The looting of Baghdad was a preview of what's in store for the region. Anouar Abdel-Malek writes Although it is fashionable these days to note the need "to deal with reality", one cannot help wondering how the civilised world would handle the pillage of Baghdad following the collapse of the Iraqi regime and with it law and order. The director of the National Museum in Baghdad, speaking in front of television cameras, said that since her entire family had been killed she had lost the ability to cry. Minutes later, she walked into the museum display halls, under the glare of the cameras, to inspect the damage. Thousands of statues, artefacts, and rare paintings had been destroyed or stolen by marauders who ransacked the museum under the very eyes of US occupation forces. And then the same woman broke down in tears -- her sadness shared by all with a shred of decency left in their hearts. If the criminal aggression was a war for "democracy", why was Baghdad looted? One is tempted to recall the conduct of victorious armies from Ramsis to Hitler, from Alexander the Great to Napoleon, and from Caesar to Stalin. Yes, defeat is a costly affair. But responsible generals know where to stop and how to win a war morally, not just militarily. In World War II, Hitler's armies seized the treasures of West Europe and took them to German museums to store and display them with pride. So did the Red Army, when it overran half the Nazi empire. It seized numerous pieces of art in East and Central Europe -- Germany in particular -- and took them to Soviet museums. Now that peace has prevailed, President Putin and Chancellor Schroeder are discussing the exchange of these treasures -- the war booty having been carefully guarded, preserved for humanity, for decades. The young Egyptian King Ramsis II, having defeated the Hittites in the historic battle of Qadesh (1450 BC), gave a number of memorable orders: enemy personnel are to be protected by the Egyptian army and may enlist in that army if they so wish. Hittite women must not be raped, but could be taken as wives by Egyptian troops. More significantly, both the Egyptian and Hittite flags were to fly on the Qadesh Castle, in homage to the defeated enemy. The pillage of Baghdad, the looting of antiquities, and the destruction of Iraqi institutions betrays a wish to destroy the legacy and traditions of a wounded nation. It may well be the first chapter in an unfolding drama, one that does not bode well for the Iraqis, one that is reminiscent of what happened when the Moguls invaded this region centuries ago, under Genghis Khan and Hulago Khan. The size of US military deployment in the Middle East is in itself alarming. It is worth noting that the largest deployment of US strategic forces against the Soviet Union, at the height of the Cold War, consisted of four aircraft carriers. Such was the force deemed sufficient to contain and deter the Soviets. Currently, there are seven aircraft carriers in the region: five in the Gulf and two in the Mediterranean. Did Saddam's Iraq pose twice as much threat to the United States as the Soviet Union once did? Did Washington truly need to dispatch up to 300,000 troops to fight a country debilitated by 12 years of sanctions? Or, do the Americans have other things on their minds? Can one assume that the aim is to intimidate the Arabs and Muslims, undermine their independence, and teach them to accept the other -- namely Israel? While Baghdad and Mosul were still burning, Washington moved on to accuse Syria of possessing weapons of mass destruction and of assisting the ousted Iraqi regime. Is this an intimation of things to come, the first step in a sequence of wars in the region? Having turned the Gulf into a military base, is the US poised to wage further attacks on various movements and countries with nationalist governments in the region? And, why Syria, one might add? The original plan of action was to target Iran, the second member of the so-called axis of evil. The answer is simple. Israel's strategic interests seem, once more, to have overridden Washington's foreign policy -- thanks to men such as Paul Wolfowitz. The Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Palestine) is known for its ethnic and religious diversity, a matter that could be helpful to those who want to control the region. This alternative plan of action (Syria first) could be effective in undermining Arab resistance. If successfully conducted, it would enable US and Israeli forces to turn their attention elsewhere -- perhaps to the Sinai. This is how the like-minded warmongers in Israel and the United States think. International Zionism can thus edge closer to the realisation of its dreams. Israel's aspirations, as articulated by Jabotinsky and voiced by Shamir, Begin, Netanyahu, and Sharon, are to establish a Greater Israel, one that runs from the Nile to the Euphrates. Apparently, the current plan matches this dream, albeit in reverse order; from the Euphrates to the Nile. It is advisable -- under these circumstances -- to view with scepticism some of the diplomatic ruses that are being played. The barrage of hostile remarks fired by the US ultra-right should give us food for thought. The likes of Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld have spent years planning this assault on our region. Intoxicated by their victory over the Iraqi regime, they have fired the first verbal broadside at Syria. Their disregard for the culture and identity of the Iraqi people is an intimation of things to come.
