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A thick rope noose around the Iraqi leader’s neck with the U.S. flag over his head in what is seen as a new era of colonialism in Iraq
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Though American soldiers toppled the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s main square Wednesday with seemingly enraptured Iraqi support, the images of that event fail to paint a complete and accurate picture of how the majority of Iraqis and Muslims feel about the continued American assault on Iraq.
Starting in early afternoon, Baghdad time, news cameras from around the world trained their lenses on the statue as an American armored column rolled into central Baghdad, seemingly triumphant. In a scene reminiscent of the period in which Communism fell into ruin, with citizens of Eastern Europe tearing down statues and posters of former rulers, a crowd of topless Iraqi men twirling their shirts overhead suddenly appeared and marched towards the imposing statue of Saddam.
Chanting and thrusting fists skyward, the mob made it clear that they wanted to destroy the statue. American soldiers obliged and rolled a large tank adjacent to the figure while a number of soldiers climbed the statue to tie a rope around it. Before pulling the statue down however, the soldiers draped an American flag over the head of Saddam.
For Americans watching the event unfold, an American flag atop the statue was something of a coup de grace, the final act in a military campaign thathas received increasing support in the United States as troops have marched closer and closer to Baghdad. For the Muslim world, however, the image of the American flag in Baghdad had an entirely different meaning.
On the Arabic language news channel, Al-Arabiyya, the newscaster covering the fall of Baghdad simply commented, “That should have been an Iraqi flag.” A similar sentiment was expressed across much of the Arab media several days earlier when American troops hoisted the Stars and Stripes above Umm Qasr, only to take it down when it was realized that a foreign flag flying over Iraqi territory implied occupation instead of liberation.
American troops in Baghdad realized their mistake as well, and eventually replaced the American flag draped over the statue’s head with an Iraqi one, tied necktie fashion around Saddam’s neck. The damage, however, was already done, for news crews and photographers had already captured images of the event and sent them to the four corners of the Earth. And as demonstrative as the act of pulling the actual statue down was, it was immediately clear that the image of the American flag over Saddam’s head would be the one that would stick in the minds of many for days and maybe years to come.
Indeed, the flag photo took up the entire top section of the front page of the Arab News on Thursday morning. The headline read “U.S. Occupies Baghdad”. So for all of the continued assurances from Washington that U.S. troops are in Iraq as liberators and as a benevolent force of reconstruction, the sentiment in the Middle East remains negative and skeptical of American intentions.
And although many Iraqis have taken to the streets to cheer U.S. soldiers, many more continue to lament the fall of their capital and the invasion of a foreign force. This is most assuredly the sentiment in the majority of the Arab world, a sentiment that was best summed up by a young Egyptian woman interviewed on CNN International Wednesday who simply noted, “We are very disappointed.”
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