When Will the Villains Stop Speaking Arabic ?

Earlier today, my brother handed me a book he just finished reading and recommended it as “similar to Clancy”. It was the New York Times Bestseller Spy by Ted Bell. So I did what I normally do when someone hands me a fiction novel. I turned it over to read the blurb on the back:
Counter-terrorist operative Alexander Hawke must save the United States from a devastating terrorist operation…The men in the jungle are highly trained Hezbollah warriors who are planning an unspeakably violent jihad against America.

Just what we need, more kill-the-Arabs type fiction, but wait a minute, it didn’t say highly-trained Arabs, it said Hezbollah. Indeed, I have no love for Hezbollah or any other military organization or Army, but I think most none-Arabs won’t know the difference, or care.

Flashback 1992; my cousins from Germany come visit us. They speak Arabic, but were raised as Germans. As usual, the adults sit and discuss “important” things, and my cousins join me to play. I say to them ‘Come on, let’s go kill some Germans !‘.

I was referring to Wolf3d which was a very popular video game at the time. You play an American soldier emprisoned in the dungeon of a German castle during WW2. As you enter a room within the dungeon, a guard would show up behind you ‘Halt ! Gestapo !‘. When you shoot the guard, he would blurt out ‘Mein Leiben‘ (my life), blood will trickle down his shirt, and you can then loot the corpse !

My cousins weren’t amused, they explained: ‘These are not Germans, they’re Nazis, we hate those guys’. Of course to an ignorant kid like me, what difference did it make what you called them, they speak German. Why should I care? In the 30s and 40s, the villians of American fiction were the Nazis and they spoke German. Once the cold war started. the new “villainese” became Russian, and communism was the greatest threat to “world peace”. Now the enemy speaks Arabic, and the lurking danger is from Islam.

One game I tried a couple of years ago went to great length to make the “killing experience” realistic. As you stroll along in the virtual city, playing the American soldier who would save humanity; the stores have authentic signs. The graffiti is hand-written Arabic. The coffee shop is playing something like Abd-Il Halim, and Um Kulothoom. You can hear the Azan from the mosque (although 50 times a day instead of 5).

As you are attacked by the fictional terrorists, they shout ‘Allahu Akbar’. When you sneak behind them, you will hear guys with names like “Akh-med” and “Habeeb” having conversations in English with a fake “Ali-Baba” accent. Sometimes they will come from a none-distinct fictional country in the middle-east; not to avoid offending anyone, but to save time doing additional research. Hollywood didn’t fare much better with dozens of movies of this type.

When will it end ? Sometime in the not too distant future, we will run out of oil. There will be nothing and no one worth protecting, so the foreign armies will withdraw. Civil wars will erupt, the remaining fortunes from the old oil wealth will be squandered on arms, and we will become the new Africa begging for handouts. What language will the “villains” speak then ? I’m guessing Chinese.

So, ‘Come on, who wants to go kill some Aye-rabs ?‘

Can you identify the terrorist attacking the British red-coat in #1 (Hint: 1775) ?
1- American revolutionary “Terorist” attacks Foreign British troops on US soil more than 200 years ago. Is this how countries are forged ? Couldn’t they have had “democracy” forced on them like the beautiful one we currently have in Iraq ?

2- Nazi trooper. The nazis invaded many countries and killed millions, yet when the British did the same, it wasn’t considered evil, it was called colonialism, and after all they were bringing civilisation to the heretics. Fortunately they’ve lost their power and since the US saved their hides in WW2, they only act as yes-men to US foreign policy.