One of Ours

...The Arab world, in its entirety, still bets on the return of Ba'athist rule to Iraq, and another part of the Arab world, even more deep in illusion, still bets on the return of Saddam, describing him as the 'the symbol, 'the leader neccessity', or the Shahid who has not died yet. And the Arab world, still living in illusion, believes in the Iraqi muqqawama ('resistance'), which is in fact a terrorist muqqawala (contractors) and not a national resistance,...That Arab world believes this terrorist muqqawala will win in Iraq over the will of the Iraqi people, and over the Iraqi future. That same Arab world living in illusion, believed that the army of Muqtada Al-Sadr will join forces with the remnants of the armed 'contractors', posing a significant threat to coalition troops forcing them to pull out from Iraq leaving it to be ruled by these groups. Today the Army of Al-Mahdi is backing [down] and the illusioned Arab world is biting its fingers grieving over its lost hope. That same Arab world living in illusion believed that a scandal caused by a group of sick demented soldiers from the coalition such as the scandal of Abu Ghraib prison will tip the balance in favour of the armed 'contractors' in Iraq which announced recently that it will pay their wages in pure gold, instead of bank notes, fixing the prices of 'necks' in a statement by Bin Laden himself.

The question here is: Why did the Arab world live in all this illusion throughout the last half century?

The answer to this question is that the Arab world acts cowardly with itself, self-delusionary, lacking the neccessary courage to recognise and admit to the facts on the ground as was done in Japan and Germany after WWII, and that the Arab world lacks the necessary courage to admit to its self-insufficiencies, its weakness, poverty, ignorance, and its poor scientific and practical capabilities. Therefore, the Arab world will never advance as long as it regards itself advanced and not behind, it will never learn as long as it regards itself learned and not ignorant, it will never seek power as long as it regards itself powerful and not weak. This neurotic swelling, this pathologic tumour, this nostalgia of submitting in humiliation to the dead glories of the past in the Arab psyche, and this phobia were all reasons that we live such a grand illusion. Since the Arab world believes to this day -as told by its civil and armed religious institutions- that the road to the future passes only through the holy cities, that the past is the nerve of the future, that who has no first has no last, that heritage is better than modernity, that ancestors are better than the inheritors, that the rule of ancestors from the grave is better than the rule of inheritors today. The Arab world believes to this day -as told by its civil and armed Pan-Arab and religious institutions- that Andalus (Spain) will be returned, that Palestine will be liberated from the river to the sea, that Iskenderun will be returned [i.e. the Turks will be conquered by the Arabs], that Al-Mahdi will reappear, that the rule of Saddam Hussein and mass graves will return to Iraq, and that Saddam as he won before, with the support of Pan-Arab and religious institutions headed by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Ba'ath party- in the first Gulf War from behind trenches, will win again today, from behind bars!