... It is the vow, not o­nly of our King and his subjects, but also of the great powers allied to His majesty, that you will prosper as in the past, when you gave the world literature, sciences and the arts, and Baghdad was o­ne of the world's great cities...

[Excerpt from the British declaration upon the conquest of Baghdad, March 1917 ( Le Monde Diplomatique , April 2003) (1) ]

Of course no o­ne expected the kind of jubilant welcome that greeted the allied troops as they triumphantly entered liberated Paris in August 1944, but Messrs Bush and Blair must have been dismayed by the thin crowds that greeted US troops in Baghdad and the continued derision from the rest of the world who sees this war as an illegal invasion of Iraq for an altogether sinister motive.

Somethin' must be wrong with 'em Iraqis. Are they not glad that we have liberated them from the clutches of a ruthless dictator who had perpetrated unspeakable crimes against his own people, conscripted their young to fight a pointless war of attrition against a neighbour and finally made them endure 12 years of crippling sanctions?

US President George W Bush must be finding it incomprehensible that the Iraqis are increasingly treating their liberators much like the Czech people greeted the Soviet Red Army that invaded Prague in 1968, although the political climate between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Alexander Dubcek's Czechoslovakia then could not have been more different.

No honour

What the hawks in Washington could not comprehend is that there is no honour in the proclamations of victory by the world's mightiest army, equipped with the most technologically advanced killing machine against that of a third world nation weakened by two previous wars and more than a decade of sanctions.

In the eyes of the world the quick victory does not diminish the illegality of the war nor justify its movable objective. We remain in astonished wonderment that despite the army of academic experts and advisors at the State Department's disposal, the justification for the war had been framed in the most inept manner, from firstly accusing Iraq of having links to al-Qaeda, and then when it was pointed out that Saddam and Osama Bin Laden loathe each other, the ruse became weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

And finally when much of the world was not buying it, the objective became simply a need for regime change to give the Iraqis freedom and democracy.

Quite frankly, almost anything has to be better for the Iraqis than Saddam's ruthless regime.

Even if there is no legal and just mechanism to effect regime change as it is at present, not just in Iraq but in much of the Arab world and beyond, it would be indeed easy for the US to redeem itself in the eyes of the world and surprise its critiques, to change our perception that it is indeed a benevolent great power, even if it half-heartedly attempts to make good its proclaimed intentions of giving the Iraqis freedom and democracy.

But the logic of arrogance of power, driven by motives of imperial greed and desire for absolute domination of others will not be perturbed by pangs of conscience and desire for redemption, for the modern imperium does not rest o­n o­ne individual. It is but a soul-less entity constituted of elected officials and technocrats, and surrounded by lobbyists within and without the government who represent powerful interests impervious to sincere arguments of global justice and human dignity.

The US had squandered the few days it had after the conquest of Baghdad to redeem herself to a world sceptical of her motives and deeply suspicious of her future designs, even if we least expected to be surprised by her.

Colonial enterprise

As the dust and rubble are beginning to settle, and looters have nothing left to loot and the arsonists nothing left to burn, the liberation of Iraq did not take long to reveal itself as nothing but a naked colonial enterprise. Shooting into a crowd of demonstrators and killing some of them as they did in Mosul is not what liberators do. It is what an occupying force has to do now and then.

Ex-general Jay Garner, the man tipped to head the new administration (at the time of writing) may have said "What better birthday can a man have than to begin it not o­nly where civilization began but where a free Iraq and a democratic Iraq will begin today" ( NST , April 16) at a US brokered meeting near the famed terraced Ziggurat temple in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur.

But the world today has become wary and cynical of America's recycling of "the white man's burden", having witnessed the consequences of her interventions all over the globe in the past half-century where Afghanistan was her last messy stop.

Having bombed o­ne of world's poorest nations back into stone age, the reconstruction of Afghanistan, normalisation of national life, and freedom and democracy remain hollow promises for the Afghans. Instead, it has installed a puppet regime in Kabul, brought back the lawlessness of the warlords and turned Afghanistan into part of its military domain.

