Letters to the Editor
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The formula
All of this ranting about 'Untermenschen' and the 'failure' of Iraqis to respond to the wonders and the benefits of having their country occupied by American troops is the same old Fascist formula: first collectively dismiss a group as sub-human, then feel free to do anything you like to them. Bomb them back to the stone age, lock them up in prisons for no indictable crime etc. My guess is that right now Michael Ledeen and his ilk are licking their wounds and plotting their revenge; nothing too sophisticated. Their theory of re-shaping the Middle East into a Western-style (meaning American) paradise by means of cruelty and violence has come unstuck, as it was bound to do. The fact is, people don't like being beaten up and having their sons taken away in the middle of the night. They don't like having no electricity, no decent medical care and no human rights. Arab or otherwise,the reaction is the same. In this the Iraqis are all too human not sub-human as the far right would have us believe.