George Carlin:
If You're Brown, You're Goin Down. Especially if your country is full of brown people. Oh, we like that, don't we? That's our hobby now. But it's also our new job in the world: bombing brown people. Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Libya. You got some brown people in your country? Tell 'em to watch the fuck out, or we'll goddamn bomb them!
I apologize in advance for writing a diary that states what to many of you will be obvious, but this strikes me as an essential fact that often gets overlooked amid the fear and fear-mongering that terrorism triggers: The Great War of Terror is waged by a rich, white-dominated country against people of color in poor countries. (That many of the victimized Muslims and Arabs are technically Caucasian doesn't alter this fact. They are, by any standard, Other.)
Only a small portion of the Great War of Terror's victims have been white. Virtually all of the white victims are American soldiers who've been killed, maimed, and otherwise fucked up in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Some of you are probably thinking: most of the GWOT's victims were guilty in that they were part of anti-American organizations and insurgencies. But no, not most. Some. Casualty numbers vary greatly but no one disputes that many, if not most, of the tens of thousands of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were civilians. The vast majority of the those killed by American drone attacks have been civilians. And how many of the four millions Iraqis dislodged from their homes were guilty? Further: even some of the guilty are victims, like all the people tortured by Americans, and every one of the 190 people who've died in U.S. custody.
And a number of people hurt by the WOT are black Africans, including Gitmo's youngest detainee, Mohammed el Gharani. The citizen of Chad was wrongly picked up in Pakistan when he was fourteen and sent to Gitmo, where he was tortured, called racial epithets by guards, and made to spy on other detainees. It's hard to imagine a more powerless person than a black Muslim teenager caught up in the American anti-terrorism machine.
El Gharani was recently released and sent to Chad, where he spoke to Al Jazeera. After spending seven years in Gitmo, a third of his life, he's emotionally and physically damaged and doesn't know what to do with his life. His story is heartbreaking. Please watch.
There are many good reasons to oppose the Great War of Terror, none better than its devastating impact on poor people of color.