ON March 20, after delivering a series of ultimatums and after making an equal number of promises, America went to war against Iraq for the second time in twelve years. Some analysts believe that by launching this new assault on Iraq, President George W. Bush, is simply finishing the job left half-done by his father in 1991.

We believe otherwise. It appears that the new Iraq war holds much greater significance for the world and especially for a country such as Pakistan. As such we should take full cognizance of the developments that preceded this war — the ultimatums that were given and the promises that were made. We will discuss the ultimatums today; we will look at the promises made on the eve of the war in the article next week.

The first ultimatum came 18 months ago, in September 2002, although it was not seen as such at the time it was delivered. It was embedded in the national security strategy document issued by the White House. The language of the strategy showed a certain amount of impatience on the part of the world’s sole superpower at other countries’ lack of enthusiasm in understanding Washington’s reasons for a different way of handling international affairs. That impatience grew as America’s diplomatic efforts got stalled in the 15-member UN Security Council. As we commented in last week’s article, the United States wished to introduce a sense of discipline into the way the world’s nations and the world’s citizens conducted themselves. Most of the rest of the world seemed to prefer the old order.

At the heart of the new strategy was America’s growing concern about the influence of the groups who explicitly rejected the generally accepted rules of conduct. Since “nine-eleven” Washington’s focus has been on the Muslim groups — in particular on Al Qaeda. President Bush and his team were not prepared to give these groups another opportunity. If the international community did not possess the resolve to contain them — preferably to eliminate them — America had the right to act on its own. As Bush said in his TV address to the nation on March 17, “the United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours.”

The second ultimatum was delivered by the US president from Azores, a Portuguese island in mid-Atlantic, where he had convened a summit of the “coalition of the willing.” The meeting was attended by four leaders. In addition to President Bush, prime ministers Tony Blair of Britain, Jose Manuel Durao Barosso of Portugal and Jose Maria Aznar of Spain were also present.

The Azores meeting was, in fact, a council of war at which the decision was taken to give the United Nations Security Council one more chance to move against Iraq. It was asked to act within twenty-four hours.

Even before the Azores summit concluded, several senior officials of the Bush administration hit the airwaves by appearing in a number of TV talk shows. There was little discussion of pursuing disarmament by Iraq in these interviews. The view was put forward, most strongly by Vice-President Dick Cheney, that the only way President Saddam Hussein could avert war was to go into voluntary exile. Washington had gone full circle and returned to the original purpose of the policy it had earlier adopted regarding Iraq — regime change in Baghdad.

The third and the final ultimatum came a day after the Azores summit. By early morning on March 17, it had become clear to Washington that it could not obtain a majority of votes in Security Council in favour of a resolution endorsing military action. By the evening of that fateful day, President Bush was prepared to throw down the gauntlet. “All the decades of deceit and cruelty have now reached an end,” Bush told his national and international audience. “Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing.” This was the beginning of the first major war of the 21st century involving the United States.

In giving Saddam Hussein an ultimatum President Bush turned to America’s first national security strategy in half a century — the doctrine of pre-emptive military action against all those the country regarded as its potential enemies. Several analysts and commentators immediately saw a number of problems with the arguments made by President Bush and his associates in choosing war as the only option worth pursuing.

Compared to the action taken by the elder Bush in 1991, the 2003 war met with stiff resistance both at home and abroad. Even after the president announced that he had authorized military action against Iraq, the voices of dissent were not stilled. “People who have supported Mr. Bush all along may feel tempted to silence those who voice dissent,” wrote The New York Times in an editorial the morning after America went to war. “It will be necessary to remind them that we are in this fight together to bring freedom of speech to Iraq, not to smother it back home.”

As America went to war, several people asked a simple question: Was there a good legal basis for the war? President Bush cited three Security Council resolutions in favour of his decision. “In the case of Iraq, the Security Council did act in the early 1990s. Under Resolutions 678 and 687, both still in effect, the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction. This is not a question of authority.

It is a question of will,” said the American president. “On November 8, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441 finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm. Today, no nation can possibly claim that Iraq has disarmed, and it will not disarm so long as Saddam Hussein holds power.”

