Humiliation & range stalk the Arab world: to many Arabs, even Saddam Hussein was better than defeat by the American-led coalition. (News Analysis).

DAMASCUS, Syria--Sure, Saddam Hussein ranked up there in the pantheon of world-class tyrants, a torturer and mass murderer who slaughtered thousands of his people. But he was still an Arab leader ruling an Arab country.

The Americans, on the other hand, are foreign--an invading army of Democracy Deliverymen, pulling up to the curb with piping-hot liberty, democracy, openness, free speech, and freedom to travel. But of course they pulled up in tanks and they're Westerners, the same people who promised all last century that the Arab world would be able to throw off the yoke of colonialism, yet never let them.

Proof? Look at Israel, they say. In their eyes, it's a Western colonial outpost planted on Arab soil in 1948. The U.S. has for decades been promising the Palestinians a state with freedom and self-determination. What have they delivered? Nothing.

There, in that sense of historical betrayal and powerlessness, is the root of the frustration, sadness, and rage that shot through the Arab world following the war in Iraq.

"THE REGIME IS NO MORE"

After less than four weeks of fighting, President Bush declared last month that "the regime of Saddam Hussein is no more." With the American military's arrival, scenes of jubilation erupted in Baghdad as some Iraqis beat on decapitated statues of their former dictator and enthusiastically welcomed allied troops. But, with food, water, and public order disrupted in the vacuum that Saddam left behind, other Iraqis were not so welcoming of their liberators. And around the region, many Arabs were not even willing to call the Americans the lesser of two evils.

"What a tragedy again plaguing the great people of Iraq," Talal Salman, the publisher of the respected Al-Safir newspaper in Beirut, wrote in a bitter front page editorial. "They have to choose between the night of tyranny and the night of humiliation stemming from foreign occupation."

Toward the end, even when they knew the game was lost, many Arabs were rooting for the idea that even Iraqis who despised Saddam would take up arms alongside his troops.

They had known "that the Saddam Hussein regime will eventually end one day, he will die," says Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, a professor of social sciences at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. But "with America you have a whole system, an entirely different system. The threat from America is far greater than the threat from a government that will disappear one day."

CREATING A BETTER IRAQ

A small group of Arab writers, editors, and intellectuals believes the U.S. will in fact create a better Iraq, a civil society run by Iraqis. They argue that the rapid collapse of Saddam's government should serve as a slap in the face, a warning that Arabs need to jettison their dictators and their socialist police states.

But many suspect the war was just to grab oil and to cripple the one country that remained a potential threat to Israel. Democracy delivered at gunpoint appears a questionable proposition. "We are expecting something terrible," says Salim Kheirbek, an engineer and human-rights activist, who was jailed from 1980 to 1993 for what the Syrian authorities called antigovernment activity, "but we are waiting to see if n will be something less than terrible.

There was widespread concern that Iraq would fracture into competing ethnic groups, punctuated by a blood bath of revenge killings against remnants of Saddam's Baath Party.

The looting in Iraq's biggest cities, including museums filled with ancient treasures, the assassination of a moderate Shiite clergyman, and reports of squads hunting down Baathists to murder seemed to confirm those fears. The Mongols leveled Baghdad in 1260, extinguishing centuries of Islamic achievement. It seemed to be happening again.

Mideast talk-radio and television were filled with dark predictions, dire warnings that Israel approved an American general to run Iraq and that the man the Americans wished to put in power is an Iraqi exile who left the country in 1958 and stands accused of defrauding investors in a Jordanian banking scandal. For this they replaced Saddam?

Much credence is given to the idea that shattering Iraq among its traditionally bloodthirsty religious, tribal, and ethnic factions is the real Western plan--or plot.

Arabs often fall back on history in divining their fate, particularly the 1916 Sykes-Picot treaty that carved the Middle East into its modern states and apportioned them to Britain or France as colonies. To this day they cite the treaty as the main cause of Arab disunity, the cause of their powerlessness.

Even if political unity among Arab states is lacking, the Arab people empathize with each other in, and through, their suffering. And the bloody images of dead and wounded Iraqis shown by Arab television over the past weeks have raised the animosity of the entire region toward America.

CAN THE U.S. RULE IRAQ?

In the end, the Arab mood will likely mirror that of the Iraqis themselves. Again, the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could prove instructive. In 1993, when the Palestine Liberation Organization signed a peace agreement with Israel that basically conceded territory won by Israel in a 1948 war, the Arabs thought their main cause had been betrayed.

But they shrugged it off when the Palestinians themselves hailed the short-lived withdrawal of Israeli troops and the return of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, from exile. Later, when progress on a Palestinian state stalled, and Palestinians turned to violence, they again carried the rest of the Arab world with them.

So the key question is whether the U.S. can rule 23 million Iraqis and move them to democracy--virtually unknown to them after 30 years of dictatorship--without arousing their anger, and hence that of all 300 million Arabs. Misrule in Iraq could cause the surge in fundamentalist violence that many, particularly Arab leaders, predicted would be the fruits of an American war against Iraq.

lesson plans

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

* The article warns that misrule by the U.S. in Iraq could produce a surge of fundamentalist violence. How would you define misrule?

* What would you say to a young Iraqi who said that while he hated Saddam Hussein, he wants Americans out of his country?

TEACHING OBJECTIVES

To help students understand why many Arabs--including those who hated Saddam--are angered by the American military occupation of Iraq.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES

CRITICAL THINGKING/DISCUSSION: This article offers a dramatic example of the power that symbols and history can have on contemporary affairs.

Note the reference to the image of the American armored vehicle pulling down the statue of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Ask students if they recall seeing that image on TV or in news photos. Do they also recall seeing Iraqis helping to topple the statue? (In case students forget, remind them that many Iraqis in Baghdad and elsewhere threw or smashed their shoes against statues or pictures of Saddam. Tell them that hitting someone with a shoe, or even showing the sole to another is an insult in that culture.)

Contrast these images with the reports of Arab outrage at the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Refer to the argument made by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb that the threat from America is greater because Saddam Hussein's regime would have disappeared someday. What might the U.S. do to persuade people like Saad-Ghorayeb that American intentions are honorable? Is the mere presence of the Americans too great a shock to Arab sensibilities?

Tell students that resentment of liberators is not unknown. How might students feel if Americans had to rely on a foreign power to restore order after some type of internal disturbance in this country? Would they welcome the help, or would they resent the outsiders?

HISTORY'S IMPACT: Note how history influences Arabs' view of current events. Do students find it strange that Arabs still cite the 1916 Sykes-Picot treaty and the 1948 creation of Israel as two sources of their problems today? Remind them that many Americans are also deeply influenced by history. Memories of the Civil War, for example, still open old wounds in parts of the U.S. (In Richmond, Virginia, recently, some citizens strenuously objected to the dedication of a statue of President Abraham Lincoln.)

NEIL MACFARQUHAR is Cairo bureau chief for The New York Times.