I couldn’t disagree more. A question was NOT asked in seriousness. An assertion was made with not one speck of evidence to back it up. That is spreading ignorance, not fighting it.
As much as i agree with the sentiment of the OP, you are right.
But it is hard to quantify racism. Especially when, in my view, it is not overt, but a strong subconcious undercurrent in mainstream America. I will try to support the OP’s basic premise with anecdotes, examples, and evidence, but i don’t know if it can adequately express the overwhelming sense of anti-Muslim sentiment i see around me every day.
“We were attacked on 9-11” is a phrase used to justify the Iraq war, not only by war supporters, but by George W Bush himself. This phrase has many meanings, but one that i think a lot of Americans believe is “Arabs attacked us, now we’re attacking Arabs.” There is a country song called Have You Forgotten? by Daryl Whorey which came out at the beginning of the Iraq war which expresses this sentiment.
Another country song, Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue doesn’t express any racism, but it does make clear the bloodlust that many Americans feel.
I have heard many people, both in my personal life and on talk radio, say that we should (or we should have) nuked Baghdad. This is not a war strategy, this is pure hatred. This is fucking genocide. I know we did it in WWII, but this is a much different situation.
A very popular local talk radio host used to deliver this mantra every day: “Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim.” This was not an off the cuff remark, he repeated it four or five times a day for about a year. I must have literally heard him say it at least 100 times.
This same talk radio host said that we should have this strategy: America should proclaim that in the event of a terrorist strike in the US, we will nuke Mecca (and follow through with the threat). This is probably the best piece of evidence i can think of for the OP. (Scarily enough, OBL proclaimed this exact same basic strategy on a videotape about a week later … i think he listens to the show.)
Some people refer to entire groups of Arabs as terrorists. For example: all the prisoners at Gautanamo Bay, all the prisoners at Abu Grab-me, all the people fighting against America in Iraq (and Afghanistan), both before and after “Mission Accomplished”. It is true that some of them are terrorrists, but many of them are not.
Others in this thread have pointed out random assaults on Arabs (and Indians) after the 9-11 attacks.
In January, 2002 Jay Leno came out with this joke in his monologue (it’s probably not an exact quote and if you know Jay’s style, you’ll understand why i used parenthesis in the quote): “There was an earthquake in Afghanistan the other day (so i guess God really is on our side) [audience applauds], [lame joke ending].” I don’t think the earthquake killed anyone, but the audience didn’t know that. How can people applaud at death and destruction? This event hit me like a sledgehammer, and seriously changed my view of the human race. People everywhere, even Americans, are full of hate and fucking evil. Heaven is unpopulated. I try not to be cynical, but it’s hard whenever i think of this event.
On a different talk radio show, a caller made the following comment (paraphrased): “When i get on a plane, if i see anyone who looks like an Arab, i’ll walk right up to them, point at them, and say ‘I’ll be watching you.’” Make your own judgement on this one, but if i were Arabic, and someone did this to me, i would want to punch him right in the fucking face.
To me, all of these pieces combined support the OP, which i believe to be hyperbolic. There is a strong undercurrent of anti-Arab sentiment in the U.S. and this is one of the reasons why many (not all) war supporters support Bush’s war.
Sorry about some of the expletives used, but some of these events get me really worked up.
John Mace is spot on. This isn’t a debate yet. It is up to the OP to make his/her case first.
But, I wonder: when I see people cheering on TV for Bush-Cheney, and when asked by the smiling reporter why, a common theme seems to be: “We need to defend our country”. One guy I saw today in Hardball was screaming “We need to defend our country, man”… looked eerily reminiscent of a face that would have screamed in a white supremacist meeting. I know I might be reading too much into this, but the anger in the man’s voice was scary. It tasted hateful. So, yes, I am willing to believe that some people in this country are ignorant and bigoted and see the war in Iraq in ways which mainstream America can’t fathom.
It appears that Jomo has posted a drive-by OP.
It’s probably not too surprising that he hasn’t returned even once to add to this thread. Of course there are some people who want to lash back at Arabs and/or Muslims in revenge for the 9/11 attacks. But there is simply no way to quantify what % of the populace feels that way. There is no way to determine if this is a minority view or a majority view or somewhere inbetween. I’d even be suspicious of any polls taken on the subject as people are notoriously hesitant to admit to racist leanings, or other negative viewpoints, when responding to polls.
That’s the thing about it, no one can any longer openly admit in a public forum to holding racist beliefs (except on call-in shows) and be accepted. Trent Lott could probably tell you more about that. So if you can’t quantify it, does that mean it can’t be talked about at all?
“Whereof one cannot quantify, thereof one must remain silent.” (Ludwig Dopenstein, Tractactus Dopo-Philosophicus)
Carp about my poor debating form, but what about the racism in America lending support to this war? Enough of us have observed it going on around us to be concerned about it. Will anyone claim that there’s no racism in America, or that it doesn’t influence the way people vote?
Nobody’s going to say there’s no racism in the US. And nobody’s going to say that it doesn’t influence the way that some people vote.
But you are implying that it’s a majority of the populace, and that’s something you’re going to have to prove.
Talk about it all you want. But if you want to debate it you have to have facts, not opinions and anecdotes.
Strawman. Can you point to anyone who has said there is no racism in the US? Support for the war has varried from something like 75% when it started down to about 50% now. Has 25% of the populace lost their racist views in the last year and half?
You still have offered no facts to support your thesis. That’s not carping about debating “form”, it’s carping about the lack of substance in your debate.
Think about it, Jomo. The fact that it’s not acceptable to be openly racist is strong evidence that most people are not racist.
It’s nothing of the kind!
