I am addressing this message to our friends, the Americans. I don’t claim to speak on behalf of all Arabs or to convey the sentiments of the Arab street. But I can at least claim to express the feelings of a large number of Arabs who see America as a friendly country and recognize there are mutual interests and many common interests that bind the two peoples together. What these people want from America is to engage actively in a rational and honest dialogue in order to further those common interests.
Let us skip the differences of how America acted to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and focus on the situation on the ground. I would like to put three questions here to our American friends that I believe are of great importance. Failure to address them properly could further heighten the tension in the region and this could in turn lead many to view America as an enemy of the Arabs.
The first question: When will America bring back security and stability to the Iraqi people for whom it allegedly went to war with Saddam’s regime?
The second question: Why, up to now, has America failed to restore basic services in Iraq including water and electricity and failed to operate hospitals, health centers and provide food and medicine to the Iraqi people?
The third question: Why did America fire hundreds of thousands of government employees and soldiers after dissolving the ministries where they worked?
Arabs, including moderates, don’t expect much in the way of positive answers to these questions. They believe America wants the chaotic situation in Iraq to continue with no security or stability for the Iraqi people. This seems almost self-evident. America destroyed the country’s water and power stations and failed to repair them. It failed to protect ministries and other vital institutions allowing looters to ransack and destroy. America hired foreigners, namely Asians, to work in Iraq after laying off Iraqi workers.
If America really wants to improve its tarnished image in the Arab world, it doesn’t have to spend millions of dollars on PR and media campaigns because such efforts will achieve nothing as long as Washington continues to deny the Iraqi people the right to govern their country and benefit from its resources.
Iraq is a great chance for America to improve its image. All that it has to do is spend Iraqi money to improve the living conditions of the Iraqi people. Let America undo the damage it caused to the Iraqis and they may start to think that America is not a colonial power. But judging from how Iraq is being run, it seems America will do as Israel does and apply the same methods Israel uses in the occupied Palestinian lands.
- Arab News From the Local Press 19 June 2003
