| August
22 , 2006
When in Doubt, Go Racist
Bush's Failing War
on Terror
By SHARON
SMITH
British
authorities grabbed media headlines on August 10, claiming to have
foiled Muslim terrorists caught in the act of harboring suspicious
liquids in their homes--sending U.S. and British airports into an
anti-terrorist frenzy. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
was simultaneously zeroing in on yet another alleged conspiracy:
men of “Middle-Eastern descent” who were scooping up
cell phones at Wal-Mart stores in Ohio and Michigan.
On August 8, two such suspects, Ali Houssaiky and Osama Sabhi Abulhassan
of Dearborn, Michigan, were arrested in Marietta, Ohio after a traffic
stop—when arresting officers discovered 12 cell phones, $11,000
in cash, and “airplane passenger lists” in their car.
The
men told authorities that the passenger lists were left by a relative
who worked at an airport and that they were buying the cell phones
in order to resell them at a profit. They were nevertheless charged
with supporting terrorism.
Within
days of the Ohio arrests, three Palestinian men from Texas--Adham
Othman, Louai Othman and Awad Muhareb--were arrested in Caro, Michigan
with 1,000 cell phones in their possession, along with digital photos
of the Mackinac Bridge (the five-mile bridge linking Michigan’s
upper and lower peninsulas). They were charged with gathering material
related to terrorism (the cell phones) and surveillance of a vulnerable
target (the Mackinac Bridge).
These
men said they were selling cell phones for a profit and merely took
photos of the bridge as visiting tourists. But CBS News informed
viewers that the “Texas Trio” had been charged with
“collecting or providing materials for terrorist acts and
surveillance of a vulnerable target for terrorist purposes.”
Within
days however, the government’s allegations quietly unraveled,
when all of the accused were proven to have told the truth and all
terrorism charges were dropped.
But the damage had been done. As Arsalan Iftikhar, legal director
for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, noted, "They
don't stop white guys with a bunch of cell phones. If they did that,
there would be an uproar. But do it to Arab-Americans and nobody
says anything."
Ratcheting
up racism
President
George W. Bush denied in the months after the September 11 terrorist
attacks (having declared “either you are with us or against
us”) that the world’s Muslims were an enemy of the U.S.
But he has seemed less concerned with this matter as the U.S.’
Middle East war aims continue to backfire, from Iraq to Lebanon.
Indeed, since Israel’s debacle in Lebanon, Bush has amplified
an anti-Muslim message—using the term “Islamic fascism”
to describe America’s enemies (including both the Hezbollah
resistance in Lebanon and that of Hamas in Palestine) on at least
two occasions in recent weeks.
Bush
argued on August 14 that Lebanon is a front in the “global
war on terrorism.” He continued, “Hezbollah terrorists
kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, Hamas kidnapped another Israeli
soldier … We must not allow terrorists to prevent elected
leaders from working together toward a comprehensive peace agreement
in the Middle East.”
Yet Israel, ostensibly the only “democracy” in the Middle
East, is now holding captive five Cabinet ministers of the Palestinian
Authority and has kidnapped more than two dozen elected members
of the Palestinian parliament in recent months.
By
invoking the war on terror abroad, Bush has emboldened the cause
of racial profiling against Arabs and Muslims at home. Fox News’
Bill O'Reilly asserted just days ago, “all young Muslims should
be subjected to more scrutiny than Granny [at U.S. airports]. And
we should blend some Israeli screening procedures with our own.”
A
significant minority of Americans apparently agree. A USA TODAY/Gallup
Poll conducted in late July showed nearly 40 percent of Americans
said they harbor prejudice against Muslims. The same percentage
supported requiring all Muslims, including U.S. citizens, to carry
a special ID "as a means of preventing terrorist attacks in
the United States." Nearly one in four—22 percent—said
they wouldn't want Muslims as their neighbors.
An
early-August poll by Cornell University found that 44 percent of
Americans support limiting Muslim-Americans' civil liberties, while
27 percent supported requiring all Muslim-Americans to register
with the federal government and 22 percent favored racial profiling
of Arabs and Muslims for security purposes.
To
be sure, recent U.S. polls tail trends in Israel, where an October
2005 Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies' opinion poll showed 46
percent of Israel's Jewish population favor “transferring”
(i.e., ethnically cleansing) Palestinians from Israel’s occupied
territories, and 31 percent supported transferring Israeli Arabs
out of Israel’s borders. But the parallels are clear.
Resistance
is not terrorism
Al
Qaeda is a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is not. It is a genuine
resistance movement against Israeli invasion and occupation.
Nor
does Hezbollah seek to establish an Iranian-style Islamic state
in Lebanon. In an interview with Adam Shatz, writing for the New
York Review of Books in 2004, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
clearly stated his views:
"We
believe the requirement for an Islamic state is to have an overwhelming
popular desire, and we're not talking about fifty percent plus
one, but a large majority. And this is not available in Lebanon
and probably never will be.”
It
is high time to make a clear distinction between legitimate resistance
operations—movements of self-defense against imperialist invasion—and
“terrorism”.
For
good reason, 87 percent of the Lebanese population supported Hezbollah
during the recent war, while an early-August poll by Near East Consulting,
based in Ramallah, showed that 97 percent of Palestinians also supported
Hezbollah—including 95 percent of Christian Arabs in the Palestinian
Authority.
With
civil war looming in Iraq, the media has paid much less attention
to the Iraqi resistance—but the number of daily strikes against
American and Iraqi troops has doubled since January. "The insurgency
has gotten worse by almost all measures, with insurgent attacks
at historically high levels," commented a senior Defense Department
official. "The insurgency has more public support and is demonstrably
more capable in numbers of people active and in its ability to direct
violence than at any point in time," he added.
According
to the New York Times, “An analysis of the 1,666 bombs that
exploded in July shows that 70 percent were directed against the
American-led military force, according to a spokesman for the military
command in Baghdad. Twenty percent struck Iraqi security forces,
up from 9 percent in 2005. And 10 percent of the blasts struck civilians,
twice the rate from last year.”
The
U.S.’ military strategy in the Middle East may be in tatters,
but its culture war against Islam is advancing spectacularly—on
the domestic front, if nowhere else.
Sharon
Smith is the author of Subterranean
Fire. She can be reached at: sharon@internationalsocialist.org
.
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