If Resolutions 678, 687 and 1441 gave America and its allies the authority to act militarily against Baghdad, why did the Azores summiteers give a 24-hour ultimatum to the Security Council to provide a mandate for action? The Bush administration did not provide an answer to this question. It understood that by stretching the validity of Resolution 678 that authorized action against Iraq to get it to vacate the occupation of Kuwait, it was stepping on a slippery legal slope. Also that resolution defined the objective of military action as expulsion of the Iraqi troops from Kuwait and not the invasion of Iraq. That was one reason why the Americans did not move into Iraq at that time. The other problem with the approach adopted was raised by Professor Stanley Hoffman of Harvard who has written copiously and extensively on international affairs. According to him, “There is no room in the UN Charter for the president’s doctrine of pre-emption, for anticipatory self-defence.”

Does this action by America in defiance of the United Nations and in clear violation of its Charter mean the end of the international system of checks and balances put together after the conclusion of the Second World War? Only time will provide a full answer to this question. The grant of veto to five countries — the permanent members of the Council — was meant to ensure that no single power would be able to impose its will on a reluctant world. The UN Charter brought democracy to the international system by giving each member country, no matter how big or small, one vote. At the same time, it introduced a check on the will of the majority by giving some extraordinary powers to the Security Council.

Under the UN Charter’s Chapter 7, some of the Security Council’s powers were akin to those wielded by the judiciary in developed political systems. The courts in these systems have the right to set aside the people’s will even when expressed through elected legislatures if it contravened the basic law of the land — the country’s constitution. In pronouncing their judgments, superior courts normally give the “original intent” of the framers of the constitution a great deal of weight.

Likewise, the Security Council, in its deliberations, was supposed to weigh in with resolutions that respected the original purpose for which the United Nations Organization was founded in the first place. The most important part of that purpose was to control the “war making” powers of member governments. War was to be used as absolutely the last option.

But this is a strict interpretation of international law governing the working of the United Nations. It is possible to argue that success in achieving the ends that have the respect of the international community would eventually lead to the sanctification of the actions taken. Kosovo offers an example of such a precedent. In 1999, the administration of President Clinton, expecting that Russia would veto any resolution authorizing the use of force, decided to bypass the UN Security Council.

The attack on the Yugoslav forces was clearly illegal, not supported by the UN Charter. In the end, according to one scholar, “the Independent International Commission on Kosovo found that although formally illegal — the United Nations Charter demands that the use of force in any cause other than self-defence be authorized by the Security Council — the intervention was nonetheless legitimate in the eyes of the international community.”

It is possible that America’s second war against Iraq will acquire ex-post legitimacy if not strict legality. This could happen if some of the following things occur: the invading forces are attacked by the Iraqis with chemical and biological weapons, troves of weapons of mass destruction are discovered by the invading forces, the invading forces are greeted by wildly cheering crowds happy to be rid of a despotic leader, an earnest effort to rebuild Iraq is launched under the auspices of the United Nations and a popularly elected regime in Iraq comes to power and declares that America acted not only in its own interests but in the interests of the people of Iraq. It was for reasons such as these that the Americans and their allies started their Iraq operations after promising a number of happy outcomes. What were these outcomes and what is the prospect of achieving these is a question we will address next week.

GOING by its record since the end of World War II, the United States should have been declared the worst war-monger long ago. The current war of aggression it has launched on Iraq only adds another huge black dot to its irredeemable record of waging wars.

Also to be noted is the undeniable fact that America has yet to win a war with honour. There is not the least doubt that its current war on Iraq is a war of aggression. The day it became unmistakably clear that the United States and the United Kingdom were determined to launch this war, the secretary-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, had warned in categorical terms that if any military action was taken without a mandate from the Security Council, such action would amount to war of aggression.

George Bush and Tony Blair have absolutely no business to act as ‘liberators’ of the Iraqi people and launch naked aggression the same people. They had asserted that the people of Iraq would rise and overthrow despot Saddam the moment they began their war in Iraq. Nothing of that kind has happened. The Iraqi people have left nobody in any doubt that in their eyes the US-UK duo is not their liberator but invader and they are fighting that invasion.

This is the second time that the United States has launched this kind of aggression against Iraq. It fought a full-scale war against Iraq in 1991. And, consistent with its black record, that war, too, resulted only in destruction, not liberation of Iraq. Saddam Hussein was not disturbed, only the country was devastated and insensate sanctions slapped on it which brought untold misery to the people of Iraq.

