NBC Correspondent Calls Chris Kyle A Racist

Yesterday, on NBC's Morning Joe, foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin (a former Al Jazeera reporter) made the statement that American sniper, Chris Kyle, was a racist who went on killing sprees in Iraq. 

MOHYELDIN: A lot of his stories when he was back home in Texas, a lot of his own personal opinions about what he was doing in Iraq, how he viewed Iraqis. Some of what people have described as his racist tendencies towards Iraqis and Muslims when he was going on some of these, you know, killing sprees in Iraq on assignment. So I think there are issues...

To his credit, host Joe Scarborough challenged at least part of Mohyeldin's statements:

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, wait. Killing sprees? Chris Kyle was going on killing sprees?

MOHYELDIN: When he was involved in his -- on assignments in terms of what he was doing. A lot of the description that has come out from his book and some of the terminology that he has used, people have described as racist.

The show's co-host, Willie Geist, pushed further than Scarborough.

GEIST: It (the movie) wasn't a commentary about the war. It wasn't about the politics of the war. It was a character study of what this guy went through. And you don't have to like him and all the comments about him calling Iraqis savages. He was calling the people he was shooting savages. He was calling people who he thought had IEDs, who he thought were going to kill his buddies, savages. He didn't - some people have seized on that term that he thought all Iraqis or everyone in the Middle East is a savage. That's just not what he said. It's not what he said. He was talking about the people he was fighting in the theater, calling them savages.

Mohyeldin's statements prove that ignorance has no bounds. Anyone with a working brain knows that neither Arab nor Islam is a race. Arab is a nationality and Islam is a cultural, religious and political system all rolled into one. 

The word "racist" is defined as: a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another. Chris Kyle didn't proclaim that any one race was superior to another. He labeled those he killed "savages." Who can blame him? Any mother who would hand her child a grenade with instructions to run toward American soldiers and attempt to kill them with it is a savage in my book. Anyone who will detonate a bomb, whether remotely or in person, and blow up innocent people in the name of their god is a savage. 

And for those who wish to pretend that Arabs are "brown skinned people," it's important to note that Caucasians evolved in the Middle East (near the Caucasus, East Arab Levant, north of Iran). The ''Caucasians'' include: Arabs, North African (Berbers), Iranians, north Indian Subcontinental people, Europeans etc. The predominant racial type in all those areas is Caucasian.

Certainly there are dark skinned Arabs just like there are dark skinned Muslims but that doesn't mean it's the rule. And a Caucasian killing an enemy that is also considered to be Caucasian is not racist - not even a little bit.

As for the "killing sprees," again Mr. Mohyeldin displays his ignorance. Chris Kyle's missions were not "killing sprees." They were missions sanctioned by his superiors. Most of his sniper shots, except for the extremely urgent ones, were pre-approved over the radio and in many situations he was given the green light to make the call himself. He was good at what he did and his superiors trusted him to make the right decision(s).

It's obvious Mr. Mohyeldin knows nothing about military operations, whether due to genuine ignorance or intentional ignorance. 

One could also suspect there is some cultural animosity in his words as well, given his Egyptian/Palestinian heritage. His bio says he was raised in Egypt and the United States but has lived extensively in the Arab world since adulthood. 

But that's probably just my right-wing, Islamophobic, racism showing...