‘STATE politics is the womb in which war is developed, in which its outlines lie hidden in a rudimentary state, like the qualities of living creatures in their embryos,’ so states the book ‘Men at War.’

The US and Britain started their war on Iraq with the sure conviction that, given the overwhelming superiority of their war machine, a quick humbling of the country was inevitable. As expected, the coalition forces started the operation with massive air and missile strikes against selected targets followed by two-fold ground attacks. One is aimed at capturing northern Iraq with Special Services Groups in collaboration with the local Kurds. The other is a two-pronged ground operation aimed at capturing Baghdad. This assessment covers developments as on the seventh day of the war.

The Operation ‘Desert Storm’, a decade earlier, was spread over 43 days. Out of this period the first 39 days witnessed only aerial and missile attacks on Iraqi targets. In the ground battle that followed, the US-led forces took only four days to defeat Iraq. Generally speaking, aerial bombardments and missile attacks cause devastation and demoralize the people at the receiving end, but the decisive engagements take place in ground battles that determine the outcome of a war.

The Anglo-American strategy in ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom’ is based on early use of land formations and Special Forces. The aircraft and missiles use guided weapon-systems for precision attacks against military targets. In such attacks the lethal cargo can at times miss the target and hit elsewhere. Such errors occur in war for a variety of reasons and these cannot be totally eliminated.

It was initially predicted in the present case that the ground battles would be short, swift and decisive and the Iraqi forces might succumb to the allied military onslaught within a matter of days. The first seven days of the war had surprises for all. Truth became a casualty on from day one and the claims and counter-claims of both antagonists reflected their respective national positions rather than ground realities. In war, as in politics, a deliberate effort is sometimes needed to separate facts from fiction.

The western media blitzkrieg was based on the assumption that the people of Iraq, long suppressed under the unpopular and harsh rule of Saddam Hussein, would rise in revolt against him. So also would the Kurds and the Shiite section of the population. It was also assumed that the Iraqi military would surrender or revolt and join the so-called ‘liberation’ forces.

Such simplistic beliefs and assumptions have proved wrong. The Iraqi military has neither revolted nor surrendered partially or totally. Nor have the Iraqi people risen in revolt against Saddam Hussein and his government. On the contrary, they have remained composed and the body language of those few civilians who appeared on the television screen spoke of confidence not anxiety. One Shiite leader has stated that the people of Iraq, irrespective of their ethnic or sectarian differences will work in unity to defend their country. For the present, Saddam Hussein is in command.

Asked to comment on this aspect, the Central Command chief General Tommy Franks stated on March 24 that ‘fear’ of reprisals had dictated the attitude of the people of Iraq. Coming days and weeks will prove or disprove the veracity of this statement. For the present, the public morale in Iraq seems good and the country’s military forces have performed reasonably well in small-scale and early ground battles in Nssiriya, Umm Qasr and Basra. On the other hand, the coalition forces crossed Euphrates after “a tough fight” and are poised for a decisive move for the Iraqi capital. The public and military commitment to the defence of Iraq will be put to the real test when the battle for Baghdad is joined.

The military odds are heavily stacked against Iraq. The disparity of military capabilities between the opposing sides is so great that, sooner than later, it will start telling. Iraq has faced the initial military thrusts with determination and courage but these were merely the initial probing rounds. The tougher part of the fighting lies ahead and the decisive engagements that will seal the fate of war have yet to take place. Semantics and emotions have no place in the gory business of war.

Wisely, Iraq has adopted the strategy of not dissipating its strength resources by trying to defend every inch of its territory. Reports say it plans to defend selected well-prepared localities, including Baghdad. Early military encounters imposed delays on the advance of coalition ground forces. General Franks claims that such delays are part of the war strategy but eventually Iraq would be defeated. The performance of the opposing sides will best be judged when some major battles take place.

The US-led forces are primarily tasked to locate and destroy all weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So far they have failed to locate any such weapons in the areas already under their control. The question of the need and justification of the war may assume an ominous note if no such weapons are found in Iraq when it is finally defeated. It will then be asked why a weak country was decimated on mere suspicion or flawed intelligence reports. On the other hand, if such weapons are found anywhere in Iraq, the US and its allies will need to prove that these were actually ‘recovered’ from Iraq.

