And still the US expects that its own foreign policy agenda ought to prevail despite its hostility to the collective Arab agenda. In the case of Iraq, a number of further extenuations make the US even more repressive. Burning in the collective US unconscious is a puritanical zeal decreeing the sternest possible attitude towards anyone deemed to be an unregenerate sinner. This clearly guided US policy towards the native American Indians, who were first demonised, then portrayed as wasteful savages, then exterminated, their tiny remnant confined to reservations and concentration camps. This almost religious anger fuels a judgmental attitude that has no place at all in international politics, but for the US it is a central tenet of its worldwide behaviour.
Punishment is conceived in apocalyptic terms.
The same view prevailed during the Gulf War in 1991. Sinners are meant to be condemned terminally, with the utmost cruelty regardless of whether or not they suffer the cruellest agonies. The notion of 'justified' punishment for Iraq is now uppermost in the minds of most US consumers of news, and with that goes an almost orgiastic delight in the power used to confront Iraq in the Gulf. Forgotten in all this is that the US has all the terror weapons known to humankind, is the only country to have used a nuclear bomb on civilians, and as recently as nine years ago dropped 66,000 tonnes of bombs on Iraq. Unfortunately, the dictates of raw power are very severe and, for a weak state like Iraq, overwhelming.