Flights of Fantasy

Flights of Fantasy
—Firas Al-Atraqchi


When it comes to the Middle East, the powers that be really do believe some animals are more equal than others

LOUD EXPLOSIONS shattered the crisp night sky as thousands of Iraqis came out of their houses to watch what was going on.

“Switch off the lights in the house, Sana,” yelled Om Hashim over the din of the crackling fireworks. Sana ran back into the house and plunged the house into darkness. She noticed that everyone else in the block had done the same. She returned to her mother’s side to watch the wonderful spectacle above. Om Hashim put her arm around her daughter and held her close.

This was a historic moment. Iraq was celebrating its freedom from tyranny and oppression. One year after the fall of the dictator, one year after the American liberators took down his statue and gave all Iraqis liberty, freedom of speech and hope for the future.

“Youm [Mother], come, they are having street parties in Karada, Mansour, Hayy Al-Khathra’a and Tahrir Square,” shouted Hashim from the rooftop of their four-bedroom house. His mother looked up at him, the cell phone clasped to his left ear.

Everyone piled into the shiny family Toyota, which they had bought with Om Hashim’s new salary from working as a coordinator of foreign business investments in Baghdad. Hashim got behind the wheel and they excitedly rushed to Tahrir Square. Fireworks were still lighting up the dark sky, transforming night into day much as the US liberation of Iraq has done for Iraqi society.

They parked several hundred meters from Tahrir Square and made the rest of their way on foot. Everywhere they went they saw jubilant Iraqis dancing and singing. A passing man with a megaphone urged Iraqis to remember that US forces were like Allah’s angels come down from the sky. Helicopters hovered overhead and within moments, confetti marked by the colors of the Iraqi and American flags filtered down onto the sea of jubilant faces. Unarmed Coalition soldiers nearby came running to join their Iraqi hosts, dancing and singing with the liberated people of this ancient land.

“Ahebkoum wallah ahebkoum [I love you all, by God, I do],” shouted a burly, mustached Iraqi man of about 60 as he grabbed a young US Marine and hugged him for all he was worth.

“I couldn’t believe the love and adoration we were getting,” Private First Class Josh Hamblin of Wichita, Kansas later told the media.

The Iraqis had plenty to celebrate: All the oil facilities in the country were fixed and oil revenue was flooding government coffers; an oil pipeline was approved by Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani to run from Kirkuk to the Israeli port of Haifa; the Islamic Council of Iraq had condemned the Palestinian Intifada and said more concern should be paid for innocent Israeli lives; Coalition Provisional Authority Head L. Paul Bremer had announced 350,000 new jobs would be available in the public sector by the end of April; Iraqi companies were in charge of the reconstruction effort; Halliburton, Bechtel and Siemens (among others) had hired a cadre of local Iraqi businessmen to oversee the maintenance of these countries’ operations in Iraq; the Iraqi Army was securing the country’s borders and US forces were going home; the Baathists had been chased out of Iraq; there had been no abductions, no rape and no crime in Baghdad, Mosul and Basra in more than six weeks; a recent Iraqi poll showed that all Shi’a, Sunni, Christian and Kurdish Iraqis were in favor of compensating Jews who left Iraq in the past 50 years and/or giving them their country back; and women and children could walk the streets at any time of day.

“Hallaw Om Hashim,” said Hajji Abou Fadel, a former political prisoner who was now manager of a new and free newspaper. Om Hashim turned around to greet her old friend and neighbor. He announced that his son, Ali, had just had a baby whom they’d named George.

“Ali wanted a little brother for Condi,” he said.

The fireworks were still crackling overhead. They were loud. Very loud. Buzzing sound. Ringing in the ears. That damned sound just wouldn’t quit…

…Donald lifted his head off his desk at the Pentagon and picked up the screaming telephone. “Wake up, Mr. Secretary,” his aide barked at the other end of the line. Rumsfeld half opened his eyes and moaned. It was Monday, and there would be hell to pay for Bob Woodward’s new book The Path to War. Not another book, he mumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes. He gently took the receiver off the hook and closed his eyes, hoping to return to Iraq.

Welcome to the world of fantasy that prevails in the Bush White House. A fantasy that perpetuates the Great Barrier Wall in Israel and the notion that pulling out of Gaza but splitting the West Bank is the next, best hope for peace. A fantasy that supports the popular military myth that hitting resistance and rebel fighters harder and faster, killing scores of innocent women and children in the process, is the best way to bring freedom and security to war-ravaged Iraq.

Or the war-ravaged Middle East. It is becoming abundantly clear that the Bush administration has abandoned any real hopes of a lasting peace in the Middle East. The timing of it all is mind-boggling. The siege of Fallujah (where some 873 civilians were killed and 2,203 wounded), the siege of Najaf, the holiest city for the Shi’a Muslims of the world, the US promise to either capture or kill Shi’a cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, the Bush administration’s unprecedented negation of the Palestinian Right of Return, the building of the Israeli separation wall, Bush’s branding of the Palestinian National Authority as a non-partner, the killing of Sheikh Yassin, and the recent killing of Rantissi are causing an unprecedented wave of anti-Americanism in the Arab Middle East. Moderates who were usually outspoken in their support of the US and Middle East political reform have now either changed their tune or withdrawn into a sullen silence.