The condemnation of the attack on Iraq continues worldwide, the US and Britain included. Russia and France demand that the UN Security Council should determine if the invasion of Iraq is legally justified. Sooner or later this aspect will be discussed in the world body. So also is the question of which agency or country will handle the post-war task of reconstruction of Iraq. Washington plans to control this effort itself. Nearly all other major powers, Britain included, suggest that this work be entrusted to the UN. On this issue some policy differences have developed between the US and Britain.

Given these developments it appears probable that war in Iraq may take weeks, not months to come to its logical conclusion. The final outcome is foreseeable, however except by those who wish their hearts to dominate their minds. This development is painful for all freedom lovers — painful, not because President Saddam Hussein is an angel or that he governed with the support of the people.

It is sad that those who preach democracy chose to disregard its basic principles and unilaterally plunged into a war. This war, unjust and unnecessary, is a rebuff to global diplomacy which failed to avert a catastrophe. It is an affront to the United Nations which was arrogantly bypassed and marginalized.

It is an indictment of the Organization of Islamic Conference which stood in silence and almost looked the other way when one of its members was subjected to naked aggression. Operation Iraqi Freedom may perhaps be remembered in history as a Crusade against Iraq. Iraq may be defeated but its defeat will not enhance the global image of the United States and Britain.

The writer is a retired general of the Pakistan army.

THE American war against Iraq is expected to make a profound impact on global politics. The key feature of the emerging international political system is the massive participation of the people at the popular level across international boundaries. Never before have the common masses felt so deeply involved in contemporary affairs or attempted on this scale to influence the course of history.

Wars are nothing new for humankind. Some of the most devastating conflicts, such as the two world wars of the twentieth century, affected the lives of millions in an unprecedented way. Yet they never triggered a popular reaction as intense as the American war in Iraq has done. In fact, the response this time has been so powerful, widespread and organized, that a peace movement was born even before the conflict had actually started.

True, the millions of people who attempted to stop the US and Britain from attacking Iraq failed to do so. But the rallies continue to be held all over the world with the aim of forcing a ceasefire and restraining America from extending the war to other countries.

What has prompted a different response this time giving the anti-war movement such a broadbased character? What has galvanized people so massively this time and ensured such a diverse participation of people from all sides of the political and ideological spectrum in peace rallies? The answer lies in the role the media have played, may be unwittingly, in producing this new sociological and political phenomenon.

The fact of the matter is that the media, driven by the emergence of the Internet, are changing people’s thinking on key issues and thus forcing governments to take note of the change. During the 1991 Gulf war and in the post-9/11 American ‘war on terror’, the television channels could get away with their flood of disinformation and obfuscation. This was the first time the viewers were exposed to images on their screen showing war and violence in their naked brutality — albeit neatly cropped to produce the desired impact on the viewers’ psyche.

With the phenomenal advancement in technology, the TV coverage has been likened to one given to the Olympic Games, so extensive and graphic has it been. With 529 journalists “embedded” with the so-called coalition forces, close-up shots are now possible as correspondents from places as far apart as Washington and Qatar are positioned on the TV screen simultaneously to give their version of events.

This is a significant change. The electronic and print media in the United States, which are owned by a corporate oligarchy that also controls political power and leading business interests, have not enjoyed the free hand they did 18 months ago in the post-9/11 period. Their capacity to “manufacture consent” — to borrow the title of Noam Chomsky’s book — has been curbed. They have been compelled to tone down somewhat their war rhetoric and skewed presentations, as they have come under pressure from a public demanding unbiased coverage of the war. The voices of dissent have begun to break through the wall of silence previously erected by the mainstream media which were accustomed to giving a sanitized version of events, peppered with conformist tone and slanting.

It is the Internet which has penetrated the stranglehold of television, radio and the press over public perceptions and thinking. According to a rough estimate, it is used today by over 605 million people all over the world (the figure would be higher if we count the number of people who share Internet connections) to obtain information and exchange messages. Informed sources in Islamabad place the number of Internet users in Pakistan at approximately five million — which is more than newspaper readers.

