Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid

Taking into account the manner in which events in Baghdad are being regarded by Arabs and the media, Ali Al-Khafji had cause to ask whether they were working against the Iraqis out of hatred or something else. The answer is of course that it is not hatred but disappointment, based on the Arabs’ past experience of an Iraq full of strong men.

The Arab media is shaped by political literature born in the age of the Arab rightists 50 years ago. Despite the fact that on the global level the left is on the wane and is in fact almost extinct, the hereditary tide has borne it on and will continue to treat the region’s issues in the same old image of what the world should be like.

Even Baghdad’s fall was evidence of the erroneous hereditary Arab analysis. Most people came to certain conclusions — the most prominent being the claims of a conspiracy of surrender. If surrender was indeed the conspiracy behind the abortive “great battle” then which of these official powers participated in its downfall: The army, the Fedayeen, the National Guard or Saddam’s personal guard?

It would have been better for the person who came up with this conspiracy theory to acknowledge the discrepancy in strength between the two sides and to consider the defeat a foregone conclusion. With time a new problem materialized — the voice of Saddam; evidence that he too is on the battlefield.

My considered opinion is that there was a conspiracy, but it was based on the acknowledgement that defeat was inevitable.

Arabs, it is true to say, are “enemies of what they are ignorant of.” They haven’t got even the vaguest idea of just how evil Saddam’s regime was, because two forces tried to conceal the truth. The first is the Arab media, which had been bought and had no qualms about justifying even the most horrific crimes committed against Iraqi civilians.

The other force believes in the old Iraqi leadership and its political discourse and doesn’t comprehend the nature of the regime or believe what is being said about it after its fall.

It is bad luck for the Iraqis that the alliance to bring down the regime was with the Americans, because if it had happened with the Iranians, the Russians or even the Brazilians, Arab feelings might have been different. Their hatred of America has blinded the Arab media and made them unable to differentiate between issues. The Kuwaitis have been chastised because they depended on the Americans to get their stolen homes and lives back in 1991.

When Palestinian President Yasser Arafat would go into Gaza amidst all the ululations of citizens as they threw roses at him, the other Arabs were casting stones at him and accusing him of collusion.

Iraqis must decide for themselves how and what they want, taking no heed of the advice of others, even if these others are their Arab brethren. That is what Abdel Naser decided in the last two years of his life — as did Sadat after him, then the Palestinians, and then a number of others.