By Osama El-Sherif
WE SAW two faces of President Clinton in as many days. We saw him light a candle of peace in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem amid grateful Palestinians. Then, we saw him stone faced, sitting in his Oval Office addressing the American people as he defended his decision to bomb Iraq.
President Clinton made another video-taped address to the Arab and Muslim people in which he explained why it was necessary to bomb Iraq at this time and in which he again outlined that the US has no quarrel with the Iraqi people or the Muslim world.
The mere idea that the presidential video message would make Arabs and Muslims accept the thrashing of Iraq is insulting. US officials, on the eve of "Operation Desert Fox", made it clear that they were sensitive to the fact that the holy month of Ramadan was only days away and that the president was keen on wrapping up the assault before the onset of the fasting season.
The United States never ceases to surprise us as it sows insults and injuries, and reaps a harvest of hate and acrimony.
What was Operation Desert Fox all about? How was it different from previous military campaigns against Iraq, like Desert Storm and Desert Shield? Who comes up with these "romantic" Hollywoodish code names anyway? And what about the timing of the latest attack? How is it related to Monicagate and the impeachment of President Clinton? Why is it that the British seem to be instigating and leading the conspiracy against Iraq?
These are some of the many questions that Arab columnists, thinkers, politicians as well as the man in the street were asking themselves as they watched on live TV for four successive nights smart but deadly bombs falling on Baghdad.
Scenes of the bombardment were almost unreal. Some Western journalists made outrageous comparisons between Baghdad's night sky during the Gulf War and in the last few days, the case being that there was more action, and more thrill in 1991.
The declared goals of the campaign were gradually shifted as the bombing continued. First, it was to degrade Saddam's capabilities to produce weapons of mass destruction. So the obvious targets, one would conclude, were suspected chemical and biological manufacturing facilities. But if US and British forces bombed such sites, what about lethal fall-out? Wouldn't millions of innocent Iraqis die as a result of exposure to deadly chemical and biological agents? No answer was given. And then the military targets began to diversify. Top brass began bragging about hitting security and police buildings, army bunkers, telecommunication and TV transmission towers, airfields, radar facilities, oil refineries, conventional armaments...etc. It became a war to reduce Iraq to ruins.
The world saw fallen civilian victims, damaged hospitals, colleges and residential buildings turned to rubble. What was going on? The sly fox had changed objectives. He was not after WMD-abbreviation used by US officials to refer to weapons of mass destruction-the crafty fox was after something else: to destabilize Saddam's regime and cripple Iraq even further.
Suddenly, just as it started, the Anglo-Saxon aggression came to a halt, not because of Ramadan, since Baghdad and other Iraqi cities sustained heavy bombing on the first day of the fasting month.
Four days and over 500 Cruise missiles later, the "objective" was achieved. But four days were enough to shake and loosen America's foreign policy assets in the Middle East for a long time to come. Four days that restored to Saddam Hussein much of his lost legitimacy as leader of Iraq. Four days that energized and inflamed anti-American sentiments in the region, just when they were showing signs of abating.
However, those four days and nights had unleashed so much hate for America and Britain among the Arabs, that we found ourselves back in the early days of the Gulf War. So much hate that US officials actually felt it back in Washington DC.
Yankeephobia had spread like fire in Cairo, Amman, Gaza, Damascus and even spilled into some European capitals. Hate and defiance had replaced fear in the sense that Baghdad slept every night with its lights on, like it did on normal nights, indifferent to falling American and British bombs.
Afterwards, travel warnings, bans, the closure of US embassies-around 40 missions in Africa alone-and the tightened security. Why?
You pass by the US embassy compound in Amman, already designed and built as a fortress, and you see signs of terror. Fresh cement barriers encircling the compound, heavily armed paramilitary police besieging the complex, nervous diplomats canceling Christmas get-togethers and burrowing in their artificially-lit offices with shuttered windows.
Nevertheless, life for Iraqis and indeed for all those whose lives have been poisoned by America through sanctions, bombs and depravation goes on. Inside there is anger, bottled and building up. It is the kind of anger and hate that gives birth to the likes of Ben Laden and thousands like him who give up their lives to hurt America and avenge its crimes.
There is a unique understanding across the Arab world of what Desert Fox was all about? It is seen as the embodiment of evil; aimed at every Iraqi, every Arab and every Muslim. That's what the newspaper columnists are saying, what the imams are shouting from their pulpits and what fathers and mothers are telling their children. The children who stay up at night to watch Baghdad, the city that keeps popping up in their history, geography, Arabic and religion books, burn by American bombs.
America's legacy is tons of hate injected into young Arab generations for everything it stands for. The fox has acted foolishly and may have strayed in the desert. Iraq, even at its bleakest hour, seems invincible while President Clinton awaits trial for perjury and obstruction of justice by the US Senate just like a common criminal.
On the other hand, one wonders why America hates us so much; why Americans feel nothing for an Arab country that has bled for eight long years, that suffered more than enough under brutal sanctions. How could hate filter down to encompass us all? How does it become a natural reflex, a built in mechanism on both sides?
Are we wrong to associate Clinton's tantrums with Monicagate? Are we naive not to associate the bombings with the impeacehment proceedings? Are we to draw is a line between their weapons of mass destruction and ours? And then, what? What comes after Desert Fox? Are there more romantic names for deadly adventures?
Desert Fox will cast its ugly shadow on relations with the United States for a long time to come. Fear has been replaced with hate, and hate is a blind anti-colonial emotion that you see in the eyes of people in Cairo and Amman, Sanna and Muscat, Damascus and Palestine.