In the US all newspapers, which were classified as the alternate media and could not previously enlarge their circulation because of financial constraints, have now set up websites and are spreading their message far and wide beyond American borders. Since their goal is the dissemination of the ‘alternative’ viewpoint, they encourage other websites and newspapers to freely reproduce whatever material appeals to them. Michael Albert, editor of ZNet, in reply to a query if permission was required to reproduce articles from their website, wrote, “We don’t pay much attention to such legalities, to be honest...”

Since all newspapers worth their while in the Third World have also set up websites, it is now possible for readers in the West to access them and obtain the other side of the picture. Traffic to these sites has spiralled. With millions accessing them, their message is forwarded to further millions by committed individuals who have set up news groups.

A psychiatrist in the US, Carol Wolman, sends me at least ten messages everyday giving me links to media sites which she monitors and which I would never have accessed in normal course. She tells me that she has 800 addresses on her list, many of which are of groups. She writes, “Many people pick up my articles and republish them — they are kind of ripples in a pond.” There are thousands of such groups who forward articles and messages to the addresses on their lists. The hope now is that with the advent of the Internet, the dream of a new information order will be realized. Twenty years ago, the Unesco director-general, Amadou-Mehtar M’Bow, had struggled for this so valiantly only to lose his job in the process, thanks to the American ambition to control the minds and hearts of the people around the world by controlling the flow of information. M’Bow is now emerging the victor. The fact that hackers — said to be professionals — have been working hard to prevent the English language website of Al Jazeera from becoming operational betrays the apprehensions of the powers that be on this score.

The other factor which accounts for the immense impact of the Internet is that it offers itself as a very convenient, cheap, prompt and effective tool of communication which is not easy to censor and does not lend itself easily to news management. This has greatly facilitated the organization of the peace movement. It sounds incredible, but the fact is that the anti-war movement, which has taken the world by storm, began on the Internet. The moveon.org which spearheaded the peace rallies all over the world on February 15 and the global candle-light vigil on March 16 was launched on the computer by four peace activists in the US. Messages were circulated through the Internet which were picked up by local activists working at their own level.

In the US the moveon.org has over 900,000 members and, according to The New York Times, it has mobilized in three months the number of people against the war in Iraq which it had taken three years to build during the Vietnam war.

The Internet is restricting the capacity of the news channels to wage a psychological war on behalf of the Bush Administration. The mainstream media can no longer ignore the Internet. They have tried to counter it by setting up their own websites in an effort to inject a measure of credibility in their reporting. Strangely enough, many of these websites are more balanced in their coverage of news than the TV channels are on the screen. ‘Damaging’ news which appears on the website is carefully expunged from news bulletins.

According to the BBC World Service, their online language sites attracted 60 million people seeking news of the military action in Iraq in six days after the American attack was launched — ten times higher than the normal figures.

A significant feature of the Internet, which the websites of TV channels and the newspapers have used to the maximum, is the opportunity it gives to people to actively interact with the hosts and other readers. Discussions and chat groups have been started — the BBC Online’s “Talking Point” is an example — which pose controversial questions, invite comments and take votes. But strangely, a notice in “Talking Point” asking for votes on the question “Was war a mistake?” was dropped without any explanation at the closing time of the vote.

The 21st century has been described as the communication century. Its key feature is that the media, especially multi-media, have resulted in an information explosion. This will have a profound impact on the course of events because the media are also involving the people in public debates and giving them a sense of participation and empowerment which was quite unheard of before.

PERSONS claiming to be close to President Pervez Musharraf used to insist that he was determined to cleanse the bureaucracy of black sheep and that the process would go on despite the fact that he would no longer be chief executive of the country.

Also that the National Accountability Bureau would continue under an army general. Since the process was apparently aimed at government officers (though not exclusively) the new politicians in power should have no objection. I suppose that is why a couple of them are federal ministers and also accused in cases before the Bureau.

As is usual with reliable sources, they believe in being vague. So my source did not describe the method the President was going to adopt for the purpose. I mean whether the black sheep will be converted into white sheep by taking a leaf out of the book of the late Dr. Mahbubul Haq, who once succeeded spectacularly in helping the nation to convert black money into white money, or whether they will be eliminated altogether. In any case the matter is now in the hands of PM Zafrullah Jamali. Or is it?

