The American and British forces were just watching the events as spectators, doing nothing at all to prevent the crimes — which will be added to the crimes these two countries have committed against Arabs and Muslims.

I do not want to give the impression that the scenes of the killing of innocent Iraqi people were less important or less painful. But having said that, the looting and burning of the monuments of Iraqi culture and civilization will have more dangerous consequences for the Iraqi people in the long run.

The wounds of the injured will heal with the passing of time, and those who remain alive will glorify the dead. Destroyed buildings can be reconstructed. But what is lost in the burning and destruction of museums and libraries can never be restored, because that collection of civilization came into being over a period of several centuries and represents the collective memory of Iraqi society and its roots in the past.

What happened in Baghdad was tantamount to erasing the Iraqi memory in a continuous effort to obliterate the identity of the Iraqi people. I am sure that it will be followed by moves to forge a new history, which will be injected into the minds of the Iraqis in the form “advanced” curriculum prepared either in the United States or Israel.

This process can be explained as a move to reprogram the Iraqi people to make them a tool against other Arabs and Muslims, and the intention may be to apply the same principle to the other countries in the region.

In my opinion, this move will fail, as have most colonialist experiments.

The biggest obstacle facing this latest colonialist is an old book: the Qur’an. It is available at all the libraries of the world, and because of its existence it will not be easy for the colonialists to erase the identity of Islamic nations. God has pledged that He will protect the holy book from all attempts at forgery: “Certainly We have revealed the reminder (the Qur’an) and surely We are its Guardian” (Qur’an 15:9).

But after watching the scenes of looting and burning at the cultural monuments in Iraq, I finally understood the reason for the consistent efforts in our beloved country to destroy historical sites in different parts of the Kingdom.

In my view, if an Iraq-like situation happens (God forbid) to us, we would be able to get out and tell the gangs of thieves and troublemakers: “We have already done your work for you!”

“We are a society of Barbarians!”

“Do whatever mischief you want, but you will never find a museum to loot or a general library to set on fire here! You will find only shops and supermarkets filled with consumer goods, which are imported and so not even made by our own hands!”