Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Four Years of Stupidity | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Four years have passed since the onset of an impractical adventure that was falsely sold to the world.

Four years have passed since the start of the American occupation, invasion or war on Iraq, which at one point was labeled as a part of the war on terror and a preemptive war to eliminate a regime that possessed and was braced to use weapons of mass destruction.

Saddam Hussein, his henchmen, the Baath Party and their despotic, destructive regime were satanic evils that should have been eliminated. It is shameful to defend them. This is a question of ethics that has to be decisively and unmistakably resolved.

Today the mulberry leaves fall one after another in a flagrant, shameful manner that reveal the lies and deception by a group of the Neoconservatives in their stupid proposal on the “benefits” of liberating Iraq – this is what they labeled their military adventure — and how that would lead to the birth of a new Middle East generation.

Because America is still a country that is governed by institutional ethics and rules and regulations– although the current administration has been endeavoring to neutralize many of these – anti-war voices have a powerful, resounding return even within the deep-rooted Republican Party itself.

Here is war veteran Senator Chuck Hagel, of Nebraska, the heart of conservative America, strongly objected to President Bush’s policy and in an unprecedented step warned the man, regardless of his position and background that if situations remained the same in Iraq, he would demand Congress remove the president from office.

I have read a number of books published in America that “exposes” political, military and information failures and the extreme abuses and excesses by the authorities to profit as a result of what is taking place in the battlefield.

What is strange is that these published books were written by military men, politicians, journalists and academics, which means that their contents came from varying backgrounds; however, there was clear consensus among them that the issue is sizeable and the excesses large.

Going back to 2003 when I was on a visit to the American capital to lecture at the Middle East Institute, preparations for attacking Iraq were in full swing. Another speaker was Joe Wilson, the former US Ambassador to Niger — and first to have exposed the American intelligence by saying that Africa had not sold Uranium to Iraq. A third was Frank Gaffney, a key Neoconservative soldier. The two of them had a heated argument, and Gaffney’s response was lacking in logic, objectivity and proof, only saying “Iraq must be invaded because this serves supreme American interests.” It is an ambiguous, gray, stretchy statement and a hollow slogan similar to the idiotic slogans of nationalists and Baathists! At that time I realized that America was “Hijacked.”

The late great writer and thinker Edward Said told me during our last meeting in Cairo a few weeks before his death that, “What is happening in America is a coup. I cannot describe it otherwise.”

There are many national t-shirts and posters on sale that express America’s dissatisfaction with what is taking place in Iraq, probably most significant of which is ” America will rectify its mistake on 1/1/2009,” the time a new president takes over.

As a regime, America is capable of self-criticism and offering alternative solutions. It is a state that was built on a free system with fundamental moral rules. Just for a group to have disrupted it is not the end of the world even if they wanted so. Four years further stifled the world and mounted its dissatisfaction with the idiotic policy adopted by that administration. However, all those who respect America and its heritage and capability bet that it is capable of rectifying itself and remedying the farce that occurred.