And of course nobody knows whether the criteria for determining the black and white sheep among senior officers in the on-going process are fixed by government officers themselves or the public. My experience tells me that bureaucrats usually think of the white ones among them as the real black sheep. They are un-officer-like, fun-spoilers, or, as they say in Urdu, the bone in the kebab. May be the Prime Minister has criteria all his own, based undoubtedly on the higher national interest. The result of this uncertainty can only be that poor officers (if there are any poor officers) will remain in a state of suspense (many of them are already suspended) as to who is going to be whitewashed and who is going to lose his skin.

Meanwhile, there is no truth in the rumour that senior bureaucrats, led by the most influential among them, once stood up to the President on a technical point, challenging him and his accountability advisers to prove that there can be a black sheep because, in fact, no such animal exists.

There are black goats, of course, but any self-respecting black goat will feel insulted at being called a black sheep. The reason is that goats do not rate sheep very high as far as intelligence is concerned. If the bureaucracy succeeds in carrying its point the newly elected government will have to issue an ordinance to equate sheep with goats in order to overcome the objection. It will have to be a presidential ordinance because the new National Assembly is not yet in a mood to legislate.

That should make the task of whitewashing, or even complete annihilation of black goats (formerly black sheep) easier. I’ll tell you why. You see, already black goats are much favoured as sacrificial animals by the superstitious and the pseudo- religious. Anyone escaping a calamity like an accident or bankruptcy or dismissal from service at once goes for a black goat which is promptly slaughtered and its meat given away to the poor and the meatless. I have often wondered what black goats have done to deserve this treatment.

Under the ordinance the Prime Minister would be well advised to offer for sacrifice one of the black goats/sheep from among the corrupt bureaucrats to those who escape disasters. Some thanedars I have seen would yield a good 100 kilos, much more than the fattest goat or sheep, black or white could offer. If that can happen, the real black goats who thus escape slaughter would pray for the PM’s and General Musharraf’s long life.

From the veterinary point of view there is not much difference between a goat and a sheep. Even if there is it wouldn’t be more than the difference between Natha Singh and Prem Singh. Since the younger readers of this column may not have heard the story I’ll repeat it for them. Sepoy Natha Singh of the British Indian army had applied for a month’s leave. The English colonel said OK and wrote out the necessary order. After a while the Subedar-major came up and said, “Sir, it was Natha Singh who had asked for leave, while you have granted it to Prem Singh”. Unruffled, the colonel said, “Doesn’t matter. Natha Singh Prem Singh comes to the same thing”.

There is also another side to this apparently minor matter. The President hoped to be an integral part of the new elected government. This he is, though not on paper. He must have realised as military chief executive that in this country no government can effectively function without the help of the senior bureaucracy, especially the police. All regimes, whether federal or provincial, military or civil, elected or non-elected, love to employ extracurricular methods to frustrate their opponents and “to make them see reason”.

Remember that terrible blood-curdling tyrant Jam Sadiq Ali? He couldn’t have lasted for a week as Chief Minister of Sindh if his officers had refused to follow his unorthodox orders. It is always the bureaucracy that is found to be the most useful agency and the most innovative for dirty deeds and evil purposes. Politicians don’t have that kind of guts.

In my 35 years in government service I have heard scores of top political leaders warning officers in general, and police officers in particular, about how they would sort them out when they came into power. The bureaucracy just listened and smiled. Because as soon as these leaders got the opportunity to rule they wanted to rule through the enterprising members of the bureaucracy. Perhaps this is what they meant by sorting them out.

Anyway, with the advent of an elected government, President Musharraf would do well to forget all about black sheep and the possible means of whitening them or eliminating them. Let the PM handle them. As it is, nothing can change the attitude and psyche of our public servants, and this expression includes everyone from top to bottom, because the Naib Qasid can be as officious and snooty as the Grade 22 wallah. A change can only come about if a man of God, a real selfless mujahid, springs from the soil to reform the entire society. In that case the black sheep will at once throw away their skins and become white.

