Manufacturing Victory

In the early days of the war on Iraq, just after the news was confirmed that the invading British troops had in fact occupied the tiny port town of Umm al-Qasr, a crowd of Iraqis encircled an al-Jazeera cameraman and reporter.

The scene was taken in a hurry, at the outskirts of Umm al-Qasr, Al Jazeera said. Many faces forced themselves above the shoulders of an older man who was the one interviewed. They all screamed on their own, some demanding water and food and others angrily screaming, just because they can.

An older man, with a darkened, tired face, drowning in wrinkles and washed with sweat fought for a spot, struggled to reach the microphone and finally burst out with screams. "Enough humiliation, enough degradation. All of them are shit. Saddam took us from one defeat to another, and now to occupation. The Americans and the British are stripping our women's cloths to look for weapons. They are here for oil. No one cares about us. Just leave us alone, leave us alone."

Maybe the Iraqi man was terrified from the consequences of his inflaming remarks, a backlash from the Iraqi regime or the occupying forces. But apparently, the level of anger, humiliation, defiance, and a complex ray of emotions were much stronger than fear. The chances were that the man never saw himself on television, since his town had no access to electricity, and maybe he didn't care.

Social scientists, on a group level, and psychiatrists, mostly on an individual level, strived throughout the years to explain why we behave the way we do. I wonder what the circumstances were that drove an old Iraqi man to declare to the whole world "they are all shit"? I am equally interested to know when the nations of the world reach a similar conclusion, not necessarily to make a similar declaration, but to realize the injustice of it all.

Following the end of the Gulf War in 1991, America declared victory and the celebrations began. Iraq was left with tons of depleted Uranium that is destined to remain there for millions of years. Iraq was also left with harsher sanctions that claimed the lives of over a million innocents. But the victory was beyond sweet then, and the dancing in the streets brought Americans from all walks of life together like never before.

It was not about oil then, and it's not about oil now, we were told, and most of us agreed. It was about liberating Kuwait, restoring democracy (what democracy in Kuwait?), it was about "containing Saddam Hussein", it was about ridding Iraq of its Weapons of Mass Destruction (where are these weapons?), it was about regime change in Iraq, it was about protecting Iraq's neighbors, it was about redrawing the map of the Middle East, it was about liberating the Iraqi people. But never had the United States any intention in controlling Iraq's oil reserve (which could reach 200 billion barrels of oil soon, compared to 35 billion barrels acquired by the US), or creating permanent military bases in the Middle East, to contain Iran, threaten Syria and protect Israel. If you say so, you are paranoid, pathetic and simply stupid. Yep, the American government would designate nearly one hundred billion dollars (estimated to last for less than a year) during one of its worst financial struggles in years, just to help those poor miserable Iraqis.

As silly as such a possibility might sound, Gallop polls are telling us that a great majority of Americans believe it. True, corporate media deserves to be blamed for deceiving the people, but how much of the blame lies on the shoulders of the people themselves?

Why don't Americans ask why aren't we storming African countries, East and West to "restore democracy"? They are certainly in a much a greater need than Iraq for this rare commodity that is only defined by the United States. Perhaps our troops will head to Africa's dictatorships when cocoa and rubber prove valuable in the international market, especially since the distance between Congo and Israel is way too far and we were promised no Armageddon there anyway.

Why don't Americans ask why their government allows itself to develop, own and use Weapons of Mass Destruction (The nuclear bomb in Japan, Agent Orange in Vietnam, and Deplete Uranium in Iraq and Yugoslavia), but we must go to war to rid Iraq of its weapons, although, oops we didn't find any such weapons in Iraq anyway? Are we just too distracted by the fabricated stories in which our media is keeping us engaged so that we don't dare ask the relevant questions: 'Coalition forces located a yacht were Saddam Hussein's son Udi used to have orgies' ..'Coalition forces located torture chambers where Iraqi Olympic team members were kept if they failed to perform well' .. and many more tales that shall generate Hollywood hundreds of millions of dollars for years to come since our chaps would love to kick Iraqi ass in movies for such cruelty.

Aren't we concerned of what our marginalization of the United Nations would cost us in the long run? Isn't anyone worried about where our arrogance might lead us? (Even France should be 'punished', Powell says for rejecting our Iraq war, so much for democracy.) Have we all forgotten how terrorism is directly manufactured by our own irresponsible foreign policy? Is this the best we could have done to honor the memory of 9/11 victims, and are these our vows that resound, "never again"?

I don't know what it will take for us to acquire the courage of that Iraqi man of Umm al-Qasr to break out from pain and scream in defiance against those who are gambling on our fate and our future, who manipulate our losses to serve their interests, who use our bodies like bridges to cross from one nation to another, from one conquest to another.

Sure, "Iraq is free" and everything is grand, for maybe a month or so, before more bloodshed restarts somewhere, before terrorists strike, and calls for vengeance dominate our lives again. Then, most likely, an 'embodied' academic or experts will appear on Fox news to tell us how 'militant Islam' is the one to blame for the world's evil, and conveniently, most of us will readily agree.

Baroud is the editor-in-chief of the PalestineChronicle.com and editor of the book entitled "Searching Jenin: Eyewitness Accounts of the Israeli Invasion."