Let Me Reassure You:The Americans Will Fail in Iraq

If you are worried about a possible success of the current process under the American helm in Iraq, I can … reassure you. Because I cannot see how the process can succeed.

The words of an Iranian Mullah? Of an Al Qaeda operative? Of an Arab sheikh? Of a North Korean autocrat?

No; the words of Pierre-Jean Luizard, a researcher close to the French state, responding to a Le Monde reader who has identified the great danger that the region (and the world) is facing: that the Middle East might …what? Blow up? No. Erupt in a war? No. Face a mounting line of bloodthirsty dictators? Non. Bear witness to a genocide like those that occurred under Saddam? Non plus. The great danger that the Middle East is facing is that it might land in Washington's lap! (Thank goodness that the CNRS researcher is there to reassure his fellow Frenchman.)

Luizard — whose concitoyens never fail to reassure Americans that the latter are their "amis américains" — goes on to call the Americans "the pyromaniacs of an Iraqi society that they have split on a long-term basis". Ignoring reports that the Iraqis are riveted by the televised Saddam trial (shookhran to RV), the Paris-based expert brushes it aside, saying that

the vast majority of Iraqis are well aware that the trial, in the current circumstances, can be nothing more than masquerade

Is it surprizing that for the people always referring to Americans as their "amis américains" (including some of our French readers), the butcher of Baghdad has become a victim, a martyr, a hero?