Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.02.2005, Síða 5

EDITORIAL
by Valur Gunnarsson
When I first went to Saudi-Arabia
in the summer of 1991, they hailed
me as liberator. Granted, they
mistook me for an American. These
days, if Europeans are mistaken for
Americans in the Middle East, they
tend to be shot on sight. This says
something about the results of US
policy in the past decade and a half.
After the end of World War
Two, when the European powers
retreated from the Middle East, the
Americans did not waste time in
taking their place. This was, by and
large, seen as a good trade off by the
local populations. The Americans
weren’t obsessed with colouring the
map pink or blue, as were the British
and the French who had come
before. The belief that the US was
a new type of Great Power seemed
justified when, in 1956, The British
and French, in a final bid to reassert
their dominance, invaded Egypt with
Israeli assistance. Not only did the
US not take part in the invasion, it
forced their allies to withdraw.
The Cold War divided the Middle
East, with the US and the USSR
pouring arms into their client states.
But, unlike previous “protectors,”
the US did not keep a large standing
army in the region. US support for
Israel angered many Arabs, and US
marines were killed in Beirut and
even in Germany. Still, when the
US forces entered Kuwait 1991, it
was seen, by most Arabs, as a good
thing. Why may explain why I was
met with feelings of friendship and
gratitude on the streets of Riyadh.
Taking a tip from Stalin?
Sure, Kuwait was carved out of the
Ottoman Empire by the British for
oil reasons. And the Emir is not the
world’s most democratic leader. But,
the people of Kuwait were not doubt
better off without Saddam than
under his control. And Saddam’s
invasion of Kuwait was a clear
example of one country attacking
another. The US attack on Iraq in
1991 was, as these things go, a just
war. However, the US Army stopped
at the border of Iraq, only to resume
its offensive more than a decade
later. Having encouraged the Iraqi
people to rise up against the dictator,
the Americans now stood by as the
rebels were massacred by Saddam’s
forces. A historical parallel could
be the Red Army stopping on the
Vistula in 1944. As the population
of Warsaw rose up to get rid of
their oppressors, Stalin ordered his
troops to wait while Hitler’s forces
levelled the city and massacred
the Poles. Only after the Nazis
had re-established control did the
Russians take the city. It has often
been supposed that Stalin made his
decision to make the Poles more
pliant in the aftermath of the war,
having been bled to death by Hitler.
Surely, the Americans would never
do such a thing in the Middle East.
Memories from another era
But just as the Red Army did not
abandon territories it had liberated,
BOMBING-STARVATION-BOMBING:
Why don’t the Iraqis love the US?
By Sy
Western Civilisation thinks in term of binary opposites.
There’s black and white, left and right, men and women,
us and them, truth and lies. This was particularly
apparent during the Cold War. There was red and blue,
East and West, communists and, well, peace loving
democrats. Us and them. Our truth, their lies. Then, in
1989, it all collapsed. The wall came down. There was
no them anymore. So who was the Us? What was the
U.S.? Along with the Berlin Wall, Western thought
virtually collapsed overnight. Nobody understood what
the thinkers were thinking anymore. The thinkers didn’t
even know what the hell they were thinking. Everybody
was quoting each other quoting each other. The poets
wrote about poetry rather than about the world. Nothing
made sense. The whole of Western civilisation was
disappearing into a bottomless pit of Post-Modernism.
And then, September the 11th happened. We had an
enemy again. There was a them again, and an us. A good
and an evil. But, somehow, the line between truth and
lies are not that apparent any more.
Us and them
so the Americans did not leave the
Middle East. US soldiers in the
neighbourhood of the holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, the starvation
of Iraq and intermittent bombings,
the continuing occupation of
Palestine by US supported Israel;
all these factor combined to breed
resentment, then hatred. The hatred
simmered, then exploded.
Now, the US keeps a large standing
Army in the Middle East, guarding
the oil supplies they had previously
sold willingly. And it is no longer
safe for Westerners to walk the
streets of Riyadh, as I once did. Back
in 1991. But that was during another
era.
Grapevine will be back on the streets
on March 11th. It’ll be the 20th issue
so far, and the last Grapevine I’ll
edit. For now. Until then...
Maurizio
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