The American Dilemma: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
The United States is teaching the world a lesson: Never make
an alliance of any kind with the Americans. They will turn on you. The now-dead
Saddam Hussein discovered this elementary truth, too late. The Shi'ites of Iraq
are about to be schooled, as well.
The Americans have declared war on Shi'ite militias,
specifically, Muqtada al-Sadr's forces, concentrated in Baghdad.
That's what George Bush's current military "surge" is, supposedly, all about.
Al-Sadr's men are now the bad guys, who are to be disarmed or killed by the
Iraqi army - also, comprised mostly of Shi'ites. Remember: the Shi'ites, as a
religious group, were supposed to be the good guys when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
Sunnis bad - Shi'ites good. But then we should remember further back, to the
Iranian seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Jimmy Carter was president then.
That's when the Americans discovered there was such a thing as a
Shi'ite, having previously believed that all Muslims were alike, sharing some
common affinity for hashish. The U.S. media went Shi'ite crazy, warning that
the Shi'ites were the most dangerous Muslims imaginable, and must be stopped
from infecting the more "moderate" Muslim world with their weird
ant-Americanism.
"The Americans
keep surging into madness."
All this worked very well for Saddam Hussein, who got full
American backing for his war against Iran - that Shi'ite country. The more
Shi'ites Hussein killed, the better the Americans liked him. Of course,
Saddam's Iraqi army was also comprised mainly of Shi'ites, who are a majority
of Iraqis as well as Iranians.
Once the Iran-Iraq war was stalemated, the Americans put the
bad guy hat on Saddam's head, and declared Iraqi Shi'ites to be the good guys.
Of course, Iranian Shi'ites right next door remained bad guys, because they
lived in the Axis of Evil - a bad neighborhood.
The Iraqi Sunnis were now the worst Muslims in the world, so
dangerous they must be suppressed with hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S.
firepower. But it turned out that some of the Sunni's adversaries among the
Shi'ites, notably Muqtada al-Sadr, also
didn't want the Americans around. So, the bad Shi'ites have to be eliminated,
along with the bad Sunnis - maybe with some help from the Kurds, who are still
thought of as good guys by the Americans, but are definitely bad news for
America's allies, the Turks, who might just stage their own invasion of
northern Iraq, to get rid of the bad Kurds.
Of course, the Americans don't know or understand any of
these people: Sunnis, Shi'ites, Kurds, Turks, Arabs, Persians, or any other
people of the region. Nevertheless, they keep surging into madness. That's why
they will lose - but they will never, ever figure out why. For Black Agenda
Radio, I'm Glen Ford.
TO LISTEN to this Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford, click on the mic at left.
TO COMMENT ON THIS ITEM, click here to visit its page on the Black Agenda Blog.
In this week’s segment, we discuss the increase in racist mob violence against Black and brown immigrants in Britain. First, we have a discussion of housing policy in New York, and why low and…
Many apartments in New York City are protected by rent regulations which determine how much rent can be charged and how much increases, if any, can be.
On June 8th, a knife attack in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the UK, was seen on video. The assailant was an African asylum seeker, and the victim was a local white resident. In the following days,…
The Black Alliance for Peace and other organizations have called for a boycott of the 2026 World Cup being held in the United States. Before any matches were played, the U.S. banned players, fans,…
It is true that the New York Knicks' journey to a championship brought disparate communities together, but gentrification remains the norm in the city that is the capital of capital. Black people are…
