Culturally Insensitive

Are USAmericans* the most culturally insensitive and/or ignorant people on the planet? If sometimes seems so.

In Baghdad today, a US soldier sparked riots by pulling a Muslim woman's Koran (the Islamic equivalent of the Bible) from her purse and throwing it on the ground. In Islam, it is effrontery enough to search a woman's bag, but it is sacrilege to throw a Koran on the ground like that. Religious Muslims believe you shouldn't even TOUCH the Koran without a ritual cleansing rite beforehand.

Does anybody even teach US soldiers this stuff? Maybe they just forget it in the desert heat, sweating in their bullet-proof vests, performing jobs for which they were never trained, beseiged by crowds of resentful locals. The soldiers cannot even understand the local language, let alone the customs and the religion. Many of them are under 21 years of age. They often come from impoverished backgrounds and they are all the sad product of the US education system. Many are contemplating, if not committing, suicide. It's hard to blame them. But who put them there?

Let's take another look at culturally insensitive comments by US Army Lt. General William Boykin, a deputy undersecretary of defense. Aside from his hard-line Christian views, Boykin offered this gem:

"The majority of Americans did not vote for him (W. Bush). Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this."

The comment must have greatly please Karl Rove, the man who actually did put Bush in the White House.

Bush has carefully cultivated religious zealots, lacing his speeches with terms which only his target audience would recognise (e.g. "miracle-working powers", a fundamental Baptist term).

The White House claims the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq do not equate to a religious war. Yet many Muslims around the world fervently disagree. And why wouldn't they? Just consider the evidence of religious zealotry that they see every day in US-dominated news (the following stories are a quick grab from Google News right now):

- Currently the Supreme Court is debating whether schoolchildren should use the phrase "under God" (which was only added during the Red Scare of the 1950s) while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

- Jeb Bush, W's brother and the Governor of Florida who ensured W won the last election, has ordered Florida hospital staff to force-feed a braindeed patient rather than let her die. The case sets new legal precedents.

- W's Republican predecessor, former movie star Ronald Reagan, has filmed a to-be-screened interview with wife Nancy in which his response to AIDS is: "They that live in sin shall die in sin." Tell that to all the innocent children who are HIV-positive, Ronnie.

Like it or not, the US occupation of Iraq is looking more and more like the early stages of a religious war and the White House is doing little to discourage it. No wonder 30 US soldiers have not turned up for their flights back to Baghdad. They could easily be dead next week and US television would not even be allowed to show their flag-draped coffins coming home.

*I hate calling US citizens "Americans" because it disenfranchises the millions of "Americans" who inhabit the two continents between Alaska and Patagonia.