Jomo, you’re right. There is a large anti-Arab sentiment in this country. Partly because most of the news we hear about Arabs/Muslims is negative and most terrorists tend to come from these countries. I don’t blame the uninformed who believe this without the desire to be informed and sympathetic to the rest of the Arab world. Even if you have 5 percent of the population who believe this and vote according to this belief, you have enough to swing the vote.
The problem is that you will never see an official poll asking this question. Too Politically-incorrect.
Most people supported World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam when they started also. Instead of saying that popular support for the Iraq war is due to racism, I think it’s more likely that it’s due to a few factors:
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A general patriotism and the idea that “politics stops at the water’s edge”…that we should support the country’s foreign policy and our military.
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Trust in the presidency and in American institutions…the administration told us the war was neccesary and that Iraq was dangerous, and so most people gave them the benefit of the doubt.
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Concern for the wellbeing of the troops. They’re over there, and people don’t want to see them get hurt or killed. That means you want to see them win. Along with that, you want to see the Iraqis fighting us be punished for fighting, hurting, and killing US troops.
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(going along with 2) Trust in America in general…we’re the good guys, everybody knows that, so if they’re fighting us, they have to be the bad guys
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Belief that the Iraq war is moral…that Sadaam was evil, that Iraq was dangerous, that he needed to be taken out, and that we were finishing the job we should have done in the First Gulf War.
Could you provide a little more depth?
There are more Muslims in America than Presbyterians. It’s really the Presbies that we’re after. We figured they were probably hiding in Afghanistan and Iraq.
As mentioned there are doubtless anti-muslim racists in America. Those types also tend to be anti-Jew, anti-black, anti-prettymucheveryonenotjustliketheyare.
That FAR and away is not the overall tone in American society.
The anecdotal evidence by MrFantsyPants earlier describing attacks on Muslims if anything proves the OP is largely misguided. That so few muslims got attacked in a country this size, and likely by the “we hate everyone not white and christian” crowd anyway, speaks that there is not some wave of mass racism against sweeping the country. Yes, one attack is one attack too many but looking at the broader picture of the country it hardly makes for a conspiracy against muslims. There are something like 6 million muslims in the US…plenty of targets were there masses of anti-muslims seeking to “get them”.
I think most (not all) Americans are smart enough to know our issue is not with Muslims. Our issue is with fanatics whose stated goal is our annihilation. We have issue with governments who encourage and sponsor those people. That most of the groups after us happen to be muslim is just how it is. If it was the militant arm fo the Salvation Army after us I doubt we would be doing anything different.
We went through WWII yet have no issue with the Japanese or Germans. Most recognize that our issue was with those country’s governments and once they were out of the way we could all go back to being friends again (and have). If anything, given the treatment of Japanese Americans in WWII, I think the US (population) tends to be even a little more careful of not going there again as it definitely was not one of our finer moments in history.
I agree that the level of underground racism that might be driving a “let’s kill all the towelheads” motive behind the war is impossible to quantify. I also agree with those who say that it is neither negligible, nor an overwhelming majority.
For example, I’ll bet any amount of money that if you could look into the heart of hearts of my <close relative I won’t otherwise specify>, he feels this way, and so is voting for Bush to continue prosecuting the war, but I’d bet a similar amount of money that you’d never, ever get him to admit it. He’s operating from a combination of fear and blind ignorance, which is always a scary combination, but he himself would deny that’s what he’s doing.
It’s an interesting question. I’m just not sure how productive it would be to debate it in anything other than the abstract, since it’ll be impossible to attach anything empirical to it.
I never said or implied that a “majority” of Americans are currently in favor of this war, so don’t put those words in my mouth. I’m aware that public opinion in favor of it has dropped to 50% or less. I know that public opinion in just about any war is more favorable in the beginning, and drops over time. (Even Civilization III has “war weariness” programmed into it that way. If your civ is attacked, you get more public opinion in your favor immediately afterward, but if you have units in enemy territory taking lethal hits, war weariness is sure to hit. By comparison, many Americans favored the war in March 2003 because they’d been hoddwinked into believing that Iraq was some kind of “threat” to America.)
What bothers me is how, after the truth has come out, plain as day, that Iraq was never a threat to America, was never colluding with anti-American terrorism, why would even 50% of Americans continue to approve of this godawful FUBAR?
Agreed. we can’t quantify how much this is driven by indiscriminate vendetta against all Arabs or all Muslims. But does that mean we can’t discuss it? The indications that I and others have observed that such an ugly sentiment seethes under the surface are disturbing. It blinds citizens from making rational decisions about public policy. I didn’t mean to imply that a “majority” of Americans think this way, but still any amount of blind vendetta driving the public is too much. How else can you account for a desire to invade Iraq even though Iraq had nothing to do with any attacks on America?
I meant “hoodwinked.” Excuse the typo.
The premise is that “so many Americans support Bush’s war”. Isn’t 50% rather a low number? Has there ever been a war fought and won overseas that was as unpopular as this one within the year - in any country?
Part of the problem is that we don’t know what you are theorizing. Of course there are racist Americans. But if you think it’s a major cause of support for the war, give us some facts.
That last sentence contradicts the one before it. If you don’t think the majority is racist, then you think there IS another way to account for the desire to invade Iraq. You seem to want to have it both ways-- agree that most Americans aren’t racist, but still use that as the reason for the invasion.
I think you’re seriously overestimating the number of war supporters who realize that Iraq didn’t collaborate with al-Qaeda. In the past month, I’ve still run into people who are under the impression that Iraq helped plan 9-11. I kid you not.
I just had to prove to a girl in my office via numerous cites that Iraq didn’t have WMDs, since she was insistent that they did, even at the time of the invasion. This was this week.