I should have made it clear that I stand for the Iraqi people and against the US hidden agenda, but not for Saddam; and that I blame the current American administration for this mess, not the whole country.

I realize now that most Americans do believe their government propaganda. They do believe their armies are here to kill us, destroy and occupy us for our own benefit, even though the US government never thought of doing so in the case of Israel, Turkey, India or Russia, each of which has killed, tortured and expelled more Muslims than the Iraqi regime ever did — and continue to do so.

Even in the case of Iraq, most Americans don’t know, or maybe just forgot, that Saddam — like many other dictators — came to power with American help. And that the Iraqi revolution, like so many that have taken place in the Third World, was American made.

I understand that most Americans do not read about Arabs, do not follow Arab developments, and generally do not care about us. When a crisis involving American interests — like the present one or the Iranian revolution or the Lockerbie case or the Taleban refusal to hand over Osama — the public tend to rely on TV news for information and explanation. US media, in turn, rely on the government for clues. The agenda is easily set, and the uninformed public easily deceived. This is not my conclusion, but one I have encountered in scores of books and academic research papers.

I try to explain to my fellow Arabs and Muslims that the American people genuinely believe they are helping us. Unlike the rest of us, who know what “realpolitik” is all about, many Americans tend to trust that their government is always made of good guys, that their generals are the nicest people on earth, and that their president is an angel. This belief is made stronger by the fact that some of these men and women were indeed as good as can be. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John and Robert Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Cyrus Vance, Omar Bradley and Norman Schwarzkopf are but some examples of great US civilian and military leaders.

Many decent US citizens also trust that their government would only act and behave on the principles of their great constitution. They have no idea about the catastrophes American support for the wrong dictators and regimes did to many countries, especially Third World countries. CIA dirty tricks and the indecent role of that organization played in many bloody coups are mostly learned about from Hollywood movies. Few Americans know about the existence of the infamous CIA training school for Latin American dictators, past and present. Even the bloody history of the Vietnam saga is not fully fathomed.

As for the wars in the eighteenth century that killed most of the 50 million Native Americans, the average Americans probably thinks it was just an unfortunate episode in a long forgotten, never repeated history. The same could be said about the treatment of blacks — from the slavery of the past to the racial discrimination of today.

Some of my fellow Arabs and Muslims believe me when I tell them all this, while others have their doubts. They ask: How come the people of the greatest nation on earth are so naive and uninformed? How could they trust that politicians are will always say the truth? Why would they believe that leaders go to war and take so much risk and costs just to make the world a “rose garden”? How did they buy into such assertions from the same people who withdrew from the Kyoto Treaty, and refused to join the world community in many others that would have limited the production and use of nuclear and chemical weapons and land mines, and would have established the first World Court?

Ignorance is no excuse — not today, and certainly not after Sept. 11, my listeners say. What the US government is doing to the world should be of great interest to its electorate. After all, wars are waged in their name.

And I have to agree with them.

Now back to your criticism of my article. The assumption here is that America came for a certain mission: Remove Saddam, democratize the regime, and then just pack and go. But this view is contested by the same people who drew the blueprint for this war. (Please check their articles in the “Weekly Standard”). And by the choice of pro-Israel leaders for the next stage.

The Iraqi invasion was first submitted to Benjamin Netanyahu, the former prime minister of Israel after his election in 1996, by Richard Perle and like minded group. Ironically, this extremist Israeli leader thought the plan was too extreme. In 2000, the same Zionist group joined their fellow neoconservatives in the Bush administration, Cheney and Rumsfeld. The plan was resubmitted to Mr. Bush who was reluctant to accept it for lack of justification. After Sept. 11, the same original scheme was back on the table, and this time Bush approved.

The plan’s reasoning for this invasion is pure “realpolitik”. It calls for redrawing the region map, destabilizing governments, invading countries, and securing the world greatest known oil reserves. Most pro-war Americans may not have read that, but we did. If we read from the same page, we wouldn’t have this argument. So, my friends, let’s start reading!