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<dd><tt>The archives of South News can be found at<br>
<dd><a href="http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/">http://southmovement.alphalink.com.au/southnews/</a></tt>
<br><br>
<br>
<dd><tt>Brutality a symptom of Western view of Arabs<br><br>
<dd>By Robert Fisk<br>
<dd>The Independent<br><br>
<dd>Why are we surprised at their racism, their brutality, their sheer<br>
<dd>callousness towards Arabs? Those American soldiers in Saddam's old<br>
<dd>prison at Abu Ghraib, those young British squaddies in Basra came -<br>
<dd>as soldiers often come - from towns and cities where race hatred has<br>
<dd>a home: Tennessee and Lancashire.<br><br>
<dd>How many of "our" lads are ex-jailbirds themselves? How many support<br>
<dd>the British National Party? Muslims, Arabs, "cloth heads", "rag<br>
<dd>heads", "terrorists", "evil". You can see how the semantics break<br>
<dd>down.<br><br>
<dd>Add to that the poisonous, racial dribble of a hundred Hollywood<br>
<dd>movies that depict Arabs as dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy and<br>
<dd>violent people - and soldiers are addicted to movies - and it's not<br>
<dd>difficult to see how some British scumbag will urinate into the face<br>
<dd>of a hooded man, how some American sadist will stand a hooded Iraqi<br>
<dd>on a box with wires tied to his hands.<br><br>
<dd>The sexual sadism - the bobby-sox girl soldier who points at a man's<br>
<dd>genitals, the mock orgy in Abu Ghraib prison, the British rifle in<br>
<dd>the prisoner's mouth - might be a crazed attempt to balance all those<br>
<dd>lies about the Arab world, about the desert warrior's potency, the<br>
<dd>harem, polygamy.<br><br>
<dd>Even today, we still show the revolting Ashanti on our television<br>
<dd>stations, a feature film about the kidnapping of the wife of an<br>
<dd>English doctor by Arab slave-traders, which depicts Arabs as almost<br>
<dd>exclusively child-molesters, rapists, murderers, liars and thieves.<br>
<dd>It stars - heaven spare us - Michael Caine, Omar Sharif and Peter<br>
<dd>Ustinov and was made partly in Israel.<br><br>
<dd>Indeed, we now depict Arabs in our films as the Nazis once depicted<br>
<dd>Jews. But Arabs are fair game. Potential terrorists to a man - and a<br>
<dd>woman - they must be softened up, "prepared", humiliated, beaten,<br>
<dd>tortured. The Israelis use torture in the Russian Compound in<br>
<dd>Jerusalem. Now we torture in Saddam's old jail outside Baghdad and -<br>
<dd>for this is where British soldiers beat a young Iraqi to death last<br>
<dd>summer - in the former office of Saddam's most murderous chemical<br>
<dd>warfare fascist, the awful "Chemical" Ali.<br><br>
<dd>And the officers? Didn't the British lieutenants and captains and<br>
<dd>majors in the Queen's Lancashire Regiment know that their lads were<br>
<dd>kicking to death a young Iraqi hotel worker last summer?<br><br>
<dd>That man's fate - and the documentary evidence proving that he was<br>
<dd>murdered - was first revealed by The Independent on Sunday in<br>
<dd>January. Didn't the CIA boys at Abu Ghraib know that Ivan "Chip"<br>
<dd>Frederick and Lynddie England, two of the American soldiers in the<br>
<dd>photographs published last week, were obscenely humiliating their<br>
<dd>prisoners?<br><br>
<dd>Of course they did. The last time I saw Brigadier General Janis<br>
<dd>Karpinski, commander of the 800th Military Police Brigade in Iraq,<br>
<dd>she told me she had visited Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo and found<br>
<dd>nothing wrong with it. I should have guessed then that something had<br>
<dd>gone terribly wrong in Iraq.<br><br>
<dd>I remember how in Basra, on the eve of a visit by Tony Blair, I<br>
<dd>visited the British Army's press office in the city to ask about the<br>
<dd>death of 26-year-old Baha Mousa. The dead man's family had given me<br>
<dd>British documents proving that he had been beaten to death in<br>
<dd>custody, that the British Army had itself tried to pay off the family<br>
<dd>if they would give up any legal claim against the soldiers who so<br>
<dd>cruelly killed their son.<br><br>
<dd>I was met with yawns and a total inability to furnish information<br>
