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Thanks now please go home { April 22 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7115-2003Apr21.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7115-2003Apr21.html
Thanks for Ousting Hussein, 'Now Please Go Home'
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 22, 2003; Page A09
BAGHDAD, April 21 -- When Marines helped pull down a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in downtown Baghdad 12 days ago, Rafeh Mohammed took to the street and cheered the legions of American troops pouring into the city to end Hussein's three-decade rule.
"We were so happy," he said. "We were being liberated from a dictator. We thought life was surely going to get better."
Today, Mohammed is a bitter man. "The Americans," sniffed the 32-year-old trader, "have failed us."
Mohammed is incensed that U.S. troops, during their first few days in Baghdad, did little to stop the wave of looting that eviscerated nearly every government building in the city, including the national library and a museum housing 5,000-year-old antiquities. He also is livid that the U.S. military has not yet restarted power, water and trash-collection service across the city.
"We were promised a better life," he said. "We have no security. We have no services. Is this better?"
After three weeks of intense airstrikes, a ground invasion and the bedlam that accompanies a war, some of Mohammed's expectations for a speedy recovery may be unreasonable. But they are not uncommon. More than two dozen Baghdad residents interviewed over the past few days voiced a similar sense of frustration and resentment, with many saying they are no longer eager to give the United States a chance to rebuild their country.
"Thank you for getting rid of Saddam," said Hathem Mohammed Bender, a poet who also hailed the arrival of American forces. "Now please go home. Let us take care of things."
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, tapped by President Bush to direct the reconstruction of Iraq, began a new phase of the military campaign today, arriving in Baghdad to start repairing war damage, set up a transitional administration and eventually form a new, democratic government. But many people here say growing anti-American sentiments could jeopardize his efforts. Iraqis of different political, religious and socioeconomic backgrounds who quietly welcomed the fall of Hussein now insist they have little desire to cooperate with a transitional U.S. administration.
Over the past week, demonstrators have gathered daily in front of a large downtown hotel housing U.S. troops and foreign journalists, calling for Iraqis to be allowed to manage their affairs immediately. Some former government officials, religious clerics and returning exiles who have talked with U.S. military officials have subsequently sought to distance themselves from those meetings.
It was the city-wide looting, which began almost immediately after U.S. forces moved in and continued unabated for three days, that crystallized much of the anger toward the United States. Nearly every government installation, from secret-police interrogation centers to the Trade Ministry, was stripped of furniture and other valuables and then set afire. With the exception of the Oil Ministry and a few other strategic buildings, U.S. troops did little to stop the initial rampage.
Many of the buildings that are needed to reconstitute a new government have been gutted, including the foreign, health, education, planning, trade and information ministries. Although there is no palpable disapproval of the sacking of jails, presidential palaces and other symbols of Hussein's ostentatious lifestyle and repressive tactics, many Iraqis say they are offended that ministries and other facilities they require to have a functioning government were not protected by U.S. troops.
"How hard would it have been for the Americans to have stood guard here?" asked Khalid Inad, a Trade Ministry employee, as he surveyed the charred wreckage of his former office. "I'm sure it would have taken no more than a few soldiers."
Perhaps most galling to people here was the looting of the National Museum of Antiquities, with its ancient Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian artifacts, where thousands of items are believed to have been stolen or destroyed. Although American archaeologists had asked the Pentagon before the war to protect the building from theft, troops did not arrive at the museum until Wednesday morning -- a full week after U.S. forces seized the city.
The failure to guard the museum -- along with the U.S. decision to almost immediately secure the Oil Ministry with a dozen armored vehicles -- has emerged as a rallying cry among those who want American forces to leave. "To the Iraqi people, this proves only one thing: They want our oil and they don't care about anything else," declared Ali Abdullah, an engineering student at Baghdad University.
Compounding these feelings is a sense that the U.S. government is not moving quickly enough to begin reconstruction and distribute humanitarian aid. Although military civil affairs teams have been delivering medicines to hospitals and trying to restart power plants, those efforts have largely been out of the public view, leading many to conclude that the role of American troops here is only to set up checkpoints and block traffic with snaking convoys of armored vehicles.
"The Iraqis had very high hopes for the Americans," said Saad Jawad, a professor of political science at Baghdad University who was one of the few Iraqis who dared call for democracy during Hussein's rule. "But all this euphoria about change, all this relief, went away when they saw the amount of destruction to the infrastructure of the country and the carelessness of the Americans to the Iraqis' day-to-day lives. People are very disappointed."
Jawad said he believes ambivalence toward the U.S. presence also is rooted in a sense of shame that Iraqis were not able to topple Hussein themselves. "We should have handled this on our own," he said. "But since we did not and could not, people now feel that at least we should do the rest ourselves."
U.S. officials said they believe that Iraqi attitudes will change once they begin to see the fruits of the reconstruction effort. But they acknowledge that the time gap between when the city fell and Garner's arrival today -- military commanders had deemed Baghdad too unsafe for his team to arrive any earlier -- has made their job more difficult.
"All the Iraqis see are soldiers with guns," one military officer said. "They need to see that this whole thing is a lot more than that."
For now, the officer said, the protests are not a big worry. "It's a chance for them to let off a little steam," he said.
Among those most eager to dismiss the U.S. troops, some note the irony involved in protesting against the very same forces that gave them the right to protest.
"We could never have done this before," said Mohammed Nasir, a teacher. "For that, we thank the Americans."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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