The problem this time is that the victor came under the guise of “liberator”. Had he not done so, things would be just the same as they were when Babylon was thriving.

To most of us, a liberator would come in shining armor riding a white steed. Barring that, he might also be an existential hero from the books of Albert Camus. We have neither in today’s battlefield. Instead, we have Enronic-type vultures hovering over the carcass. The US government is doing its best to make their life easier and their predatory activities profitable.

When people in the Middle East made it clear that they were against the war, Americans (a sizable majority) could not understand how we could “stand for Saddam”. We didn’t. Saddam is not Iraq. Wanting him out does not by necessity mean the raping of Iraq under the banners of “liberation” and “rebuilding”.

Now that the agenda is becoming reality, we need some answers.

Haliburton and Bechtel, to name but two, have landed sizeable contracts from the fallen Babylonian cow. Dick Cheney and George Shultz (Reagan’s man) have undeniable ties with those two companies. Ahmed Chalabi, the Bush administration’s choice to lead Iraq, is a figure out of Enron itself.

The Swiss have just come out with information about him that would make the Houston executives proud. How do we square this activity with the declared aim of WMD, terrorist attacks, and regional peace?

The small mercies inherent in this behavior are the facts that American companies are the best at what they do, if they decide to do it properly. Iraqis will probably get the best Baghdad airport money can buy; they will have an oil industry that can squeeze the last drop from the last pebble; and they will probably have hospitals that brandish the latest equipment available in the world (as for doctors, the Iraqis have them.

They are the pride of the Arab world). It is obvious then that the issue is not anti-American commercial activities.

Administration official have been acting like a medieval conqueror with little or no subtlety. They are speaking of “punishing” France for its anti-war stand. They are on record as not giving French companies any contracts in Iraq. They have just squeezed some 100 million into the coffers of Egypt to keep it quiet. Israel got some 10 billion dollars. This feudal system of reward and punishment will render all international norms null and void. The United Nations will be the first casualty. Such behavior is the prime cause of mistrust of American intentions in the area. It is obvious to us that the Bush administration used the “terror” agenda to convince the American people of the need to invade Iraq, while the real agenda was nothing more than dividing the spoils.

The end result of such reasoning is that we are in for a period of successive wars to “change the regime”, to “liberate”, or even to protect the homeland from the heights of Mount Everest, etc. These will be the declared aims. The real ones are that Bechtel or Boeing are making out of contracts. This is a miserable state of affairs brought to us by men and women of no vision and no sense of humanity’s raison d’etre. America’s intolerance of dissent on the international stage has been an eye opener. It is something akin to Roman emperors dealing with their vast empire. The Romans never claimed democracy or the free will of nations as their policy. America, on the other hand, is the homeland of Woodrow Wilson. Is that heritage a matter of history now? It is petty and humiliating to deal with France in this crass commercial manner. France, I’m sure, would not lose much since the Arabs should and would give it all other contracts from the remaining 21 nations of the League. That would be enough if the issue were financial. But money is not the only issue.

Instead of sitting down with their allies and talking things over as any mature statesman would advise, the Americans are aggressive and belligerent. People in the Middle East are watching all of this and having their worst fears confirmed. If France gets this treatment, what are we to expect? Throwing bones to “friends” and starving foes was the declared policy of Nero; and Nero was the precursor of Saddam and his ilk.