Thanks Tavis

Connie Rice: Top 10 'Taboo' Things Said about Baghdad

The Tavis Smiley Show audio
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=3864954

Aug. 23, 2004 -- Over the last 18 months, U.S. military and political 
leaders have had to deal with a restive population of unemployed young 
men, looting, a devastated infrastructure and a violent insurgency.

Those same military and political officials have said things that strike 
commentator Connie Rice as curious -- and so she has paraphrased them 
into another top 10 list.

This time: Top 10 things said about Baghdad that you'll never hear said 
about Watts or other U.S. ghettoes...

(10.) "Isn't it great that Iraqis are now free to flood their streets 
with tens of thousands of protesters in open demonstrations?"

You especially won't hear this one said about Manhattan. John Ashcroft 
of the U.S. Department of Justice is right now hunting down and 
interrogating Americans planning to protest the Republican convention in 
New York City -- so I guess the tens of thousands of Republican 
Convention protesters can march freely in Baghdad, but not Central Park.

(9.) "There's no physical security without economic security."

Who would ever have thought this version of "no jobs, no peace" would 
come out of the mouth of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld? Someone 
needs to Humvee him down the street to his backyard, and give him a mike 
-- so he can repeat this to the underclass of Washington, D.C. The new 
Republican call to action: No jobs, no peace!

(8.) "Iraqis cannot recover from 40 years of Hussein's savage brutality 
overnight; it will take decades."

How about 400 years of American savage brutality called slavery that the 
state of Mississippi didn't vote to end until February of 1996? If 40 
years of Iraqi brutality is hard to overcome, why do we act like 400 
years of American brutality is irrelevant ancient history?

(7.) "Political quotas will facilitate fairness and the political 
viability of the future Iraq."

All proposed Iraqi political structures have quota-guaranteed seats for 
Kurds, Sunnis, Shiites and women. So let's get this straight: Quotas 
guarantee fairness in trade and Iraqi politics when the establishment 
needs fairness -- but back home, the mildest affirmative action is unfair?

(6.) "We're confiscating thousands of guns to reduce violence and 
killing in Baghdad."

Just when Congress and President Bush are ending the assault weapons ban 
in time for the Christmas shopping season, we're making Baghdad safer by 
snatching guns off the streets. The NRA needs to invade Mosul.

(5.) "We probably alienated thousands of Iraqis by doing hundreds of 
midnight home invasions looking for a few insurgents."

Can you hear in the echoes of this statement the mistakes of "urban 
policing?" Mass brutalization and alienation of the community in the 
pursuit of a war on drugs and gangs, that has reduced neither? Don't 
hold your breath waiting for that same admission to be said in this 
country...

(4.) "Conditions is Abu Ghraib under Hussein were unimaginable to 
Americans -- desperate pleas scrawled in excrement on the walls, crammed 
cells, torture, humiliation and unjust executions."

Unimaginable? Has President Bush never seen 60 Minutes? The military 
lawyer who recently said this about Abu Ghraib needs a tour of 
California's prisons and Illinois' death row -- a place where half of 
its residents were innocent. And what planet was Bush on when American 
abuses of Iraqi prisoners hit the fan?

(3.) "We have to put ourselves in Iraqi shoes, and become culturally 
sophisticated enough to win the only battle that counts: the one for 
Iraqi hearts and minds."

Now, without laughing hysterically, picture this being said about the 
U.S. urban underclass...

(2.) "You have to expect a people who are suppressed and denied 
opportunity to erupt on occasion."

Since we will never hear this said in the United States, I am going to 
make a banner out of this statement by Donald Rumsfeld and fly it up the 
flag pole after the next U.S. riot.

(1.) "Men without jobs feel emasculated and desperate -- that's why our 
number-one mission is to get Iraqis into jobs."

Do you think that delegates to the Republican National Convention will 
travel up to Harlem to repeat this statement to the 49 percent of black 
men a new study shows were without jobs in 2003?
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