Four years after the invasion, we should, more then ever, be ashamed. Who are “we”? All of us. European and American, in all our differences. Why? Because all we can say is “right or wrong”, and we can still not sincerely ask ourselves “how”.

While Bush plays his last cards in the American congress avoiding Patty Murray’s (Democrat Senator) approval of the returning of all American troops (starting in four months), hundreds of Spanish activists fill the streets to listen to Saramago (Portuguese Nobel prize) and protest against the war, demanding the end of Guantanamo and celebrate the anti-american way of life. Meanwhile, the French PM (Dominique de Villepin) speaks in Harvard and says that USA are responsible for all the current situation. In an empty speech (he is also playing his last cards) Villepin recommends that American troops go home within a year, working with Europe and Iraqi neighbours to solve the “problem”.

Unfortunately, four years after the first big “womb”, West is still not prepared to solve any problem at all. Public opinion is still, either divided or tired of the subject. The modern problem is the conflicts within EU, the American Elections (Al Gore scores every day, even in MTV) and…Iran (how fashion-victims are our international affairs opinion makers?).

Among the activists (victims of the anti-fashion bible), most people will never go back in their passion to assume that Iraq is a common problem and the reason belongs, probably, to none of the parts. Or, to both. Not even American activists who, also celebrating the 4th anniversary of the Iraq invasion (and 40th anniversary of the “anti-Vietnam march”) got together demanding the end of the war, claiming that 3.200 soldiers have died and calling Bush a Hitler’s style tyrant. American’s can also celebrate the anti-american way of life. That is one of the most remarkable qualities of the American people – the passion about their convictions and the self-regulation mechanisms (the French are the same, aren’t they?). We (West) are really not that divided anymore. There are the scars, of course, but mostly among public opinion (politics change and they, even Bush, understood that West must be a team, even if a cynical one). So, what is the problem, the real one? We are, I believe. All of us – together in our passions and prejudices. Even if going to Iraq in the first place was wrong, the truth is we are already there. People are dying. Insurrection is a reality. The government asked international community not to leave. Many sunits claim they also want peace. There is too much work yet to be done. And….we (public opinion) want to leave. The real problem is that (like Zizek wrote) the public opinion is divided in left (we must leave Iraq, even if that means a total humanitarian disaster) and right (neoconservateurs, totalitarists and “Bush friends”). Well, were is the left who believes that, even if we had no right to go there in the first place, we also have no right to leave now? Were are the European marches claiming for the right intervention in Iraq? Where are the European think tanks producing well funded solutions for the Iraq problem? Where are the professional and organized lobbies of the global thinking? It’s not even questionable that most European countries are facing huge internal problems (like USA, also). However, we (We West and we, public opinion) are loosing fast the one thing we always had: our credibility – moral (our values) and effective (our practical ability to make things happen). We are still not developing the thought that internal problems must be solved in order to promote “good practices” in international level. Instead, we look desperately for an “OTHER” inside our homes, and we allow our values to become nothing more than old books and empty words. And, some (few of us) forget they personal problems, and go on the streets, marching, passionately , screaming empty words (empty because, no matter the propose, the result is also catastrophic).

In the Bagdad conference, peace and stability were the main points of the discussion. However, the invited where: the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France -- and Arab countries (Iraq neighbors). And even if France and Britain were there, the EU had no formal representation. And that’s a shame. And we don’t even talk about it. And we don’t event think about it, anymore (or, hopefully, yet). However, if we don’t move fast, Iraq will become, in History, as the most shameless proof of the West failure. And we, Europeans, will fail twice: once because we fought our own family, twice because we betrayed our own values.