<dd>about the event. I was told to call the Ministry of Defence in<br>
<dd>London. The officer I spoke to appeared weary, even impatient about<br>
<dd>my inquiry. There was not a single word of compassion for the dead<br>
<dd>man.<br><br>
<dd>Back in September last year, General Karpinski was with a small group<br>
<dd>of journalists in Abu Ghraib - the same ghastly prison in which<br>
<dd>thousands were put to death by Saddam, the same jail in which<br>
<dd>Frederick and England and their American buddies were standing their<br>
<dd>hooded Iraqi prisoner on a box with supposed electrodes on his hands<br>
<dd>- and General Karpinski took some delight in escorting us to the old<br>
<dd>Saddam execution chamber.<br><br>
<dd>She led the way into the concrete room with its raised dais and<br>
<dd>gallows, and - in front of us all - triumphantly pulled the gallows<br>
<dd>lever so that the trap door clanged down. She urged us to read the<br>
<dd>last messages scrawled on the walls of the neighbouring death row by<br>
<dd>Iraqis awaiting Saddam's vengeance. But there was something wrong<br>
<dd>about her prison tour.<br><br>
<dd>There was no clear judicial process for the prisoners and there was<br>
<dd>no mention - until I brought it up - of the mortar attack on the<br>
<dd>American-held jail which killed six of the inmates in their tents in<br>
<dd>August, when General Karpinski was already in command of Iraq's 8,000<br>
<dd>prisoners. They had been given "counselling", she told us. "They<br>
<dd>seemed to think we had been using them as some kind of sand-bag." Abu<br>
<dd>Ghraib was then being attacked by insurgents four out of every seven<br>
<dd>nights. Now it is attacked twice every night.<br><br>
<dd>Oddly, she claimed in answer to a question of mine that there were<br>
<dd>"six prisoners claiming to be American and two claiming to be from<br>
<dd>the UK". But when General Ricardo Sanchez, the senior Iraqi officer<br>
<dd>in Iraq, later denied this, no one asked how the confusion had<br>
<dd>arisen. Was General Karpinski making it up? Or was General Sanchez<br>
<dd>not telling us the truth?<br><br>
<dd>Prisoners' names were often confused, Arabic script was<br>
<dd>mis-transliterated, men went "missing" from the files. It spoke of a<br>
<dd>whole culture in which Iraqis - especially Iraqi prisoners - were<br>
<dd>somehow not worthy of the same rights as us Westerners; which is why,<br>
<dd>I suppose, the occupying powers in Iraq always give us the statistics<br>
<dd>of Westerners' deaths but care not the slightest to discover the<br>
<dd>statistics of the deaths of Iraqis, the very people they are mandated<br>
<dd>to protect and care for.<br><br>
<dd>A few weeks ago, I was chatting to a young American soldier off<br>
<dd>Saadoun Street in the centre of Baghdad. He was giving sweets to<br>
<dd>street kids and mimicking the Arabic for "thank you": sukran. Did he<br>
<dd>know Arabic, I innocently asked. He grinned at me. "I know how to<br>
<dd>shout at them," he said.<br><br>
<dd>And there you have it.<br><br>
<dd>We are all victims of our high-flown morality. "They" - the Arabs,<br>
<dd>Muslims, "cloth heads", "rag heads", "terrorists" - are of a lesser<br>
<dd>breed, of lower moral standards. They are people to be shouted at.<br>
<dd>They have to be "liberated" and given "democracy".<br><br>
<dd>But we little band of brothers, we dress ourselves up in the uniforms<br>
<dd>of righteousness. We are marines or military police or a Queen's<br>
<dd>regiment and we are on the side of good. "They" are on the side of<br>
<dd>"evil". So we can do no wrong.<br><br>
<dd>Or so it appeared until those shameful pictures last week tore apart<br>
<dd>the whole bandwagon and proved that race hatred and prejudice is an<br>
<dd>old historical inheritance of ours. We used to call Saddam the Hitler<br>
<dd>of Iraq.<br><br>
<dd>But wasn't Hitler one of "us", a Westerner, a citizen of "our"<br>
<dd>culture? If he could kill six million Jews, which he did, why should<br>
<dd>we be surprised that "we" can treat Iraqis like animals? Last week<br>
<dd>came the photographs to prove we can. - The Independent<br><br>
</tt>
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