"Indian Country"- Beyond The "Green Zone" In Iraq

[struggle4progress]

Scott E. Starr 9/1/2007

... Most people have heard the "safe" area in Baghdad where Americans and their allies have created forts referred to as the "Green Zone". I have also heard or read accounts of the area outside the "Green Zone" referred to as the Red Zone -- or sometimes "Indian Country".

During the first Gulf War, Brigadier General Richard Neal, briefing reporters in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, stated that the U.S. military wanted to be certain of speedy victory once they committed land forces to "Indian Country." The following day, in a narrowly publicized statement of protest, the National Congress of American Indians pointed out that 15,000 Native Americans were serving as combat troops in the Gulf. Since General Neal's comment, however, the term "Indian Country" has become military slang that is often used by troops and leaders on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also used in the Viet Nam war. I have heard it occasionally used in T.V. news interviews and documentaries with and about military personnel.

You see, beyond the "Green Zone" one encounters a "terrorist"-infested territory- a wilderness as dangerous to the "justice bearing liberators" as the lands inhabited by by "Redskins" with the resistance they offered during the Indian wars- wars that opposed the conquest, the theft, rape, murder and cultural genocide and treaty breaking mendacity of the allegedly Christian colonizers.

This linguistic use of the term "Indian Country" speaks volumes about the intellectual ignorance and dishonesty of many in the United States' self image of the soul of America. It reveals an often willful ignorance of the perception of the rest of the world. It bespeaks of arrogance, hubris, and self imposed paternalism, exceptionalism and imperialism ...

http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=8978

[lazer47]

1. We used the term "INDIAN COUNTRY" in 'Nam for a long time

and the term itself has been around since frontier days, anything outside the walls of the fort,

[knitter4democracy]

2. Excuse me?! How freakin' racist can they get?

The Wind Talkers saved their butts in WWII, but hey, they're all still terrorists? Grrrrr! Well, they also call any soldier who complains a woman or all sorts of other names related to female-ness, so I guess we shouldn't be all that surprised. :eyes:

[Maq]

3. Reservations are the largest US federal prison system