(The Age-Australia) Thurayya al-Urayyid - We are not raising our children to feel free to think and be creative, encouraging them to add their own achievements to those of the past. Instead, wars whet our appetite for angry shouting. Crowds filled the streets in virtually every Arab capital to protest against the Iraq war, chanting slogans I have been hearing for quite a while: it is a war on Islam; this is a call for a united front against Western invasion and against America's foreign policy double standards and bias against Arabs. But the reality in Iraq before the war was shameful to the whole Arab world. A tyrant embodying the utmost of sadism and inhumanity was able to torture his people for three decades, right down to rape and killing, mutilating and torturing family members. Thousands vanished in prisons. Iraqis had reached a state of mind where they were scared even of their shadows. The author is a columnist for Saudi Arabia's Al-Hayat newspaper.
2003-06-13 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive