One Year Later: In Shock and Awe I Remain

By Ayman S. Ashour

Twelve months after the original shock and awe, I am a lot clearer about how I feel about the war on Iraq and the subsequent occupation. A year ago, I knew the reasons given for the war were made up, so I couldn’t support the war. But I also struggled with opposing the war knowing that Saddam Hussein has been a brutal and oppressive thug. I felt that it is immoral to make any argument for prolonging the rule of Saddam over his helpless people.

Today, I am certain about my opposition to this war. Before our very eyes, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has delivered us to a world of hate, division and conflict. Never before has the standing of the US been so low in the Islamic world. Never before have the advocates of democracy and modernization in Muslim and Arab countries like Egypt, where I was born, felt so defeated and so isolated. The truth about the US lies that justified the war is before the whole world to see.

Before the Iraq fiasco, progressive, pro-democracy, pro-human rights activists had a voice struggling to be heard between the US-backed non-democratic governments and Muslim fundamentalists. Today, people in the Muslim world see democracy and human rights as nothing more than empty slogans, doublespeak and justifications for imposing America’s will. Fundamentalists could not have dreamt of a better recruiting campaign than the Iraq war. Anyone who talked of democracy and human rights is now being accused of being an agent for the US, seeking an Iraq-like invasion.

How can the US remain silent, absolutely silent, about Israel’s acknowledged nuclear weapons and other WMDs, yet invade and occupy Iraq over rumors of WMDs? Why does the US interfere to protect the Kurds with no-fly-zones, yet remain silent about the misery of the Palestinians? While there are strong moral and legal grounds for the US to interfere by force in the Israel-Palestine crisis, no one realistically expects that to happen. It is the silence and tacit (sometimes explicit) approval of Israeli crimes against Palestinians that is so difficult to understand.

This double standard is seen as proof positive for the vast majority of Egyptians, Arabs and Muslims that the US is not really interested in WMDs, human rights or democracy, but only uses these words as an excuse to advance a racist hate agenda against those it purports to want to save.

Today, I am in shock and awe of how bad things are, and how bad they are likely to become. I stand numb from the continuous stream of death and bloodshed, from the horrible bombing of a residential area of Baghdad last year leveling homes in the hope of catching Saddam Hussein to the brutal bombing of the Jabal Lebanon Hotel last week, also in Baghdad. The land between the two rivers, amongst the world’s most fertile, remains fertile today, but as a vast killing field.

Sadly, the killing fields of Iraq are producing enough hateful evidence of our American hypocrisy to feed many a future terrorist and suicide bomber. The daily dose of lies, propaganda, and contradictions does nothing to convince the youth of the Muslim world about the virtues of American “democracy.” With no love lost for their undemocratic and corrupt governments, their only choice becomes Islamic fundamentalism.

In shock and awe, I remain--at our silence, at our persistence when we are so clearly wrong, at our indifference to the suffering of other people, at our one-sided view of human life, and at our cruelty.

Ayman S. Ashour is the principal of Newton International Management, LLC, an international business management consulting company in Massachusetts. He has been a supporter of peace and reconciliation in the Middle East for over 25 years. He writes and speaks against hatred and discrimination.