War, the systematic and organised use of violence with all its bestial destructiveness, is peculiar to the most advanced of animals, man. Writing in the early sixteenth century, Erasmus considered war “unnatural”. “Animals do not make war on one another. Whoever heard of 100,000 animals rushing together to butcher each other, as men do everywhere?”

It was the European thinkers of the eighteenth century Enlightenment who saw the issue of war in perhaps more realistic terms. “Want of a common judge with authority puts all men in a state of nature,” wrote John Locke. Or as Michael Howard, the distinguished war historian, has written more recently, “War is an inherent element in a system of sovereign states which lack any supreme and acknowledged arbiter.”

There is probably something in this. After all, the few societies which have never practised war appear to have a common ingredient, a homogeneous culture and a system of authority refined and effective enough to resolve disputes without recourse to arms. The Eskimos do not practise war. The Eskimo tribes of Greenland don’t even have a word for war in their language.

Some of the pre-Colombian Indian peoples of North America also developed highly ritualised forms of conflict that stop short of war-like the tribes of central California where men on the two sides would throw arrows at each other, without an attempt to wound, and between bouts the children would run to the dividing line and scoop up the arrows, like ball boys at Wimbledon. Egypt of the Pharaohs, a far more complex society than any of these, didn’t go to war for over 1000 years.

The question we now face — and which appeared to be out of the framework of the thinking of those in power in Washington this time round — is how we move from a situation where the powder chain is laid to one where by negotiation, by agreement, by order and by institution, the growth of armaments and the chances of conflict can be seriously diminished. Law on which we all agree is our only hope.

The Romans used to say: Inter arma silent leges: in the time of war law is silent. Our job must be to give law resonance and strength; to provide the framework of trust and practice that can contain the forces of a hostile world. This is not an impossible task. In the last half century it has been done in Europe, the crucible of most of the world’s worst wars. It has been done in most of the countries of South America, at least in inter-state relations. And it has been done in much of the South Pacific and indeed within the continent of North America. The constitution of Japan forbids it to make war.

Some may be tempted at this moment to conclude that this war shows that the world is going backwards. I think this is a misinterpretation of what went on in the great debates at the UN Security Council. The continued and feverish debating managed to delay war by many months. It also gave time for anybody who could read a newspaper, even the more conservative ones, to realize that Washington and London had only a paucity of evidence to prove that Iraq was the threat they said it was and that the supposed connections with Al Qaeda were tenuous at best.

It allowed public opinion in Europe to move from its long-standing stance of deferring to Washington’s judgement on matters concerning life and death to becoming independently minded in a way it never had before. —Copyright Jonathan Power

ONE would have thought that a quarter of a million personnel, equipped with the newest-fangled products of military technology, should not have found it all that difficult to subdue adversaries who had methodically been stripped of most of their weaponry. But two weeks into the invasion of Iraq, the invaders are no longer counting on a cakewalk.

George W. Bush has memorized a new mantra: “As long as it takes”. But no one in a position of authority is willing to say how long that may be, because they simply do not know. The US Defence Department’s calculations have gone awry. Donald Rumsfeld now finds himself in a position similar to that of Colin Powell.

Powell had played a significant role in persuading Bush to seek approval for the aggression from the United Nations Security Council. Sensibly, the Council refused to play ball. Rumsfeld, who has never had much time for the UN, was keen not just on a quick war but also a relatively cheap one.

General Tommy Franks wanted 400,000 troops deployed in the Gulf. That seemed ridiculous to Rumsfeld, who was convinced 40,000 would do the trick. After all, the UN inspectors had more or less made sure that Saddam Hussein had no ballistic surprises up his sleeve. Besides, weren’t most Iraqis simply dying to be liberated from the tyrant’s yoke? And wasn’t it clearly in the interests of Saddam’s fighting forces to surrender or defect en masse? Didn’t virtually everyone in Iraq realize that resistance would be futile?

Iraqi thought processes evidently diverge from the single track delineated for them by the Washington hawks. The level of Saddam’s popularity is somewhat besides the point in this context: like most other peoples around the globe, the majority of Iraqis do not want their land occupied by Anglo-American adventurists. And even those among them who are desperate for regime change in Baghdad are, by and large, determined not to leave it to the Americans, after the nasty experience of 1991.

