Shocking and Awful: US on the Road to Perdition

DUBAI: A week into the Iraq war and a feeling of deep unease is spreading over the Arab world. American and British troops, painfully making their way towards Baghdad, are being looked upon as invaders, rather than liberators. That is not how the script written by George Bush and Colin Powell had read. They had imagined that their "shock and awe" tactics of a massive bombardment of Iraq''s capital would have "decapitated" the Iraqi leadership.
The advancing coalition troops would then be welcomed with flowers and open arms by the Iraqi public, leading to the installation of a new government.
There have been no flowers, only bullets. And Saddam Hussein is very much alive, vowing to "slit the throats" of the invading troops. American intelligence forces, after a tip-off, thought they had got their man by dropping devastating "smart" and bunker-busting bombs into the building where they thought he and his main officials were holed up. There were even reports of satellite photos showing panic digging at the site after the bombing and a stretcher taking out a wounded or dead Saddam Hussein. His first appearance on Iraqi television was dismissed as perhaps being that of a "double", or a pre-recording.
A second appearance, however, removed all doubts. The Iraqi president named some of his officers taking part in the fighting and where the main battles were taking place. He also cleverly appealed to all Arabs and Muslims for support, while highlighting the Palestinian cause. The US-British invasion of Iraq is rapidly converting Saddam Hussein into a kind of folk hero. That is bad news for the Americans and the British.
Till the attack, he had few supporters. He had, after all, attacked, without any provocation whatsoever, two of his neighbours, Iran and Kuwait. He had set alight Kuwait''s oil wells causing the worst ecological disasters of our times. The eight-year war with Iran killed some one million Iraqis and the take-over of Kuwait, a fellow Arab country, brought on the wrath of the USA, as well as much of the Arab world. There was little sympathy for Saddam Hussein. All that has now dramatically changed in a breathtakingly short time of a few days. Washington has grossly miscalculated.
The nightly bombardments of Baghdad are sickening the civilised world. The so-called "smart" bombs have killed and injured hundreds of civilians. For the first time, three Arab TV channels are operating from Iraq: Al Jazeera, and two new ones, Abu Dhabi Television and the recently set up Al Arabia channel. They have been beaming terrifying images of women and children horribly burnt and maimed by the US bombings.
Washington has got worked up about the coverage by these Arab TV channels of American prisoners of war (PoWs), citing violation of the Geneva Convention. An American commander called the coverage "disgusting". But what about the US treatment of PoWs in Afghanistan at Mazar-e-Sharif and the 650 PoWs being held in Cuba''s Guantanamo Bay? it is being asked. At Mazar-e-Sharif, American and Northern Alliance troops fired on — and killed — a large number of PoWs. Mary Robinson, the then high commissioner for human rights, had called for an inquiry, which was angrily rejected by the USA. The PoWs in Guantanamo Bay have been blindfolded, shackled, chained and held in what can only be described as cages. No Geneva Convention for them.
The US and Britain claim to have moved against Saddam Hussein for his refusal to destroy his weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Have any WMDs been found so far, journalists have pointedly and repeatedly asked at the daily press briefings being given by the American and British commanders. No, but we are still looking, comes the lame reply. We are going into Iraq to bring democracy to the country, after years of tyrannical rule, says Mr Bush. Since when have American governments actively promoted democracy? From Latin American to Africa and Asia, Washington has been far more comfortable with dictatorships than with democracies.
The Americans came to Kuwait''s help in 1991, not out of any great love for the Kuwaitis but because of oil. And they want to take over Iraq — the second biggest producer of oil, after Saudi Arabia, in the world — for the same reason. Few people, even outside the Muslim world, dispute that contention. There are also juicy contracts for American industry to be had in the "reconstruction of Iraq". But, Mr Bush, and those close to him, have a deeper, more sinister strategy planned. The first step in that strategy was Afghanistan. Iraq is the second. All in the name of fighting terrorism, after September 11, but actually intended to ensure US domination of the world.
There was little opposition, even among Muslims, to the American strike against the Taliban in Afghanistan and nobody seriously questioned the terrorist links between the Taliban and Al-Qaida. However, as for Saddam Hussein, nasty and brutal though he may be, no proof exists of any ties between his regime and international terrorism. The irony is that the invasion of Iraq, especially if it leads to a great deal of bloodshed and loss of civilian life, could inflame Arab and Muslim sentiment, leading to terrible 9/11-style terrorist strikes, and the creation of an unbridgeable gulf between the Muslim and the non-Muslim world. The US and the UK have embarked on a perilous and fateful road.
(The author is the editor of , Dubai)