The above words, as every American knows, are the last sentence from the American national anthem "The star spangled banner". The banner referred to is of course the stars and stripes, the flag that is seen at virtually every occasion where Americans are present, at every event from sports contests to official meetings, at schools, government buildings, factories and residential homes. It is worn on coats , jackets and shirts, on hats and even on pants. You can purchase them as souvenirs, like keychains and coffee mugs and on many more items.

It is obvious then that the flag symbolizes the pride and patriotism of Americans and they use it like no other nation on earth to identify themselves as Americans. Mind you, lately the shine has come off it for many who travel abroad, as their popularity has waned considerably around the world and in many countries has been replaced by hatred for anything American. So for safety reasons the plainly visible U.S identification labels are left home. In fact, some foreign troops that are aiding the US cause in Afghanistan and Iraq deliberately show their own country identifications for fear of being mistaken for Americans and being shot at.

With the flag being such an important symbol for Americans, you can imagine what their reaction would be if some outside force gained control over the country and decided, without consultation with the people, to discard the stars and stripes and replace it with, lets say a multicoloured cloth on which each colour represents the skin colour of the various races making up the US population. No-one can imagine such a thing happening, but the outrage of discarding the very symbol that stands for American pride, freedom and bravery would be overwhelming. Yet, that is the very thing the US administration has done to the people of Iraq, when it arbitrarily replaced the Iraqi flag with a new design more to the liking of the occupiers of the country. It is hard to think of anything more stupid to stir up additional hatred for America and its allies, a hatred that is already at the boiling point.

Truthfully, the whole war in Iraq does not depict as a war being carried out by men that represent "the home of the brave". It is not a brave act to overrun a country that was already substantially weakened from a previous war, suffered 12 years of economic sanctions and was subjected to constant bombing raids during that period. To attack it after that with a vastly superior military, equiped with the most modern weapons, is not an act of bravery. Neither is the wanton killing of Iraqi civilians, the illegal use of clusterbombs that maim and injure people at random, the shooting at ambulances carrying injured people, the torture that prisoners are subjected to, or the indefinite imprisonment of so-called enemy combatants in Guantanamo. Even the phoney heroic rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch was a staged event supposedly showing American bravery in action, but in reality it was more a Hollywood-style fake promotion. And while individual US soldiers undoubtedly may be brave under some of the circumstances they find themselves in, America as a nation is not behaving like the land of the brave but more like the land of the bully.

America today can no longer be seen as the land of the free and the home of the brave when it uses its enormous powers to pressure, coerce and force other, usually weaker nations to accept American domination of its policies, their economies and their culture. Each nation has the inalienable right to adopt its own economic system and lifestyle without outside interference. That is the freedom America wants for itself and about which it sings its national anthem and raises its flag. It is however no act of bravery to deny the same rights of self determination to other countries in the world and attempt to turn them into servants of America. The era of colonization and slavery is long behind us and there's no turning back.