Phil Sheridan & Tosawi

On occasion, our troops killed unarmed enemy prisoners in the Second World War, and LT William Calley oversaw the slaughter of women and children at My Lai. Now we have prison interrogators who held themselves above international and moral law, some of whom are still being trained right here at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where the terms "Raghead" and "Sand Nigger" are used by instructors in referring to citizens of Middle East. (Does that mean that our friends in Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, etc. are "Sand Niggers" too?). To paraphrase General Phillip Sheridan, is the only "good 'Sand Nigger' a dead 'Sand Nigger'?" ~ Wade Sanders, The Greatest Country In The World

Comanche Leader Tosawi (Toshaway, Toshua, Silver Brooch)

General Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888)

During the so-called "Indian Wars" of the second half of the 19th Century in the U.S. West, a Comanche leader, Tosawi of the Ponetaka band, led numerous raids on settlers in the American Southwest. In 1867-’68, the U.S. Cavalry made a concentrated effort to end these raids. Tosawi was the first Comanche leader to surrender to the military at Fort Cobb in the Indian Territory.

As the story goes, shortly after surrendering, Tosawi met with General Philip H. Sheridan:

Tosawi: Tosawi, good Indian.

Sheridan: The only good Indians I ever saw were dead.

Sheridan’s notorious response was later misquoted as: The only good Indian is a dead Indian.

There is some doubt as to whether Phil Sheridan actually made either statement. Wolfgang Mieder states in The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian: History and Meaning of a Proverbial Stereotype that it is highly unlikely that Sheridan actually spoke those words. However, Tosawi recounted the story numerous times, always attributing the statement to Sheridan.

I first encountered the statement The only good… when I was an R.O.T.C. cadet in the 1960s. The phrase then was The only good Gook is a dead Gook. “Gook” in this context referred to a Vietnamese.

I was reminded of that horrible phrase recently when I heard the statement: The only good sand nigger is a dead sand nigger. That pejorative term evidently is used by U.S. solders to refer to Muslims. The phrase shocked and appalled me, as did the reference to Vietnamese in the 1960s and, when I read of it, the original phrase attributed to General Sheridan.

How can there be justice, much less peace, when we use such terminology to degrade and dehumanize other people?

As I did research for this post, I found a bit of light in the midst of the darkness where I least expected it: Military.com. I urge you to read the article by Wade Sanders, The Greatest Country In The World, at Military.com from which I quoted at the beginning of this post. Further in the article, Sanders writes:

It is our hubris, a "holier than thou" attitude that permeates our national psyche, and infuriates the rest of the world. It isn't that we are worse than everyone else; it is that we continually crow that we are better than everyone else and this hypocrisy grates on the international community. ~ Wade Sanders, The Greatest Country In The World

But that’s just part of his article. Please read all of it.