| With security having been the exclusive property of the Americans for so long, Iraqis still ask when full ownership of their country will be returned to them. The million-dollar trophy that National Security Adviser Mowaffaq Al Rubaie keeps in his home study suggests the restoration has begun. For many Americans, the memory of Iraqis (supported by U.S. forces off-screen) pulling down Saddam's statue in Al Firdos Square still provides an inspirational bookend to the U.S. invasion. For Iraqis today, the statue--or at least its head--just provides a bookend. As the national security adviser tells it, in the aftermath of the invasion, a senior American officer tried to abscond with Saddam's head. But he only made it as far as Kuwait, where the authorities alerted Rubaie, who subsequently reclaimed the head for Iraq. So here it sits, in the national security adviser's study, where Iraqi elites express their hatred for Saddam by hitting him on the head with the soles of their shoes. "I put it here to remember Saddam is always here," he explains. (from: Centripetal Force, The Case for Staying in iraq, by Lawrence F. Kaplan in The New Republic, 02.24.06 |
