Trump Calls for Shooting Muslim ‘Terrorists’ with Bullets Dipped in Pigs’ Blood

By: Dr. Abdullah Robin

The US has a long and ugly colonial history, but while most US politicians try to cover the crimes of colonialism, the current US president boasts about them proudly. Following the recent terror attack that killed 13 people in Barcelona, Spain, Trump tweeted: “Study what General Pershing of the United States did to terrorists when caught. There was no more Radical Islamic Terror for 35 years!” His advice on the 17^th of August, 2017, to study what “the United states did to terrorists” is a reference to what the US did to Muslims in the Philippines when they rebelled against US colonial occupation while General Pershing served as governor of the mostly Muslim Moro Province from 1909 to 1913. The US used savage tactics. In Pershing’s memoir, “My Life Before the World War, 1860-1917,” he said that Muslim fighters were “publicly buried in the same grave with a dead pig … It was not pleasant to have to take such measures, but the prospect of going to hell instead of heaven sometimes deterred the would-be assassins.” Trump was more explicit in South Carolina in February 2016: “They were having terrorism problems, just like we do,” he told a throng of cheering supporters before describing how General Pershing “caught 50 terrorists who did tremendous damage and killed many people. And he took the 50 terrorists, and he took 50 men and he dipped 50 bullets in pigs’ blood — you heard that, right? He took 50 bullets, and he dipped them in pigs’ blood. And he had his men load his rifles, and he lined up the 50 people, and they shot 49 of those people, and for the 50th person, he said: “You go back to your people, and you tell them what happened. And for 25 years, there wasn’t a problem.” The US declares opposition to its colonialism as terrorism, but the Moro rebellion was a struggle for independence from colonial rule, not terrorism.

The US was born in terror and consistently acted as if superior to other peoples giving itself every right to dictate how their resources and lands should be used. It wiped out the native Red Indians, took their lands, forced them into humiliating settlements and betrayed them repeatedly. As for relations between black and white in the US, a recent demonstration by white supremacist hate groups in Charlottesville resulted in violence that continues to shock the US. James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car into anti-Nazi protesters killing one and injuring nineteen, and Trump spoke three times about the subject with his first and third Press statements revealing the ugly face of racist opinion about the subject. After the President supported the white supremacists in an interview in his hotel (Trump Tower), some in the media started talking seriously of a second civil war in America as opinion is deeply divided over the issue of race. While many senior US politicians have attacked Trump and resignations over the issue beset his administration, enough people have supported the views Trump expresses to get him elected, and he continues to make comments about using bullets dipped in pigs blood or the justification of white supremacist views in order to maintain the support of a huge section of US voters.

Trump is perhaps the most outspoken president the US has seen, but US arrogance is not new. As Trump threatens North Korea now for challenging it, so have previous US presidents, and while Trump threatens Venezuela with military action, previous US presidents have threatened Venezuela with the same and have actually led  merciless wars elsewhere in South and Central America. Invasions and funding of vicious rebel groups or right-wing governments have shed much blood in Granada, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras. In the Middle East, successive US governments have led invasions and divided countries along sectarian lines, and the US is supporting the ugliest dictatorships in the world. Trump’s crude words merely expose the real face of US colonialism by holding up a mirror for Americans to see themselves as the rest of the world has known them for a long time. This helps to explain why Trump is so much hated by some, and loved by others in his own country.

* Written for Ar-Rayah Newspaper – Issue 146