The United States and Iraq: American Bull in a Middle East China Shop

Abstract

The late Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN Human Rights Commissioner who was also the United Nations’ top official in Iraq, understood that the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq humiliates many Iraqis. Most Arabs identify with what they perceive to be a dishonoring of the Arab world and hence of themselves as well. They scorn their own governments for having demonstrated disunity and impotence in the face of American threats prior to the invasion of Iraq. Other non-Arab Muslims share a similar anger and frustration. As a postwar cross-country survey of public opinion indicates, most of the Arab and Muslim respondents, headed by 93 percent of the Moroccans but also including Turks, Indonesians, and Pakistanis, regretted that the Iraqi military had not put up a better fight.¹

It must be one of the most humiliating periods in their history. Who would like to see their country occupied? I would not like to see foreign tanks in Copacabana.

—Sergio Vieira de Mello