The Hindu
Friday, Dec 19, 2003
Spurt in anti-U.S. sentiments
By Atul Aneja
...
from which -
Among intellectual circles in Baghdad, there is view that the Americans deliberately wished to humiliate Mr. Hussein in order to announce that the era of pan-Arab leaders, with a regional appeal had ended. "I think the images shown over television illustrated a strategic decision by the U.S. occupation to covey that Mr. Hussein, because he supported the Palestinian cause, was the last of the larger than life Arab leaders", Rommel Moushi of the Assyrian democratic movement told The Hindu. The seeming victory of the U.S. demonstration over an Arab leader, has, however hardened anti-American sentiment in the region sharply and has been reflected in the Arab media. In Baghdad a fierce defiance of the Americans is visible both among ordinary Sunni and Shias. In the working class Shia district of Sadr city, earlier known as Saddam city, the atmosphere is politically charged and graffiti on the walls speaks the language of unity and struggle. "Sunnis and Shias are like the Tigris and the Euphrates", the two rivers that meet in southern Iraq, said a banner, drenched in the overnight rain, that was pinned on the walls of a former, but now bombed out, food godown.
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Many of us will focus on whatever inaccuracies are present in the so-called *conspiracy theories* the article describes. We will also recite, again, the fact that Hussein was a tyrant and the author of seemingly innumerable horrors.
But this piece give us a taste of more complex emotions which observers of the Stalin phenomena should understand almost immediately.
Note well how American triumphalism and claims of doing good, of bringing light to dark places produces a kind of slow burn. The capture of Hussein, which everyone applauds as an unalloyed *good thing* is also seen as a humiliation. This is not a simple business and no amount of debate will unravel the exquisitely tangled threads.
There's been a lot of talk about how Iraq is not Vietnam. fair enough, the differences are vast. But I have a feeling that American chest thumping, along with the harsh realities of unreliable power, intrusive (and sometimes lethal) raids and general physical and economic insecurity are like tributary cracks all leading to an immense fault line. Sooner or later a large upheaval is going to happen which will make what we've seen so far appear mild by comparison.
DRM