Stay true to the dreams of thy youth

“We are obviously in the presence of two interpretations of history, which crystallize around different perceptions of ‘the enemy… For, as soon as you accept certain premises, everything can be interpreted coherently without needing to hear the other side’s opinion.

If, for example, you accept the conjecture that the great calamity of our time is the ‘barbarity of the Muslim world’, looking at Iraq will only confirm your view. You will see a bloody tyrant whose reign of terror lasted a third of a century, who slaughtered his own people and squandered their oil wealth on luxuries and military spending; who invaded his neighbours, defined the great powers, became increasingly boastful … before folding without putting up a real fight. Then, after his fall, watch as the country sinks into chaos and see the different communities begin to massacre each other, as if to say: ‘You see, it took a dictator to keep a people like this in line!’

If, on the other hand, you take the cynicism of the West for granted, events can be explained just as coherently: as a prelude there were sanctions, which plunged a whole nation into poverty and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of children but didn’t ever deprive the dictator of his cigars. Next came an invasion, justified on a false premise and carried out in contempt of public opinion as well as international institutions, and motivated at least in part by the desire to gain control of Iraq’s oil resources. Then, following the US victory, there was the hasty and arbitrary dissolution of the Iraqi army and machinery of state, the explicit implantation of communitarianism within its institutions as if it had been decided to plunge the country deliberately into a state of permanent instability; and for good measure, the barbaric acts of Abu Ghraib prison, systematic torture, endless humiliation, collateral damage, innumerable blunders that have gone unpunished, looting, waste ….

To some, the case of Iraq demonstrates that the Muslim world is impervious to democracy. To others, it reveals the true face of Western ‘democratisation’.”