Just cause depends on foe

We’re schizophrenic – applauding war against brown Afghan and Iraqi people while condemning it against brown or black Americans here at home. Racial thinking is as common as apple pie in our Euro-American population, and like other immigrant-descendants we’ve struggled to express who we are in history and within our white families.

Eastern Washington people are fed propaganda daily that justifies war on the Islamic dark-skinned enemy – propaganda that manipulates public “discussion” of alleged backpack bomber Kevin Harpham. Media coverage of Harpham’s arrest attests to abandonment of fair trial principles. Spoke the queen in Alice in Wonderland, “First the sentence, then the trial.” It’s no mental stretch to wonder if Harpham was set up.

Is there another Hitler-lover on military duty now, perhaps a young video-game warrior in Colorado pushing buttons causing the deaths of Afghan families by pilotless drones? In the movie “Restrepo,” young GIs horse around playfully after raining machine-gun hellfire on local villagers defending their loved ones. Such madness comes home to Colville and Anywhere, USA.

We need a big “what’s racism” conversation all right: historical, global and more penetrating than what’s featured by media, public luminaries and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Chuck Armsbury

Colville