If the Anglo-American war against Iraq was not a racial war, then what was it? Check out the way the media (including our own version of that shameful crew) choose to describe it.
There was jubilation at the presumed death of ‘Chemical Ali” in southern Iraq. ‘Chemical Ali” was reportedly blown to bits in a private house in Basra in a surgical, airborne strike by an American aircraft. Blah, blah, blah, he’s gone. But no chemical weapons were presumably found in and around his private pozzie. What do we make of this?
This was followed by jubilation at the disappearance of what the media chose to call ‘Comical Ali” in Baghdad itself.
‘Ali” had become, or had re-become, a contemptuous term of abuse for Arabs who didn’t subscribe to the alliance’s programme in general. So ‘Comical Ali” he became, even though his name was far from ‘Ali”. His name, in fact, is, or was, Mohammed Saheed al-Sahaf.
He is, or was, the minister of information in the previously sovereign state of Iraq. And, in the face of an invincible assault from the imperialist West, he was, for many weeks, and for many in the world, an extraordinarily brave man. He stood up, in the face of cowardly Sherman or Lincoln or Al Capone or Rockefeller tanks or whatever they were called (take your pick) backed by an invincible force that had nothing to stand up against it, and spoke defiance in the face of an enemy that had no credible answer to offer him — except force.
Who knows where Al-Sahaf is now? I only hope that he is safe. No world power has yet proved that he is a war criminal. But the Anglo-American alliance is currently moving heaven and earth to prove that he is. And of course, both heaven and earth are now theirs to do with as they wish.
The Anglo-American alliance is sparing nothing to prove that the ‘Alis” of this world are their enemy. From ‘Chemical Ali” to ‘Comical Ali”. ‘There is no ‘Ali’ who can actually be a credible and responsible part of our universe,” is what the press is going out of its way to amplify so loyally.
Oh, I suppose there is one exception. There is that small child, probably known as ‘Pathetical Ali”, who has made a series of appearances in the Sunday smilies, arms blown away by alliance bombing raids, heroically evacuated to redemption in civilised hospitals run by the Americans in neighbouring Kuwait. This ‘Ali” has no immediate family left, because he is the only survivor. (The rest of his family was blown away by American aircraft in order to liberate them.)
The only good ‘Ali”, the press would have us believe, is a maimed ‘Ali”. And so he is an ‘Ali” who is currently held up by the yellow press as a symbol of what the war was/is/will always be truly about, from now on.
Which is about what?
And now that the press is on its racially skewed binge (‘Ali” is a useful euphemism for ‘snotty Arabs”, ‘coons” and ‘jigaboos”, phrases officially regarded as infradig these days) the question is how many other kinds of ‘Alis” will pop up in their pages.
It is useful that two of the media’s ‘Alis” are actually called Ali. Ali Hassan al-Majid, alias ‘Chemical Ali”, really was called Ali. And Ali Ismail Abbas, the 12-year-old who no longer has any limbs, was also known as ‘Ali” to his sadly departed parents and siblings. His parents named him Ali because it’s a perfectly respectable sort of name in that part of the world. Too bad they won’t be around to see him grow up into a strapping, civilised Ali, but that’s how it is in war.
Or so say the Bush/Blair/Rumsfeld troika. And presumably their wives and children as well. Hell, when you’ve still got arms attached to your body, you can say anything.
But it’s open season on whatever other ‘Alis” there might be lurking out there.
Top of the list, of course, is ‘Hectic Ali”, also known as Osama bin Laden. Now this guy really is hectic, but the problem is they can’t find him. This makes him even more hectic. But it doesn’t take away from the fact that, at the end of the day, he is just another ‘Ali”.
If a white child had been orphaned in a ‘friendly” attack in his own country, the outcry across the civilised world would have been awesome. If that same child had lost both its arms, and had then been forced to undergo a ghastly series of plastic surgery to bring some sort of normality back to his blasted life, there would have been inquiries in parliaments across the globe.
Ali Ismail Abbas is, unfortunately, just another ‘Ali”. He’s a cute little ‘Ali” (because his hands and half of the skin on his body have been blasted off), but he’s an ‘Ali” nonetheless.
What if all of this had been going on in Scotland or New Zealand? As far as I can tell, those countries are also in possession of weapons of mass destruction. Not to mention a number of other countries we could mention.
The only difference being that people in those countries are, for the most part, not Arabs, or ‘Alis”. Or darkies of some other stripe. Which means that they cannot be attacked. A moral line has to be drawn somewhere.
In the end, the new Masters of the Universe (abetted by their tame press) will characterise this evil thing as the war between the ‘Alis” and the ‘allies”.
And so we go back to square one — circa the Stone Age.
John Matshikiza is a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research
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