But Iraq is not Afghanistan. It was the birth place of human civilisation and for a thousand years Baghdad was the cultural capital of the Arab and Muslim world. At its peak it was the centre of Islamic civilization with its great libraries and centres of learning where scholars and students for all over the Muslim world converged.

Calculated move

And today Iraqis are the most literate population in the Middle East. It is no doubt morally uplifting, to themselves at least, for Baghdad's new occupiers to repeat the white man's burden rhetoric of the British conquerors of 1917, "to make the Iraqis proper as in the past, when they gave the world science and the arts, and Baghdad was o­ne of the world's great cities..."

But despite such charitable intentions announced by the new liberators, o­ne is greatly disturbed by reports that the looting and arson of Baghdad's public buildings and institutions was perhaps deliberately encouraged, abetted and aided by the US military.

Was this a calculated move to erase their history and cultural identity, to turn their sense of national pride and dignity into o­ne of self-loathing, the first thing that any imperial power would do to subjugate its newly colonised people?

The US soldiers heavily guarded the oil ministry but allowed other ministries, hospitals, universities, museums and libraries to be looted and some were set fires to.

What is most disturbing is an interview published o­n April 11 in Sweden's largest newspaper Dagens Nyhater , with Khaled Bayoumi, a Swedish researcher of middle eastern ancestry who had gone to Iraq to serve as human shield.

He described how US soldiers shot security guards at a local government building, then blasted the doors apart, and from the tanks came eager calls by Arabic interpreters encouraging people to plunder it.

Next he saw the tank crashed the entrance to the justice department and the plundering continued there.

"I stood in a large crowd and watched this together with them. They did not partake in the plundering but dared not interfere. Many had tears of shame in their eyes. The next morning the plundering spread to the modern museum. . . There were also two crowds there, o­ne that plundered and o­ne that watched with disgust" (2).

Benevolent superpower

It must be said that the US has been very successful in projecting itself as an enlightened and benevolent superpower that is always at the forefront in defending liberty and freedom.

This is partly because its cold war opponent, after all the account books are closed, was truly an evil empire, and partly because of the pervasive influence of Hollywood, books and television in popular culture and entertainment.

To be fair, the role America played and its sacrifice in World War II war in defeating Fascism was admirable and deserving of gratitude and praise. People in the third world envy the kind of individual liberty and the standard of living Americans enjoy.

The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution was a very remarkable document for its time, and the founding ideals of America were the inspiration for many subsequent liberation movements in history.

But after more than 200 years and what history has amply testified, today American presidents can no longer claim automatically the mantle of leadership for freedom and justice, and of virtue and righteousness.

President Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union address, "America will lead by defending liberty and justice because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere".

Without the context of Sept 11, what President Bush had said would have been greeted with cynicism if not hoots of laughter.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Americans asked, "Why do they hate us?" America gained a lot of sympathy after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington to the point that a few who had been critical of American interventions abroad turned apologists and grudging admirers of the United States.

It was difficult in the immediate aftermath of post-Sept 11 to be critical of the US in trying to understand the root cause of the terrorist attacks without being accused of complicity with Osama.

But that sympathy did not take very long to wear off, not least because America's self absorption and her president's penchant for reminding the world that God is o­n the side of America and for inventing self-righteous phrases like "they hate our freedom and democracy", and "axis of evil", but to a large measure because of the farce that had unfolded in Afghanistan after dislodging the Taliban and how their prisoners were treated in Guantanamo Bay.

Unprecedented outrage

But it was in the build up to the invasion of Iraq that we saw an unprecedented outrage the world over at the US as an arrogant hyperpower who, in the pursuit of political, economic and military domination, defies international law and conventions, rendering ineffective and toothless the many fragile international instruments for world peace that are just beginning to take shape.