Saddam’s very special equation with the United States is no longer any secret. He has all along been the United States’ buddy. He was lionized by it, first to wage war on Iran and avenge the humiliation of the United States after its assault on Iran ended up in a fiasco with the US forces beating a retreat. That was not very long after Washington had, first, declared Iran (of the Shah) as a bastion of security in the Middle East. Soon thereafter the same Shahanshah Aryamehr was to be ousted, humiliated and forced into exile.

As a state perpetually launching wars and invariably losing them, the record of the United States is uniquely disreputable. It has by now waged 21 wars since World War II. Do not forget, the Allied powers had promised that their World War II was going to be the “the war to end all wars.”

Now look at the record of the United States of America since World War II ended in autumn of 1945. The undeniable fact is that this world has seen more wars, more destruction and more demeaning of humanity since that cataclysm than at any time in recorded history. Also to be noted is the mindlessness of the big powers obsessed with weapons of mass destruction.

Hardly had World War II ended that the United States of America launched its first war. The target was China and the objective was to save the discredited Chiang Kai-Shek regime. The first phase of that war against China was fought in 1945-46. This war renewed, or a second war launched on China in 1950. It lasted till 1953. This time the objective was to defeat the revolution and the People’s Republic of China. The aggressive enterprise ended up in a fiasco.

While the war in China was still continuing, the United States unleashed war on Korea. It began in 1950 and lasted till 1953 when it ended in the division of that country, but no victory for the United States. The tragic result of that war was that to this day Korea has not known peace. That country remains divided and virtually at war with itself.

The flames of war were still raging in Korea when the United States turned its attention to its own neighbourhood. The victim this time was Guatemala. This war was started in 1954, that is only months after it had beaten a retreat from Korea. It returned to Guatemala with its armies in 1967 and remained involved in hostilities till 1969.

The war in Guatemala was continuing when the United States went to war with Indonesia in 1958. Its giant B-52 flying Fortress bombed Indonesia to oust Indonesia’s liberator Soekarno and to instal General Suharto who was to rule Indonesia with an iron hand in the course of his 30 years in power with full support from Washington. Before US protege Suharto was installed, more than one million Indonesians were killed.

As if the massacres in Indonesia were not enough to learn some lessons from, the United States undertook to launch a war against tiny neighbour, Cuba, in 1961. That fiasco, generally known as President John F. Kennedy’s misadventure of the Bay of Pigs, is something the United States will take long to live down. The purpose of that CIA-sponsored clandestine military move and trade embargo that it imposed the following year was to oust Fidel Castro who still remains in power in Cuba.

The next year (1961) saw the beginning of what may perhaps be rated as 22 of America’s most sinister and damaging wars launched in various parts of the world. These included the Vietnam war that America fought for twelve years only to end in utter disarray and disrepute of fleeing the battlefield. The drop scene over this war of aggression and the humiliating defeat in it came in 1975. What astonishes is America’s inability to learn from its self-inflicted disasters.

The next war, waged in 1964, was to take the United States to Africa. This time the battlefields lay in rain forests of Belgian Congo where Patrice Lumumba was to be killed. Soon thereafter was staged that notorious outrage in which the legendary secretary-general of the United Nations, Dag Hammerskjold was to be killed in a contrived air crash, courtesy Belgium-US.

While still engaged in Congo, the United States took a long leap and landed with its armies to distant Laos. This war was to continue for nine long years, till 1973. Meanwhile, Washington had begun a war in the other hemisphere and nearer home. The year was 1965 and the target country was the impoverished republic of Peru.

America’s war in Cambodia was waged and fought alongside its longest war in Vietnam. The campaign began in 1969 and ended the following year. As usual, this war began without a plausible casus belli and ended, again as usual, without any result that could be construed as a success.

After the Vietnam fiasco, America took a deep breath. For almost a decade it rested itself, so to say. Then it returned to aggression in 1983, this time in Grenada. The United States had been at war with El Salvador throughout the following ten years (the 1980s decade), though it was fought rather intermittently. The war with Nicaragua was waged alongside the war in El Salvador. Before the decade of 1980s was out, America had begun a war with a close, though tiny, neighbour, Panama, in 1989.

The beginning of the 20th century’s last decade saw the United States commence its second longest and most wasteful war. In 1991, following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, America launched its ferocious attack on that country. This was to last, as noted above, till 1991 only to end infructuously. It can be said that the war against Iraq did not really end in 1991. Rather it was called off to be resumed later as it did earlier this month, despite a warning that it would be regarded as war of aggression.

