Tweet
"Americans Don’t Burn Books" they cry. Oh yes they do. Americans most assuredly do burn books. They burn them with malice and with forethought as an expression of their hatred and contempt for the peoples’ of the lands they have invaded, for the peoples of those lands and for our religion.
I know for a fact that Americans burn books, in particular The Holy Qur’an because like other Gorilla’s Guides team members I have gone into Mosques to clean them after your soldiers have desecrated them.
Your soldiers’ SOP for doing this is to shit on the prayer mats, to scrawl crude graffiti (mostly penises) on the walls, to spray paint hate slogans against Irakis, against Muslims, and against Islam on the walls, they also scrawl Christian and Jewish religious symbols on the walls, and they gather together copies of The Holy Qur’an, together with any other books they can find and set them on fire.
Don’t you dare try pretend that "Americans Don’t Burn Books" because I, other Gorilla’s Guides team members and plenty of other people in Irak can tell you from direct personal experience that yes you Americans damned well do burn books. They are Your American troops, from your American culture, imbued with your American culture’s values and yes they do burn books.
There is a proverb in the English language, I am told it comes from a Scottish poem, which expresses the desire "to see ourselves as others see us", well now you can. If you don’t like what you see then you can try to fix it. You can start that by refusing to mouth the comforting lies about how "Americans Don’t Burn Books", oh yes they damned well do.
You also burn people. — Ask the survivors of Fallujah.
Mohammed Ibn Laith.
10 Comments
My understanding of the other diarist’s post is that it is an exclamation of an American ideal. It did not appear to be denial, rather an exhortation to adhere to the ideal. The First Amendment of the Constitution is supposed to enshrine protections of speech and religion, and the event in particular which may have moved the other diarist to write was Pastor Jones’ burning of a religious book.
Book burning is not acceptable behavior, and the majority of the audience who reads here is disgusted by behavior of troops who have behaved so abominably in other countries including Iraq. The problem, though, is that like so many Americans who cannot distinguish between Sh’ia and Sunni, there is a political and religious faction which has co-opted political and military power and enabled and encouraged what is not acceptable behavior. Surely you must understand how easily a faction with a wavering minority/majority can co-opt and assert power; it does not make the behavior acceptable in any way, but it explains the dynamic.
The other side of the coin is that here in the U.S. — not to be confused with behavior by military on foreign soil — the First Amendment also protects political and religious speech which includes the burning of books. This is a difficult concept for Americans to grasp.
And murder, which is what happened in Fallujah, rationalized by corrupt military as war, is never acceptable.
Yes, we do burn books. We do torture. We act corruptly. We have for years and years. And we grew up being told that Americans didn’t do such things. The ugly truth is hard to see and harder to accept.
Many of us don’t burn books and deplore acts of desecration. We don’t torture and hate that some do in our name. But far too many Americans are either silent or ignorant and, I believe, neither of these states is acceptable.
Thank you, Mohammed, and the other Guides for holding up the mirror to our unwilling eyes.
Thank you, Mohammed and all the Guides. I am so sorry that terrible and disgusting things have happened in Iraq. I can’t imagine burning a book – not even a bad fiction book – because they hold knowledge. My thoughts are with all of you. Peace.
That kind of desecration is pure evil. And tolerance for the crimes like you describe is born from extremist Christian neocon ideology that has been institutionalized in our military. Absolutely vile and unacceptable.
Exactly.
The irony of course is that every act of defilement is yet another thing for Al-Qaeda to use in their recruitment drives as proof that Muslims and non-Muslims can never live peaceably together.
The original diarist made a set of conventionally pious assertions.
I pointed out the reality.
The problem that he and other Americans have is that he subscribes to the conventional American fiction of what America stands for.
I completely understand how Americans may not like how the results of disgusting and barbaric American behaviour abroad are now coming home to roost in America itself.
All my life I have heard Americans sneeringly proclaim that people get the government they deserve. Yes indeed …
No, it comes from your society’s American belief that Americans are inherently better than everyone else simply by virtue of being American.
From this it follows that anyone who opposes America’s will is at best wrong headed and at worst evil and deserving of everything no matter how vile that Americans can do to them.
The takfiri argument is more subtle than you give them credit for. They argue that Christians have become the agents of America and are therefore either to be driven out or forced to renounce their dual loyalty.
They are wrong of course “Guides” has a lot of Christians members and outside of that I have many Christian friends and they are good Iraki patriots, believe me they hate America even more than I do. It is boring to quote myself but here goes:
Source:
Nearly One Million Christians – Most Of Them Now On The Run | Gorilla’s Guides
Most Muslims have no problems with Christians as Christians, or with Jews as Jews, the problem arises when Americans, who mostly profess to be Christians, act upon the American definition of peace. When America talks of peace she means a situation in which everyone else does what America wants.
When Zionists talk of peace they mean a situation similar to that which obtained in South Africa under apartheid.
Neither of these of acceptable. Both must be opposed.
Finally I would add that you should not make the mistake of taking me for a political friend or ally. I am interested in peace, not in friendship, it is with your enemies, my sister in humanity, that you must make peace.
We clearly disagree. A large part of that self-rightousness is based on the religous underpinnings of America, like the shining city on the hill and all that. Based in Christianity.
Actually, I, and not Pericles, was doing the oversimplification. Pericles is more attuned to the subtleties.
Of course, it’s not just Bin Laden who benefits from American belligerence and stupidity. Ahmad Chalabi boasts openly of how he manipulated his neocon friends in both Israel and the US — a manipulation that wound up working to the benefit of his Iranian friends. I still can’t believe that they actually fell for Chalabi’s lie that they could topple Saddam, install an Israeli-friendly government in a country that is a relic of British colonial map-carving, and pretty much implement the Ledeen Doctrine at will. But when the neocons and corporate interests exert great control what we see and hear, maybe that’s not so surprising.