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Nuts are right and we're wrong?
Ralph R. Reiland is an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University and a local restaurateur. He can be reached at via e-mail.
Translation: It's our fault that people of color smashed passenger jets into the World Trade Center. If we weren't so racist, we'd be bombing someone more like us, maybe Norway.
In charging that America is racist when it comes to war, that our "whole history in regime change has been of people of different color," Asner, of course, ignores some not too insignificant events in America's "whole history" -- things like World War I and World War II. Last time I checked, the folks we bombed in Dresden don't qualify for any bonus points for color at the University of Michigan.
In another bit of recent analysis on war and color from the Left, filmmaker Michael Moore told a London audience that the passengers on hijacked Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania on Sept. 11 were "scaredy-cats because they were mostly white." Explained Moore: "If the passengers had included black men, those killers, with their puny bodies and unimpressive small knives, would have been crushed by the dudes, who as we all know take no disrespect from anybody."
Writing from death row, ex-Black Panther minister of information Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted murderer of 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, adds another colorful analysis, saying that America's impending war in Iraq is simply a case of white capitalists killing for oil: "The U.S. really could care less for the people of Iraq, its Kurdish minority, 'weapons of mass destruction,' or any other pretexts it offers as justification for war. It cares about the dark, slippery ooze beneath the sands of Iraq, and it wants to wage war to control its flow and distribution. Human blood for the long-dead remains of dinosaurs!"
Straight out of the Marxist handbook, Abu-Jamal writes that the Iraqi war will just be another case of the bourgeois exploiting the proletariat: "Truth be told, war is not hell to all. War is hell to the poor. To the wealthy, to the elites, to the business class, war is not only not hell, it's opportunity. Indeed, war is big business. To the U.S., war is profitable simply because it is the top arms dealer on earth."
Back when he was a Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote, "I for one feel like putting down the pen. LET'S WRITE EPITAPHS FOR PIGS." Political power, he explained, "grows from the barrel of a gun."
On the night of Dec. 9, 1981, five eyewitnesses said within minutes of the shooting that they saw Abu-Jamal run from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner in the back as he attempted to arrest Abu-Jamal's brother. Eyewitnesses said Faulkner got one shot off and then Abu-Jamal repeatedly fired at the fallen and unarmed officer from point blank range. The final shot, testified one eyewitness, was fired into the wounded officer's face from a few inches away, and that Faulkner's "whole body jerked" when the shot hit.
Officer Faulkner died from a bullet to the brain, a bullet from Abu-Jamal's registered pistol. At the crime scene, Abu-Jamal was apprehended a few feet away from Faulkner's body, a bullet fired from Faulkner's gun in his chest.
Today, Abu-Jamal writes from jail that America is a cold-blooded killer, a monster in search of victims: "Like a Roman potentate, Bush is saying the U.S. could care less what its European or Arab so-called 'allies' want; the U.S. will act, if needs be, unilaterally -- alone. Empires, you see, don't need allies; they need subject."
Translation: Empires, you see, should take advice from a dysfunctional street punk. At the anti-war demonstrations on Feb. 15, the "Free Mumia" posters were carried high from Manhattan to Hollywood. You see, America deserved what it got on Sept. 11, and Faulkner deserved what he got on Dec. 9.
In France, mayors of six cities have made Mumia Abu-Jamal an honorary citizen. Last Nov. 1, a French delegation arrived at the airport in Philadelphia with petitions containing 250,000 signatures calling for freedom for Abu-Jamal. The delegation marched to Philadelphia's City Hall to deliver the petitions to the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. Laurent Sauveaux brought a check for $2,000 for the International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. The money was collected at the Mumia Abu-Jamal Youth Festival in France.
Ed Asner is firmly on board, leading the "Free Mumia" chants at anti-war rallies -- and getting his facts about as straight as when he said that America only targets "people of different color" for regime change. "Asner once complained to Philadelphia magazine that there were no African-Americans on the jury that convicted Mumia," writes columnist Michael Tremoglie. "But Asner was wrong, there were two. On ABC's 20/20, Asner claimed that police had performed no ballistics tests in their investigation of Mumia. He was wrong."
And the message? The nuts are right and we're wrong. We're wrong to fight back when they smash passenger jets into Manhattan, wrong to want to execute the person who executed Daniel Faulkner.
