2003:  The Cultural Crime of the Century

The Money or Your Lives: Wild West in Iraq
Afnan Fatani, Special to Arab News
From May 9, 2003, Arab News (of an event that occurred on April 9)
Originally at http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=26049 (link dead)

“The money or your lives” — this infamous Wild West slogan best describes, in a nutshell, the armed-robbery situation in Iraq. The tragedy is that at the end of this Western-style holdup, Bush and his neoconservative highwaymen got away with both — the money and the lives of thousands of innocent Iraqi men, women and children.

Baghdad, the shimmering legendary city of King Gilgamesh, of Scheherazade and the Thousand and One Nights, of Harun Ar-Rashid, of flying carpets, of bazaars, of Aladdin and his lamp, of Sinbad and his seven voyages, and of Ali Baba and the 40 thieves, has now been ransacked, raped, trashed and pillaged. But who is responsible for all the thieving, lawlessness and chaos in Baghdad? Who is the real Ali Baba in this modern tale of theft, deception and wanton destruction?

On the day US Marines captured Baghdad, the only people celebrating their victory were the thousands of liberated looters, drifters, criminals and arsonists armed with AK-47s that the Americans deliberately let loose on the streets, frantically waving the V-sign and cynically shouting “Bush Good — Saddam Bad.” Only a few weeks back, these same criminal crowds were kissing the feet of the Iraqi dictator, chanting “Our soul, our blood, we sacrifice to Saddam.” Decent Iraqis stayed at home, and when they did venture out into the lawlessness and chaos outside, they were not celebrating; they were demonstrating. To them, the real culprits were the American invaders themselves, not their rampaging Iraqi goons and cronies.

There are now credible and independent eyewitness accounts that US Marines were actually encouraging mobs to ransack and destroy the administrative and cultural institutions of the country....  continued