STEVEN PLAUT MEET <~text text="PAUL TIBBETTS">

King Sweeney Meets Bin Laden (Steven Plaut, July 30, 2003, Israel National News)

One of the unchallenged axioms of American civic religion is that each and every group of people on earth must consist of an "overwhelmingly vast majority of decent, hard-working, honest people, who want peace and are tolerant and freedom-loving and anti-violence."

It is an unchallengeable presumption of this theology that "vast majorities" of not only each and every racial/religious/ethnic group may be so described, but even vast majorities of each and any subgroup within society. Hence, we even sometimes hear assertions that the vast majority of prisoners, prostitutes, drug users, gang members, etc. are also decent, honest, peace-loving, honorable people.

The one imponderable in American civic theology is the idea that somewhere out there someplace there just might be a group of people - the majority of whom are not peace-loving or honest or tolerant. This belief in universal peacefulness in the minds of Americans is the main obstacle to Americans ever understanding the Middle East. The simple fact of the matter is that the overwhelmingly vast majority of Arabs, and the overwhelmingly vast majority of Moslems, are not peace-loving and are not opposed to violence. [...]

The vast majority of Moslems do not personally engage in violence and terror in their daily lives. The vast majority of Germans did not take personal part in the Holocaust. Indeed, as a blanket statement regarding Arabs in Israel, I would say that most Arabs behave in a far more polite daily manner than Jews, exhibiting on average far better manners and more consideration than do Jewish Israelis. But, of course, that is hardly the point.

What a positively bizarre assertion to make about an America that treated the Indians rather brutally, enslaved Africans, segregated African-Americans, imprisoned Japanese-Americans, fire-bombed the Germans and the Japanese (then nuked the Japanese for good measure), has the highest proportion of its population in porison of any nation on Earth, etc., etc., etc. If anything, Americans seem to--because we determine our nation's policies--hold entire nation's, whether free or not, responsible for the actions of their governments. There's been much made of the Administration supposedly trying to tie Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda--here's something to consider: the difference between our waging a war of liberation with minimal casualties in Iraq and our waging a war of extermination, with Baghdad irradiated, was probably only a function of our not believing they were involved in 9-11. If Israel fought the Arabs the way America fights its wars there might be no Palestinians, never mind a Palestine. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2003 9:16 PM