Legend has it that when the French complained to their queen Marie Antoinette that they didn’t have bread to eat, she asked them to eat cakes. The newly-built US Embassy building in Baghdad is a throwback to that age of simmering contempt and discontent which crescendoed with the French Revolution.
Martin Fletcher describes the shameless way in which colonialism is being perpetrated in the middle of rotting Baghdad:
What you can see through the haze of heat and pollution is a complex of two dozen smart new dun and grey blocks set in 104 acres (42 hectares) of grounds ringed by that impregnable wall. It is a fortress within the fortress that is the green zone. It is designed to repel any physical attack and. when it opens for business in a few weeks, it will be protected by a detachment of Marines with their own barracks. It is not, however, invulnerable to criticism.
This is the largest US Embassy built – roughly the size of Vatican City – and at $600 million (£300 million) the most expensive. At a time when millions of Baghdadis outside the green zone receive only a couple of hours of water and electricity daily, Iraqis observe that this project has been completed on time, on budget, and is entirely self-sufficient with its own fresh water supply, electricity plant, sewage treatment facility, maintenance shops and warehouses.
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