How could events deteriorate so quickly?

Do pigs fly? Does a racist mentality allow for opposing views? No, on all accounts. Racism is the answer.

According to The Telegraph’s Sean Rayment, a British officer “who agreed to the interview on condition of anonymity, said that part of the problem was that American troops viewed Iraqis as untermenschen [the Nazi expression for ‘sub-humans and Hitler’s favorite word for inferior Jews.] They are not concerned about the Iraqi loss of life in the way the British are. Their attitude towards the Iraqis is tragic, it’s awful.” The British officer accused the US Military of targeting “terrorists” located in densely populated civilian areas: “They may well kill the terrorists in the barrage, but they will also kill and maim innocent civilians. That has been their response on a number of occasions. It is trite, but American troops do shoot first and ask questions later. They are very concerned about taking casualties and have even trained their guns on British troops, which has led to some confrontations between soldiers,” The Telegraph reported.

So if the US Military considers Iraqis inferior beings, it is then academic to extrapolate that US lawmakers view Iraqis as lesser peoples. Perhaps that helps explain why the Bush administration is so irked by news reports showing dead Iraqi women and children. Perhaps it helps explain why US officials accuse Arab media of being propagandists and liars. Perhaps it also explains why every Iraqi protestation in the last few years about lack of WMDs was shot down by US media, and Iraqi officials were branded expert liars.

“We are resorting to collective punishment,” Newsweek editor Fareed Zakaria told Chris Matthews on Hardball recently. He denied the official US position that fighters in the “Sunni Triangle” are dead-enders. He also claimed uneven-handedness in Iraq was feeding the “insurgency.”

As civilian casualties escalate into the hundreds, US Military commanders, hoping to save face in Iraq and the Arab World, have begun accusing the defenders of Fallujah of hiding behind women and children. That statement flies in the face of video footage shot by Al-Jazeera and carried on ABC, CBS, MSNBC, and NBC clearly showing Iraqi fighters running between streets, in trenches, atop buildings, firing their RPGs and automatic weapons. No women and children in sight.

The Middle East is going through an untenable period of imbalance. Iraq, which was considered a strategic balance to Israel and Iran, is on the verge of collapse, according to Middle East analysts. During the standoff with Al-Sadr, the young Shi’a cleric said he was the right hand of Hamas and Hezbollah. When Sheikh Yassin was killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis — Shi’a and Sunni alike — took to the streets and protested the Anglo-American-Zionist aggression against Islam.

When Fallujah was pounded by F-16s and AC-130 gunships, Palestinians took to the streets to protest what they called “the murder of Iraq.” Two conflicts that were once seen as mutually exclusive have now become mutually inclusive. Increasingly, Arab opposition newspapers, union leaders, and parliamentarians have linked the two crises and pointed to a greater war against Arabs and Islam. So angered and hateful of the US and Israel are the Arabs that they have put aside a 1,000-year theological differences and vowed to fight as one. Witness the widespread Arab Sunni support of the Shi’a uprising in southern Iraq.

There is arrogance in the West that everything Western is superior, exemplary and ideal for all cultures. In 2002, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said that Islamic culture was inferior to the advanced Western civilization. This school of thought is prevalent throughout every sector of US society and has been nurtured by the various “hate-films” that Hollywood churns out every year. Arabs are portrayed as stupid, animalistic, amoral, sex-starved, abusing, wife-battering terrorists who seek to kill themselves (and their children) so that they can languish with 72 virgins in heaven. That Arabs saved Western civilization by translating the Greek philosophies and complementing them, introducing algebra, geometryand astronomy to Europe is left out. That the first medical institute in world history was established in — wait for it — southern Iraq by the Muslims is also lost on the US public.

Perhaps this arrogance also explains why “the axis of evil” slogan was so popular with Washington neo-cons. Inferior people are considered satanic and evil. After all, was this not how slavery thrived in the continental US in the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries? Were not the slaves considered by white supremacist landowners to be cursed by God, soulless and would never see the gates of heaven? Was this not how Apartheid was allowed to survive in the heart of black Africa?

Racism. The same racism that allowed 800,000 Rwandan Hutus and Tutsis to die exactly 10 years ago while the so-called compassionate superpower focused on twiddling their thumbs. The same racism that refused to apologize for centuries of slavery at the Durban Conferences in South Africa on September 8, 2001.

Zakaria put it best when he told Matthews how Iraqis must feel: “We lost four on our side and they lost 700. What do you think that tells them? That their lives are not nearly as important?”

Welcome to free Iraq.

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