I was a non-traditional student enrolled at Southeastern Louisiana Unversity back in 2001, the year that 9/11 happened. I had and still have some good friends at SLU. Most of my friends are around my age, fortyish people, who've decided to start or finish college in their mid-years.

About two weeks after 9/11 happened, I had made aquaintance with a crazy guy who lived on campus, who was a proud, card carrying republican, and former marine and Gulf War veteran, who was also the room mate of my best friend, a kindly, shaggy old hippy Viet Nam vet, named Riki.

This guy (Don was his name) clearly didn't like me, and hated all Arabs, Afghanis, Iranians, Indians, Pakistanis, and a sundry of other swarthy people, with a militant intensity, that I'm sure could only of been matched by this man's intense love of "the Corp."

Anyway, one day I walked to the liquor store across the street from the SLU campus to buy a pack of cigarettes. The liquor store was owned by a guy I was friendly with named Rashid, who was Morrocan.

I walked into the store and hear this heated argument going on. Rashid, and Don the Marine were the only people in the store, and Don was waving his finger in Rashid's face, and shouting this threat over and over again that the U.S. should turn Afghanistan into a "parking lot."

Rashid was scared. And hell, like me, his roots are in the Maghareb and North Africa. I was starting to get pissed as I watched this wild, moronic, marine, waving his finger while he shouted, and manifestly made it clear, that he was holding Rashid accountable.

So I figured, hey, you're gonna hold him to accounts...hold me too.

When I see shit like, I just don't care anymore what becomes of me - but NO juiced up jarhead is gonna threaten any one of my friends.

I went up to this livid son of a bitch and asked him if he needed somebody to take a poke at, and suggested that it be me. I put out my chin, and asked Don, his most high and exhalted dudeness, to plant a punch on my outward extended jaw.

I just stood there waiting for him to land a punch. Well he looked at me with a puzzled expression. About a minute expired and he lost the red palor to his insanely pinched up face, he then purfunctolily huffed, and quickly left the liquor store.

A few moments passed.

Rashid had retreated away from the cash register, and began to relax a little. After i bought my cigarettes, he closed his store for the rest of the day.

About a month later, he closed it for good.

I saw Don the marine on campus a few times after I had extended to him my invite for him to stomp my ass. He never spoke a single word to me.

And that's the way I like it.

In my case in that instance, it was more a kind of a case of the crazies that caught a hold of me.

As a side note..the real shit thing was, that after 9/11, people who practice the Sikh religion, a religion from India, that has little or nothing to do with Islam, were selected out as scapegoats for "payback."

Religious Sikhs stand out like a sore thumb because they wear black turbans.

They were too obvious a target for some bigots to pass by.

It's cool. My best friend like I said back then was my bro Riki, who's a Viet Nam Vet, a very gentle and good hearted person. A REAL hippy too, no neo-phyte type. After his two tours in Nam, Riki tuned in, dropped out...however the hell that goes...anyway, all things told, Riki's really of the original 60's mold.

Another of my good friends is a navy doctor, so people who come out of the services are good personal friends of mine...but I gotta say, marines just seem to have a strange sense of the spirit is willing, for a little utra-violence, if not perhaps, a little pitstop for some killing.

Sometimes as peeps..they give me a slight sense of the creeps.

If a gang of your "just folks" ever get it into their heads to fuck with me again, they'd better just duck, because I am somebody, with whom you'd never wanna fuck.

As to what he and his campaign

Whoop up

Because people like me

Aren't gonna tolerate

Any of

The republican rough stuff...

I wonder if they even have felafel

In her great white northern territory...

You are truest bro.

The poet in the know.

There can be no doubt that there's some swiftboating going on here, the only thing is, this boat moves with the sneaky swiftness of a sinking U-boat.

There is no subtlety here.

I don't know how Joe average is reacting to people using the word "arab" as a word tantamount to being and meaning an obscenity in the American-English lexicon.

But believe me, if they can demonize arabs and Iranians

You know they can do it to The Irish and Lithuanians.

So, in that sense you could say in the long run

Everybody or anybody's ass could potentially be put in the proverbial sling

Unless this shit is halted

And ignorance is flatly called ignorance

Instead of being paranoidly exhalted.

- Euripides

The high irony here is that these people who are using irrational fears and phony fabrications that are foundationless and devoid of fact, and are earestly attempting to undermine, and characterize Obama as a terrorist, are THEMSELVES the true terrorists.

They are using fear as a political instrument. If that doesn't define a terrorist, I don't know what does.