All over the world, hundreds of thousands marched in majors cities, including her own citizens in American cities.

This must have brought bemused smiles to traditional critiques of American foreign policy who, until recently, have been limited to a benign small circle of the usual suspects - left-wing academics and champagne socialists.

But today just about every o­ne can quote a string of US interventions from the Vietnam war to Central and South America to the present day, if not the full list of Zoltan Grossman's ' A Century of US Military Interventions from Wounded Knee to Afghanistan' .

It is as though everyone had suddenly been reading Chomsky. Using the figleaf of freedom and democracy, America has intervened in every continent in its quest for global domination, using its military might to protect its economic interests.

This could not have been put more bluntly than by the New York Times star columnist Thomas Friedman who wrote o­n March 28, 1999, "For globalisation to work, America cant be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnel-Douglas, the designer of the F-15, and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technology is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps" (3).

Israeli factor

It is also something unprecedented that the war o­n Iraq and the flurry of diplomatic confrontations that preceded it had made many ordinary westerners became aware of Washington's greatest and most sustained act of hypocrisy, the continued support of Israel, the nation that was born of terrorism o­n land stolen from Palestinians.

As a nation, it could not have survived without US military and economic support. The nation that America unconditionally supports at her tax-payers' expense has famously perpetrated systemic, terrible injustice that fits the definition of crimes against humanity for half a century o­n the people they stole land from, has defied numerous UN resolutions, and is a threat to world peace because of its arsenal of WMD.

Going by the bad press Israel is receiving especially in Europe, it is as though the world is beginning to listen to what Osama has been trying to tell them, when in actual fact he is a belated newcomer in the cause of justice for Palestinians.

The Iraqis would not be able to forget Washington's hypocrisy in its determination to force regime change to bring of freedom and democracy o­n their behalf when the Saddam himself was America's Frankenstein in the 1980's.

How will post-Saddam Iraq turn out to be?

These are interesting times. Taking history as a guide and Washington's pronouncements before the war about excluding the UN, and notably France and Germany from any role in the administration and reconstruction of Iraq, it seemed that Washington is bent o­n creating a new fiefdom in the middle east.

Those who opposed the invasion must not partake in the spoils of war. But in today's global village, the world's public seems to have wised up to Washington's game. The unprecedented level of disgust that ordinary people have towards America's arrogance of power and hypocrisy has made the world public opinion a potent weapon against Washington's designs of global domination.

Increasingly, the Iraqis themselves have resoundingly expressed their desire for self-determination and want the Americans to leave.

Irredeemably immoral?

Does the world's and the Iraq's public opinion matter to President Bush and his cabal in Washington?

Probably not, but recent statements coming out from Washington regarding post-war administration of Iraq does sound qualitatively less arrogant than those made before the invasion.

Is America, the world's o­nly hyperpower, irredeemably immoral or does she still have the capacity to surprise old skeptics and the multitudes of new convert of critiques?

Can she put her immense wealth and power at the service of goodness and win back the friendship of the weak and the poor?

It is in America's long term interest that the hard men in Washington learn that other peoples too desire liberty, dignity and a decent living standard. If o­nly they would have a little humility and take from the following prayer (4):

O Master, grant that I may never seek

So much to be consoled as to console

To be understood as to understand

To be loved, as to love, with all my soul

(Make me an Instrument of your Peace. St Francis of Assisi)

Notes:

1) This excerpt was taken and translated from an appendix to the article "Comment l'Empire ottoman fut d pec (How the ottoman Empire was dismembered)" by Henry Laurens , Le Monde Diplomatique , April 2003

2) From Counterpunch Diaries , April 16, 2003 by Alexander Cockburn, www.counterpunch.org

3) From The clash of Fundamentalisms - Crusades, Jihads and Modernity by Tariq Ali, Verso, London, 2002

4) From Why Do People Hate America? by Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies, Icon Books, Cambridge, 2002