While engaged in what has come to be known as the First Iraq War, the United States remained involved in four different military offensives, more or less simultaneously. These were the war against Bosnia (1995), missile attack on Sudan (1998), punitive military action against Yugoslavia (1999) and a missile strike against Afghanistan (1999), targeting Osama bin Laden in retaliation for his suspected sponsorship of the 1998 terrorist attack on US embassies in East Africa. One can also argue that, though fought on Afghan soil, America’s war against the Soviet Union started in the late 1970s. After the Soviets retreated from Afghanistan, the Americans found themselves fighting their erstwhile allies, the Taliban. This should be seen as the opportunism of a simply preternatural and transcendental variety. This is of the same class as America’s love-hate equation with the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and some others. There is no counting the examples of America first spawning a dictator and then going after the despicable dictator, and at times after his victimized people.

This is exactly what the world is witnessing yet again — this time in Iraq. You never know who America will go after, once it feels it has done with the Iraqi people. The world is holding its breath and keeping its fingers crossed.

MICHAEL MOORE, the film-maker and writer managed to create a rumpus at the Academy Awards. I had first learnt of him when I had read a review of his book Stupid White Men.

I decided to read the book and managed to get a copy of it. Penguin, his publisher, puts the book in the category of politics/humour. The book deserves a category of its own. Jonathan Swift’s satire was stinging but it was sophisticated and within the established boundaries of literary decorum.

Hence, in his modest proposal for preventing children of Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, he wrote that he had learnt from a knowing American of his acquaintance in London ‘that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout’.

Michael Moore is more slap-stick and in the words of one reviewer is a “thorn in the side of corporate America scourge of political hypocrisy and all-round ass-kicker of those that need a boot in the behind”. Stupid White Men may be hysterically funny but it is a book or its equivalent that should have been prescribed as required reading for those who were taking political science classes when I was at the University of Southern California. Then all we had were political stand-up comics like Mort Sahl and in later years Art Buchwald, both of whom were at USC at the same time as I was.

Michael Moore’s book almost became a casualty of 9/11. Stupid White Men was written in the months preceding September 11, 2001. The first 50,000 copies came off the presses on the evening of September 10. Needless to say that the book could not be released. When he asked his American publishers Regan Books (a division of Harper-Collins which in turn is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.) about the release of the book, he was told that the book as it was written could not be released.

The political climate had changed and he would have to rewrite 50 per cent of the book. Michael Moore’s response was: “I am not going to change 50 per cent of even one word of the book. I can’t believe what you are telling me. You already accepted this book and printed it. Now you are afraid — worse, you are trying to censor me to conform to the corporation’s political philosophy. At a time when we are supposed to be fighting for our freedom, this is how we do it — by reducing our freedom here at home? Shouldn’t this be the time when we are expanding our freedom, to show that, no matter how much we are attacked, the last thing we are going to do is to be like those nations which suppress freedom of expression and dissent?”

The book was ultimately released (without revision) and became an instant bestseller. Within hours it had sold out the first run of 50,000. Indeed I know this because when I first tried to get the book I was told that it had sold out. I got instead, audio-tapes of the book.

Apart from being a very funny book, it is also a very angry one. He calls the election that saw Al Gore losing despite more votes than George Bush Jr. a “coup”. He is livid about it even though Michael Moore did not vote for Al Gore and is pretty scathing about the Democrats. He introduces George Bush’s team to the readers. Dick Cheney as a CEO of Halliburton, an oil service industry that has had business dealings with Iraq. As a congressman Cheney has also had the honour of voting against a House resolution calling for South Africa to release Nelson Mandela.

And so forth down to Condoleeza Rice who “for her services on Chevron’s board of directors, Rice had a 130,000-ton oil tanker named after her. She was also director at Charles Schwab and Transamerica, and has served as an adviser on J.P. Morgan.” He established a direct connection between the Bush administration and corporate America. Michael Moore is relentless.

In the British edition of his book, he casts some pearls of wisdom, written well before Blair became Bush’s soul-mate and comrade-in-arms in the war of liberation of Iraq and other virtues that can be delivered by cruise missiles and tomahawks.

