History in a Hard Land
America's challenge in Iraq is more than sectarianism and insurgency
By Fouad Ajami
Posted 7/30/06
Page 4 of 4
Few Arabs have dared challenge those deadly dreams of their own people. The Arabs have been living in a "false world," as a man of the business elite wrote to me in mid-April 2004. He could have added that it was both false and powerful at the same time, that reality often faltered as its bearers attempted to breach those walls of denial and illusion. That lone man urging caution in Fallujah was not about to alter age-old ways.
Milestone. Iraqis cheer Saddam's fall.
SCOTT NELSON--GETTY IMAGES
Excerpted from The Foreigner's Gift: The Americans, the Arabs, and the Iraqis in Iraq by Fouad Ajami. Copyright ÃÂÃÂÃÂé 2006 by Fouad Ajami
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