WHITE HOUSE SETTING THE TONE FOR HATE SPEECH AGAINST MUSLIMS

by Mark Lloyd

(PNS) -- The sale of control of key operations at six U.S. ports to a United Arab Emirates company may be aborted and the uproar may die down, but what it made clear is the ugly language of hate and war has taken on a life of its own. And this problem is the result of a script written in the White House.

One in three Americans has heard prejudiced comments about Muslims, according to a recent Associated Press-Washington Post poll. Nearly half of Americans have a negative view of Islam. No wonder the American public was vehement in its opposition to the Dubai port deal.

While concern over the Bush administration's handling of national security is justified -- the Bush Administration has failed to establish policies to secure the nation's ports from legitimate threats -- serious debate over how to protect our national security is hardly possible when the president of the United States leads the war-mongering. Even as President Bush spoke in support of the deal to turn over the control of certain commercial operations at the ports to a Dubai company, he continued the climate of deception and fear that makes the deal so objectionable to many Americans.

Speaking before an audience of veterans, Bush continued to confuse his blunder into Iraq with a "war on terror" that he claimed began on 9/11. Perhaps most disturbingly, he declared: "The enemy we face is brutal and determined. The terrorists have an ideology. They share a hateful vision that rejects tolerance and crushes all dissent. They seek a world where women are oppressed, where children are indoctrinated, and those who reject their ideology of violence and extremism are threatened and often murdered." In other words, U.S. violence -- even directed at Americans -- is justified because we are fighting an enemy that is not fully human.

Bush is speaking from a script written by Karl Rove designed to make voters too frightened to change political leaders. It is a script that helped him win an election, and one that Rove hopes will keep the Republicans in control of both houses of Congress after the 2006 elections. And it is a script that has significance beyond the White House's own political agendas.

In December 2005, a billboard campaign critical of North Carolina's policies regarding the issuing of driver's licenses was launched featuring a man dressed in a kaffiyeh -- a traditional Arab headdress -- and holding a hand grenade. The billboard read: "Don't License Terrorists, North Carolina."

The Nutritional Health Alliance is distributing a flyer of Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin in a turban and the captions: "Get a Turban for Durbin!" and "Keep Congressional Terrorism at Bay." The NHA is campaigning against regulations Sen. Durbin supports that would require reporting the serious side effects of diet pills.

The NHA ads may have been inspired by an earlier attack on Sen. Durbin from Bush friend and supporter Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh mocked Durbin's criticism of operations and conditions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba by calling him "Dick Turban" and referring to the prison camp as "Club Gitmo, the Muslim resort," a "tropical paradise down there where Muslim extremists and terrorist wannabes can get together for rest and relaxation."

In addition to the racist rhetoric, the Associated Press reports an increase in tensions between Arabs and U.S. security forces. According to Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations in Washington, "There are several incidents and policies that are unfairly targeting Muslims because of who they are, not because of what they did."

As President Bush and other federal officials brush aside the distinctions between Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and Iraq, it would be naive to expect the dittoheads to appreciate the distinctions between Muslim and Sikh, or for that matter between Arab and terrorist. The Bush administration has created an opening for a new American vocabulary.

"When you label someone an 'ayatollah' you label someone intolerant or cruel," says Kenneth Cuno, director of the Program in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Illinois. "The word 'jihad' -- if you don't like what I'm doing, you might say I'm waging a jihad against X, Y or Z. This association with Islam and terrorism is part of the same phenomenon."

"There is this feeling that it's somewhat of an open season on Muslims," says Rabiah Ahmed, spokeswoman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Washington, a group calling for NHA to withdraw its campaign and apologize.

Bush and his father have long-standing ties to Dubai, ties made of oil and money. When our president presents to the public his cartoonish caricature of the "enemy," he does not have his wealthy Arab friends in mind. But by inspiring fear for political gains, he is fanning the fire of racism, one that will continue to burn long after his presidency.