Winning The West
By Frank Fugate
The other day I was set
for some relaxation time watching on TV the 1963 movie, “How the West Was Won,”
with a star-studded cast, such as, Spencer Tracy and Henry Fonda and partially directed by
John Ford. Later I watched a documentary on the History channel about the untold story of
General Custer’s last stand against the Indians - now called Native Americans.
The movie “How
the West Was Won,” is a grandiose Hollywood make-believe spin-job about the early
pioneers, refugees from the Old World, spreading like a plague across new America and our
Army chasing the Native Americans off their ancestral land to make room for these
immigrants. The History channel program happened to be more balanced by at least showing
some of the Native Americans points-of-view.
As it turned out neither was very
relaxing. I had a hard time concentrating on the TV. Why? My mind kept wondering to
another West — the West Bank. A similar struggle is taking place between the hoards
of settlers pouring into Israel and the West Bank with their insatiable appetite for land,
which requires displacement of native Palestinians. The Palestinians, similar to the
Native Americans, are standing in the way of Sharon’s vision of a greater Israel.
Volumes have
been written on how America’s west was won, so it is
not necessary to spend any time on this dark period in American history, except to tell
you how my mind began comparing American history with this present day struggle. We
Americans are a proud people. We never miss a chance to tell the world about our heritage
– a heritage we forcefully and brutally took from other humans. Yes, we called them
savages - today we might call them terrorists.
As in the Middle
East, we played tit-for-tat with the Native Americans until might became right. We had an
Army equipped with modern weapons against savages outfitted with stone-point arrows and
stone axes; today it is American supplied tanks against stone throwing teenagers. We
destroyed Native American cities by burning their tepees and slaughtering their old
people, women, and children; today American bulldozers are being used to flatten
Palestinian homes and American supplied rockets to vaporize the old people, women and
children. We slaughtered the Buffalo and other “game” which forced Native
Americans into hopeless starvation; today Sharon’s Army of vengeance enforces
starvation curfews. We desecrated Native Americans’ sacred hills in our lust for
gold; today the Sharon’s Army desecrates Palestinian churches and mosques.
When the braves
could take no more they left the reservations and became raiding parties destroying
settler homes and families in retaliation. Today the Intifada and suicide bombers have
become the braves of frontier days - in BOTH cases against hopeless odds. BOTH methods
were and are despicable, and were and will be failures in their objective. The Army of
vengeance, with all it’s might, was unable to round up the marauders and force them
back on their reservations of despair, so the politicians devised a more potent weapon -
treaties. Today it was the Oslo and Camp David accords. The native Palestinians,
negotiating from a position of weakness, after years of occupation, genocide, starvation,
and humiliation were expected to blindly agree to terms of impunity as the Native American
had been. One only has to visit the Native
American reservations to foresee the future for the native Palestinians -- BOTH once proud
people reduced to poverty and despair.
As I watched the
TV movie and the documentary, I began to realize it is not about right or wrong, it is not
about savages or terrorists, it is not about religion – it is about one of the ten
commandments - covet not thy neighbor’s belongings -
it is about greed and the forceful conquest of thy neighbor’s land. Occupation and intimidation until they have no will - until
they have no dignity - until they are driven from their land into modern day reservations,
such as Ain Al-Hilweh and other horrible refugee
camps in Lebanon with their deplorable living conditions.
I have often wondered why the majority
of American people, noted for being for the underdog, have little empathy for the plight
of the Palestinians according to media polls. It becomes more apparent when a recent poll
showed only 14% of the American people know were Iraq is located on a world map. How can
they be so ignorant about geography and yet blindly follow the pro-Israel news media, our
self-centered politicians, and buffoons like Jerry Fawell. That I will never understand. I can understand why campaign money-hungry
politicians, such as Tom DeLay, a religious fanatic who appears at times to be suffering
from brain damage, who appears to have no honor, who appears to sell out to the deepest
pockets, and who appears to buckle-under to special-interest group pressure. They
willingly give away our tax dollars to the renegade Sharon so he can kill more
Palestinians and take more land. For them it is a matter of survival – survival so
they can continue to sit on their prestigious fat jobs in Washington and accumulate
mind-boggling annuities. Then there is John McCain who shuns an investigation of our USS
Liberty being deliberately attack by a “friendly” country as if it were some
plague. Why? Who is he protecting?
I keep asking myself, what is President
Bush’s agenda? He continues his orchestrated crusade of whipping the American people
into war frenzy against the Iraqi people so he can remove their despot leader Saddam. Is
that where it ends? Rumors keep leaking out of Washington that Bush has a greater vision
for the Middle East than just eliminating Saddam. Is it to keep his popularity high, a
son’s revenge, oil, or is it a religious vision of returning control of the region to
the Zionists - a biblical prophesy requirement for
an Armageddon – incidentally, a prophesy from a Bible written mostly by Hebrew
scribes. If not, why is he so occupied with the Middle East and yet doesn’t make a
whimper when the dictatorial psychopathic leader of North Korea keeps threatening America
and thumbing his nose at him. North Korea is becoming a far greater threat to the world
with weapons of mass destruction than Saddam has ever been. The difference could be North
Korea is not sitting on Israel’s doorstep nor do they occupy the birthplace of
Christianity and Judaism.
How does it all
end? I shuddered as the horrible thought
passed through my mind - will Hollywood some day produce a movie, directed by a think
alike Aaron Spielberg or John Ford, “How the West Bank Was Won,” — and then an impish smile brought relief to
my gloomy thoughts — or will it be a
History Channel documentary, “the untold story of Sharon’s last stand?”
Courtesy of and © 2002 by Frank Fugate.
Frank Fugate is a former senior
vice-president and member of the Board of Directors of the Arabian American Oil Company
(Aramco) and spent most of his career in Saudi Arabia. Frank may be reached
at ffugate@austin.rr.com
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