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t ime, 800,000 fled to neighboring countries in an effort to avoid what
foreign minister Paul Munyembari called "genocide."95
The violence of Africa, of Islam and of Latin America is not a
massive deviation from the human norm.  It is a simple outbreak of
something we all share.  The citizens of these lands are in the grip of
forces no human can escape--the animal brain and the battle between
superorganisms.  There are no righteous societies.  There are simply
different  degrees of depravity.
To establish the American Republic, our forefathers exterminated
Indian tribes.  The Indians were no better.  James Mooney, a pioneering
ethnologist whom the native Americans of the late 19th century
regarded as a friend, said, "The career of every Indian has been the
warpath.  His proudest title has been that of warrior.  His conversation
by day and his dreams by night have been of bloody deeds upon the
enemies of his tribe.  His highest boast was in the number of his scalp
trophies, and his chief delight at home was in the war dance and the
scalp dance.  The thirst for blood and massacre seemed inborn in every
man, woman, and child of every tribe."96
Violent addictions still run like ramrods through our statements
of ideals.  We glorify the bloody war that gave us our independence.
We sing a national anthem that invokes images of bombs bursting in
air during battle.  One of our favorite tunes for schoolchildren is "The
Battle Hymn Of The Republic," a paean to bloodlust.  In it, our God is
pictured as a violence-junkie.  He gets His kicks by "trampling out the
vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored."
The Islamic world today does not see us as respecting human
life.  It views westerners--and Americans in particular--as the ultimate
destructive force, the civilization that indulged in two world wars and
capped that carnage with the creation of the atomic bomb.  In the
minds of Moslems, only believers in Islam are true champions of peace
and justice.  To Moslems, WE are the  people whose hands are
perpetually stained with blood.
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