THE EDITOR, Sir:
ONE CANNOT say that the Anglo-American war in Iraq is racist even if the cynic should maintain that Colin Powell and Condoleesa Rice provide the instrument of camouflage.
My expectation is that the two African-Americans will, in the bringing of American democracy, salvation and general presumptions to superior ways of human existence to the Iraqis, reveal to them their own struggles to achieve these noble ideals.
It would, essentially, be a comparison between setting Baghdad ablaze and doing considerable harm to the ecology of the country against their long period of the lynching of black people and all the known horrors of Jim Crowism.
My thoughts have been provoked by my childhood memories in our corner of Mr. Blair's erstwhile British empire, when one's bad behaviour would have been described as that of a "wild Arab" and one's ungodly ways that of a "Mohammedan heathen".
Of course, in those days, little black children sang at Sunday School: "I washed my hands this morning very white and clean, I bowed them down to Jesus, very white and clean." The black congregation, who having been told that they belong to "Adam's fallen race," would be singing: "Whiter than snow, whiter than snow, Lord wash me and I shall be whiter than snow".
As Mr. Bush is showing very disturbing signs of wanting to create a world empire in the image of America, the presumption that God is an American and he, His avenging angel, his Anglo-Saxon cousin, Mr. Blair, might want to whisper a few wise words in his ears about the evils and problems of empire.
What should be of great concern to us is the effect of the war on the children of Iraq who have been suffering under Saddam's rule and under sanctions maintained by US veto in the UN. It is very surprising to me that given Mr. Bush's stated mission to "liberate" and "save" Iraq for them that we are yet to see at least one media house in America getting the learned opinion of one of their behavioural scientists on the effect of this excessive bombing, of trembling earth, of the hellish flames, is having on the psyche of the young (which is the majority of the country's population) and the implications for "tomorrow" when the ashes and dust settle.
Does collateral damage refer only to death and physical harm? This war is an act of monstrous iniquity.
I am, etc.,
TED DWYER
8 Hope Road
Kingston 6
