The invasion of Iraq would, we were told, rid the world of mortal danger. One year on, the only people who feel safer are those who prefer not to think for themselves

By Robert Fisk
17 March 2004 “The Independent”

The impact of the cruise missiles can still be seen in the telecommunications tower across the Tigris. The Ministry of Defence still lies in ruins. Half the government ministries in Baghdad are still fire-stained, a necessary reminder of the cancer of arson that took hold of the people of this city in the first hours and days of their “liberation”.

But the symbols of the war are not the scars of last year’s invasion - we cannot say “last year’s war”, because the war continues to this day. No, the real folly of our invasion can be seen in the fortresses that the occupiers are building, the ramparts of steel and concrete and armour with which the Americans have now surrounded themselves. Like Crusaders, they are building castles amid the people they came to “save”, to protect themselves from those who were supposed to have greeted them with flowers.

In even the smallest streets of Baghdad, you can smell the orange blossom, both sweet and bitter, a little paradise amid the muck and the stench of benzine. But you can also hear the sound of an alienated population, for whom every problem, every indignity, every mishap, every tragedy, is the fault and responsibility of its occupiers. Just as we blame Blair - and Blair and Bush only - for the war, so Iraqis blame those who have come to run their country: Americans, British, Westerners, foreigners. Oh, how different we are. Oh, how different they are. Never the twain shall meet. But we are not so different.