Satire by Tony Hendra.
From an unexpected quarter comes some rare good news for embattled U.S. military commanders trying to contain the widening prison-abuse scandals in Iraq. The conservative San Diego-based scientific review No Junk Science published an article today by a team of researchers from the Adolf Coors Center for Studying Arabs at Pepperdine and the Charles Murray Institute of Eugenics at West Texas Christian University. The study presents "overwhelming evidence" that Arabs are not, by any prevailing scientific standard, human.
The idea that there is something uniquely "different" about Arabs has been roiling conservative think-tanks and intellectual circles for some years. An internal paper circulated at the American Enterprise Institute in 1997 posed the question bluntly: Is it prejudice that leads so many people with long experience and intimate knowledge of the Arab world -- Americans, British, French, and Israelis -- to think of Arabs as animals? Or simply that they are perceiving at a non-cognitive level what is biologically the case?
The Coors Center launched several lines of research to explore this question. They ranged from the socio-political, assembling statistics on why Arab populations resist progressive opportunities in favor of self-destructive behaviors (supporting oppressive governments, voluntarily adopting barbaric laws and medieval social structures, embracing "martyrdom," etc.), to the archeological. One provocative Pepperdine monograph demonstrated radical differences in ancient embodiments of divinity as conceived by pre-European BCE populations and BCE precursors of Arab populations. Greco-Roman, Celtic, Indo-Aryan, and Nordic divinities were predominantly anthropomorphic, while the divinities of ancient pre-Arabic peoples of North Africa and the Levant -- with the sole exception of Israel -- were predominantly animal (e.g., the myriad half-animal gods of the Egyptians). If ancient peoples projected an idealized version of themselves into their deities, would not a pantheon of half-human, half-animal deities suggests a population that was at best only half-human?
But it was the Charles Murray Institute that provided the clincher, thanks to huge advances in one particular application of DNA research: population genetics. Population genetics has incontrovertibly established a Homo sapiens family tree of relatively recent origin -- beginning about 60,000 years ago in Ethiopia -- by reading mutations (or polymorphisms) on the Y (or male) chromosome. Both the approximate dates and the destinations of migrations out of northeast Africa into Asia, Australia, the Americas, and Europe can be tracked by these genetic markers. The admirable implication is that racial and ethnic categories are meaningless: We are all descended from the same distinct individuals and -- whether black, white, brown, yellow, Jew, Christian, Hindu, or Muslim -- constitute one human family.
Except, say the DNA experts of the Charles Murray Institute, the Arabs. According to their research results (which have been subjected to peer review by Dinesh D'Souza), Arab male DNA does not carry the common polymorphisms of Homo sapiens. Instead it carries DNA markers from another hominid species altogether, Homo erectus. More commonly known as Neanderthal man, the species was displaced and/or eradicated by Homo sapiens in every region of the world -- with the exception, apparently, of the Middle East. Whether they represent a pure strain of Homo erectus that somehow survived the predations of Homo sapiens or came about through interbreeding between an errant Mediterranean strain of Homo sapiens and indigenous Neanderthals, Arabs are the sole surviving subhumans on the planet.
If true, the findings could have a dramatic impact on the prison-abuse investigation and its legal ramifications, as well as on the treatment and detention of Arab prisoners in general. Kenneth Starr, Dean of Pepperdine Law School, says: "This study annihilates the 'inalienable' and 'human' rights of Arabs, including (but not limited to) property rights, right of assembly, free speech, freedom of religion, privacy, due process, the right to an attorney, and, most importantly in this matter, the rights of combatants. The authors of the Geneva Conventions wrote the rules for humans, not hominids. We are under no obligation to observe the rules of war for a species without rights, nor do we have any criminal liability for our actions toward them in any court from Virginia to The Hague."
Beltway progressives, sensing the evaporation of a major campaign issue, have fired back that even if Arabs are non-human, there is still no reason to treat them inhumanely. "Be kind to animals," is the thought. Animal-rights ethicist Peter Singer of Princeton goes further, arguing that the rights of other species -- regardless of whether they are hominids -- are if anything superior to those of humans: "Centuries and millennia of oppression and exploitation of all other species by humans require us to make massive restitution to them. Arabs in this respect are no different than cows, chickens, shrimp, or oysters."
Harder heads, however, point out more draconian consequences of the scientific breakthrough. A source in the office of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who requested anonymity for reasons of national security, says: "Where animal populations prey on humans, controlling populations by culling herds -- or even, in certain cases or locations, extermination -- is a legitimate response. This could finally bring the enormous firepower and human resources of the NRA front and center in the war on terrorism. The idea of open season is long overdue."
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld doesn't go quite that far. He puts the situation differently: "For me it's simple. The burden of proof is on these prisoners or on the thugs in Guantanamo or on these whining widows and orphans in Fallujah who want us to pay them off or on any other Arab who tangles with us -- you prove your human, we'll respect your rights. Otherwise -- you're dead meat."
The Charles Murray Institute is under enormous public pressure to release its lab results, but has so far refused to do so, citing the confidentiality of its DNA sources. The exhaustive study analyzed DNA samples from a comprehensive cross-section of Arab nations; the sole exception was the Saudi Royal Family, which exempted itself on religious grounds. The authors of the article have thus been forced to admit the possibility -- though they stress it's highly unlikely -- that the Saudi Royal Family may be human.
Interviewed in Ohio at a fund-raising dinner thrown for him by the Diebold Corporation, President Bush steered clear of the more incendiary aspects of the research, but he did pointedly use the phrase "human dignity" three times in his response to a reporter's question. He also expressed doubts about the major role played in the study by "the evolution thing." Said the President, "The jury's still out on that."
Tony Hendra is an author and an actor. His latest book, Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul (Random House), will be on sale May 18.
