“It would have been easier to defend the war had there been peace in Iraq’s streets, had there been (beyond Kurdistan) communities and leaders eager to embrace the American presence. Where the Japanese had turned an American army of occupation into an ‘army of liberation’ to enhance their own liberty, the Iraqis did the opposite. The Anglo-American liberators were turned into occupiers who had come to dispossess the Iraqis of their wealth. Perhaps it was the curse of oil, the suspicion that America had come to stay and to plunder Iraq’s wealth. Then too, the Arab and Iranian spectators to the drama must have fed the Iraqis’ eagerness to play a glamorous ‘anti-imperialist’ role. Nature imitated art: the Arabs beyond Iraq’s borders could offer Iraq no help in its hour of need. The American authorities had come through with a huge reconstruction package, nearly $20 billion in aid. It was the liberator’s burden and bounty. But Iraq had become a big Arab story and the Arabic daily papers in London, and the satellite channels in Dubai and Qatar, had cast this encounter in Iraq as yet another duel between American ‘hegemony’ and Arab resistance.
The Iraqis had to play the role assigned them by the Arab media; they couldn’t disappoint their ‘brethren’ in Arab lands. They could not accept the embrace of the Americans or the writ of the occupation authorities. Pride can be a terrible affliction, and the Iraqis appeared to have it in plentiful supply. Patience was needed, and a measure of gratitude for the work that the Americans were doing in Iraq. But gratitude was rarely expressed.” –Fouad Ajami, The Foreigner’s Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq, p.141.
Posted by christocentrist 
Posted by christocentrist 
