America's original sin

Hana Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty, Al-Ahram Weekly

A DISASTROUS DAY REMEMBERED: smoke billows as a missile hits the Iraqi Planning Ministry in Baghdad; an Iraqi surrenders to the British in Basra; parts of a beheaded sculpture lies among rubble after a mob of looters ransacked Iraq's largest archaeological museum in Baghdad The illegal invasion and destruction of Iraq is not only the biggest crime of recent history, it is the original sin of the 21st century, a depravity. In its war on Iraq, the United States has sought to destroy Iraq as both a state and a nation. It decimated an entire class -- the progressive middle class of Iraq that had proven its capacity to manage Iraqi resources independently and to the benefit of all; it killed nearly a million while sending millions more into exile; it orchestrated death squads and looting and invented new horrors in torture and rape; in the name of bringing democracy, it brought material destruction on a mass scale to a people, aiming also to erase their identity, memory, culture, social fabric, institutions and forms of administration, commerce, and everyday life; it even attacked Iraq's unborn generations with the 4.7 billion-year death of depleted uranium...

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