    30

    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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