With prescience, he writes: “in Britain, it seems that all the attention in recent years has been on the evils of Mad Cow — with little or no heed paid to the Mad Men....There is nothing sadder than seeing leaders of other countries trying to mimic the leaders of our country. America decides to bomb some country — and your head of state joins right in. We accept a dumbed-down mass media — and your nightly newscasts soon start to resemble ours. We decide to eliminate the safety net for our poor, and your legislative bodies can’t wait to start cutting numerous social services that have been in place for decades.” Michael Moore says that he is convinced that “this will be the unravelling of your soul.”

I had read Stupid White Men before the war in Iraq had started. I have re-read it since and paid careful attention to those in the Bush Administration whose past shows an association or connection with defence industries. The liberation of Iraqi people aside, someone is getting rich. I have always believed that if we took the profit out of war, there would be no incentive to go to war.

One Corporation sells the weapons to destroy a country and another Corporation provides the bricks and mortars to re-build it. Wars may be lost on the battle-fields but they are always won in the ledgers of business houses. George Bush has asked for a supplementary $75 billion for the war in Iraq. Just imagine if this kind of money was invested, not in some Third World country, but to feed the 30 million people in the United States who will go hungry, 12 million of whom are children. The most recent Census Bureau figures show that an estimated 33 million US residents live below the poverty line. The most famous line of the 1929 Depression was; “Brother, can you spare a dime?” I think a few dollars should be spared for the hungry of the world’s only super-power and the mightiest.

How many slums in the inner cities in the USA could be cleared up for the cost of a stealth bomber? But these are subversive thoughts when the war in Iraq is being described as “noble cause.”

PRESIDENT George W. Bush is often compared with the 26th President of the US Theodore Roosevelt, who entered the White House a little more than 100 years ago, in 1901. A Republican, Teddy Roosevelt’s outlook and temperament shared the expansionist and imperialist ethos of the European powers that were busy carving out empires, supposedly in pursuit of a civilizing mission.

He supported the war against Spain in 1898, and displaying a swashbuckling trait, raised a volunteer regiment that became known as the Rough Riders. As a result of the war, the Philippines came under US control, making it a colonial power. Having been elected vice-president in 1900, he succeeded President McKinley on the latter’s assassination on September 6, 1901.

Perhaps his most memorable achievement was the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone in Panama, which was detached from Colombia and set up as an independent state in 1903. This facilitated the construction of the Panama Canal that links the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Less well known is his role in promoting peace between Russia and Japan following their war of 1905, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

A famous statement attributed to Teddy Roosevelt is “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” This implies that while conducting negotiations, one’s language should be soft and non-provocative but the other party should know that you have the power to achieve your aims by force if talks fail.

The name given to the US-led military campaign launched against Iraq on March 20 when the 48-hours ultimatum given to Baghdad had not yet expired, is “shock and awe.” In contrast to the famous saying by Teddy Roosevelt, this translates as “speak arrogantly and use the big stick” General Tommy Franks, the military supremo of the operations against Iraq, declared in his first press briefing that the campaign would be “like none other in military history.”

The US currently possesses the mightiest war machine in human history. It has been a superpower since the end of the Second World War in 1945, and the sole superpower since the cold war ended in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the first 25 years following the end of World War II, the US followed policies and displayed qualities that won it worldwide admiration. The creation of the UN through negotiations on US soil was hailed as a historic achievement, with its twin aims of ending “the scourge of war” and promoting social and economic progress in the world.

The country, then commanding almost half of the world’s GDP, used its wealth and technology to reconstruct the devastated continent of Europe through the Marshall Plan and supported the worldwide movement against colonialism, setting the example by ending its control of the Philippines in 1946. It also provided massive economic and technical assistance to the newly independent nations of the Third World.

The benign image of the US has been tarnished from time to time, when it used its power and influence to achieve goals of questionable moral validity. President Truman, who inherited the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt before the Second World War ended, took many historic decisions, but two of these were widely questioned: the use of nuclear bombs against Japan and the creation of Israel in 1948.

One could cite many instances of the misuse of power, as also of benevolent activity by US institutions and citizens. Overall, the US became the most admired nation in the world, as culture and art in that country flourished side by side with science and technology. Impressed by its high level of prosperity and its quality of life, people from all over the world either sought to gain entry into it or to create replicas of it in their own lands.

