recognised dishonesty was inherent in Arab society. Today is the same. They do nothing for love and nothing at all if they can help it."I never have trusted that Tony Blair, with those beady little eyes and that pasty white skin of his.
The attitudes of the officer, shocking though they are, only mirror those of the people who sent him to war. Scratch a neo-con and you find an Arabophobe. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security adviser, has berated Arabs on the "need to change their behaviour". Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defence for policy, has talked of Israel's "moral superiority" over its neighbours. And the veteran foreign policy hawk Richard Perle, when asked about the fears Egyptians had of the Iraq war provoking an Arab backlash, replied: "Egyptians can barely govern their own country, we don't need advice on how to govern ours."
...
The British public had to decide who was telling the truth: Tony Blair, with his claim that Iraq posed "a very real threat to Britain", or Saddam, with his repeated denials. The neo-cons knew that their case for war was painfully thin. But they banked on Arabophobia - stoked by their allies in the media - to do the rest: Tony, the white, middle-class churchgoer, or Saddam, the swarthy Arab? For many, there was no contest. Of course, Saddam couldn't possibly be telling the truth about not possessing WMD. He's an Arab. Arabs lie. We know this from TE Lawrence.
