The Ugly Arab

The vast majority of Arabs I have known in my lifetime have been wonderful people. I spent a total of eight years in Iraq, and during those years I met all kinds of Arabs - poor, rich, educated, illiterate, Shia, Sunna, and Christians. On our street in east Baghdad there lived families of various ethnic and religious backgrounds. Across the street from us lived an Armenian Christian family, and next to them lived a large Sunni Arab family - they were always kind and most gracious to our family. Here in the US I have also met many Arabs, mostly educated and well off - about half of them are Sunni Arabs. I have met only one Arab I did not like, and the reason I disliked him was because he believed that Saddam Hussein was good for Iraq, and that Iraq needs a 'strong' leader like Saddam. He is half Saudi, half Palestinian, and he shared his theory with me in 2000, more than ten years after I first met him - I considered him to be a friend until then. I have heard this theory from different people, especially in the last three years. Even western reporters like Kevin Toolis argue that Saddam's terror in Iraq was needed to 'suppress greater horrors'. Perhaps Mr. Toolis should ask himself why a dictator's terror was not needed to suppress 'greater horrors' in Iraq before 1980, or how Iraq survived on its own without sectarian tensions, without the aid of a tyrant, before Saddam Hussein and his Tikriti mafiosi came onto the scene.

The US has been culpable to an extent in creating Saddam Hussein and the murderous mafiosi who have become so powerful in Iraq, but I think it is very clear who is responsible for the mayhem we see in Iraq today: it is the UGLY Arab. The Ugly Arab has been murdering innocent Iraqis for decades. In the 1980s Ugly Arabs murdered only Allah-knows how many innocent (and often educated) Iraqis - it didn't matter whether an Iraqi was Sunni or Shii - he would be alive as long as he was loyal to the filthy dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Saddam and his Baathi mafiosi were equal opportunity murderers, and that is why so many Arabs love him - he even had a Christian as his foreign minister! How benevolent of the Ugly Arab. During the 1990s, the Ugly Arab killed tens of thousands more innocent Iraqis by various ingenious methods that have not been discussed on Al Jazeera or Al Arabiya. In 2000, Ugly Arabs apprehended the wife of an Islamist who was opposed to Saddam's regime, took her away from her kids and beheaded her on the street in front of her neighbors - this was not covered by all those progressive Arab news media outlets - only Amnesty International had the courage to report on that sad story. Today the Ugly Arab has sharply escalated murderous attacks on Iraqis and uses such clever methods as luring Iraqi job seekers and detonating explosives among them to prove to the world that life was indeed better for Iraqis before 2003.

The Ugly Arab does not exist only in Iraq. Yesterday, at least 30 Ugly Arabs in Saudi Arabia announced that Sunnis must band together against the Shia in Iraq and urged clerics to "educate the public about the Shiite threat." At least they are being honest - I have never seen such a level of honesty from Saudi clerics before! The Ugly Arab travels from Egypt, passes close to occupied Jerusalem (occupied for almost 40 years now) and the West Bank where Palestinians work for Israelis, and ends up in Iraq to murder innocent Iraqis who work for the American occupiers and Iraqi Shia shopping for fruits and vegetables. To date, far more Arabs have been murdered by the Ugly Arab than by the Ugly American and the Ugly Israeli combined.

Arabs who believe that Americans (Bush's CIA perhaps) are responsible for the car bombs that have murdered so many innocent Iraqis should consider that the Republicans (Ugly Arabs must be told that Bush is a Republican) lost control of the House and Senate primarily because of the violence in Iraq, so it would not make sense for Bush's CIA or any American agency to cause this kind of violence in Iraq. But it makes perfect sense to the Ugly Arab - logic is not a strong suit of the Ugly Arab. After the Americans leave Iraq, it is unfortunate for ordinary Iraqis that thousands of Ugly Arabs will continue to infest Iraq like the cockroaches they are. But perhaps then, the mafiosi from Anbar will once again be in control of Iraq, security in Iraq will return to 'normal' and the Ugly Arab will be happy.