The roots of the current conflict with Iraq and with Arab and Muslim countries generally can be traced to events during the tenure of President Bush Senior, who had talked of a new world order, while forging a coalition for the 1991 Gulf war against Saddam Hussain, following the latter’s invasion of aggression against Kuwait. Though he had initiated a peace process in Palestine, his failure to address the injustices perpetrated by the Israelis against the Palestinians ultimately gave birth to the terrorist outrage of 9/11.

President George W. Bush departed from the liberal, multilateralist approach of President Clinton who had defeated his father in his bid for re-election. With his own political experience limited to governorship of Texas, he depends heavily on hawkish advisers having close links with the Israeli and oil lobbies. He has followed a unilateralist approach since entering the White House. His National Missile Defence (NMD) initiative designed for world to be achieved under the cover of hegemony countering the threats from “rogue states’ had already created misgivings about the intention. The 9/11 terrorist attack led him to forge a coalition against international terrorism focusing more on suppressing the menace than on addressing its political and economic causes.

Since the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 atrocity were all Arabs and Muslims, the campaign against terrorism has virtually assumed the character of a drive aimed against the Arab and Muslim countries. Israel which, under Ariel Sharon, was already engaged in brutal repression of the Palestinians, has left encouraged to violate the UN resolutions on Palestine as well as human rights principles in the name of suppressing terrorism. Likewise, the Hindu nationalist BJP government in India has also stepped up its repression of freedom fighters in Kashmir, who have also been dubbed as terrorists. The distinction that the UN used to make between freedom fighters and terrorists has disappeared.

The war in Iraq has been launched clearly in pursuit of the long-term goals the Bush administration had set for itself after the 9/11 events. These goals had been identified by Republican hawks in the last year of Bush Senior’s presidency, in 1992. They advocated the pre-emptive use of US military power to safeguard America’s security and to ensure its US hegemony in the world. After the 9/11 events, the use of force had to be justified on the basis of evidence that a UN-mounted initiative for the elimination of the threat of terrorism was neither possible nor practical.

The truth is that with the UN weapons inspectors reporting progress in the tasks entrusted to them, and conveying assurances that the disarming of Iraq could be accomplished, Washington virtually took the law into its own hands, by issuing an ultimatum to Iraq that Saddam Hussein and his sons and close associates must leave within 48 hours, or else military action would be launched to achieve that other related objectives.

In a clarification issued shortly afterwards, it was made clear that the military action would be taken even if the demand in the ultimatum was met. President Bush was set on his war course and would not be deterred by such inanities as legality, evidence of intransigence or plain desirability or justification of war.

General Tommy Franks, the Commander-in-Chief of the Central Command, set forth the US war aims in his first war briefing after the launching of the Anglo-US attack. These included the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction as well as terrorist networks, securing oil wells and rehabilitation of Iraq to prepare it for representative government. Along with air and ground assaults, an intense psychological was launched, to persuade the Iraqi armed forces and public to surrender rather than risk their lives and property by siding with a doomed regime.

The course of over a week’s fighting has made it clear that the Saddam’s regime is receiving wider support than had been anticipated, since patriotic sentiments have been aroused by what is perceived by Iraqis as an unholy war of aggression. The sense of outrage over the hubris and arrogance of power behind the US strategy has aroused opposition not only in the Arab and Muslim countries but all over the world, including substantial elements in the US. The propaganda line that the US attack is meant to bring liberation and democracy to Iraq rings hollow, and a worldwide demand that the war and bloodshed in Iraq end at once is gaining momentum.

With regard to post-war rehabilitation and administration of Iraq, demand is for the UN to play the crucial role in the reconstruction and transition of Iraq to an elected government of its own. Much of these prospects, however, remain obscured by the growing intensity of the war, its possible duration and consequence. For its part, the US has made its long-term intention clear by designating a retired general, John Garner, to run the country that may involve the stationing of 100,000 troops for pacification. The Bush administration seems determined to pursue its own agenda in post-war Iraq rather than allow the UN to move in and take charge.

The US has clearly lost standing by launching a war that the majority of the world community considers unjustified and unnecessary. The damage done to the status and relevance of the UN in the process is also highly regrettable. International law and morality are of little relevance when it comes to resolving disputes and differences between a major power and an economically and militarily weak nation or nations or protecting the rights, interests and sovereignty of a country when pitted against a formidably powerful one believing in the doctrine of might being always right. This has been America’s gift to the rest of the world hopefully looking for peace, justice, sanity and good sense to emerge.