Rumsfeld and others of his ilk — such as Richard Perle, who last week felt forced to resign from his position as head of a key defence advisory committee after leading investigative journalist Seymour Hersh exposed an embarrassing conflict of interest — must be frustrated that US forces are hamstrung by the need to limit civilian casualties.

There are two primary reasons for this approach. In propaganda terms, much has been made of the pretence that the chief objective of the war is to “liberate” Iraqis and “democratize” their nation. Even those Americans who do not have too many problems with being systematically misinformed, Rupert Murdoch’s shamefully biased Fox network would find it hard to accept that killing people is the best means of liberating them.

Nor would it be particularly easy to sell the idea that mass graves are a prerequisite for democracy.

Secondly, the war has been unleashed in the face of massive popular opposition in the West, not least in nations that are a part of the so-called “coalition of the willing”. In Spain, 90 per cent of the public has reservations about the Bush-Blair crusade.

Opinion polls suggest that opposition to the war has lately decreased in Britain and the US (although large-scale popular protests are by no means a thing of the past).

The figures could yet be reversed, however, if the civilian death toll continues to mount. As it is, recent instances of carnage in Baghdad suggest, at the very least, that America9s much-ballyhooed smart weapons are not so smart after all - or at least that those operating them leave much to be desired in terms of intelligence.

American forces have been surprised by the level of resistance they have encountered even in regions deemed to be overwhelmingly hostile to the Ba’ath Party regime. As ground forces commander Lieutenant-General William S. Wallace confessed, “The enemy we’re fighting is different from the one we’d war-gamed against.”

This suggests, among other things, that the signals from Baghdad went unheeded. Officials have not exactly fought shy of discussing Iraq’s strategy. A member of Saddam’s inner circle, for example, confided to a western correspondent a week before the war began: “They can enter the cities, but they cannot stay. They will destroy much in Iraq. But we are preparing thousands of people as suicide bombers like the Palestinians .... For the first two or three days the Americans will feel they are in control. But we have a lot of experience in this. The Americans taught us a lot in 1991 and we fought Iran for eight years.”

The gist of what he said was echoed in an interview deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz gave to the International Institute of Strategic Studies: “People say to me you are not the Vietnamese, you have no jungles and swamps to hide in. I reply, ‘Let our cities be our swamps and our buildings be our jungles’.”

It does not follow, of course, that the nature of the regime has changed. Saddam has not transmogrified into a Ho Chi Minh (although it is worth remembering that 40 odd years ago the US spared no effort in vilifying the resolute Vietnamese leader) nor is it likely that he enjoys access to the services of a tactician as brilliant as General Giap. He could, at best, be designated a petty Stalin (an allusion that would not alarm him, given that Saddam considers Uncle Joe a role model).

Yet history tells us that, notwithstanding Stalin’s penchant for repression, the Soviet people strained every sinew to stave off the Nazi hordes.

To return to the present, the evidence thus far of Iraqi resistance to the would-be occupiers - whose supply lines have been disrupted, and who have had to send for massive reinforcements - is having an electrifying effect on public opinion among Arabs.

When millions of people across the western world rallied six weeks ago in an effort to avert the inevitable catastrophe, the Arab street remained relatively quiet. This does not mean that the average Arab was unconcerned about what lay ahead.

Many Arabs are keen for regime change not just in Iraq but also in most other countries in the region. At the same time, hardly anyone in that part of the world harbours many illusions about the US. Not only is Washington’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian context a source of profound dismay, but Arabs by and large are also aware of the part the US plays in sustaining various potentates in the Middle East (the list included Saddam until 1990).

Public demonstrations are not a common phenomenon in the Arab world, not least because the authorities are generally extremely suspicious of any unauthorised expression of the popular will. That is why Hosni Mubarak - regularly ‘re-elected’ by majorities comparable to the one Saddam achieved in last year’s referendum - was willing to tolerate a one-off anti-war protest last week, but sent in the riot police when Cairo erupted for the second day running.

Jordan and Lebanon have experienced similar eruptions, while correspondents attest to seething anger over the events in Iraq among Arab populations elsewhere. Crucially, this indignation is mixed with pride. The Iraqis have not rolled over, which suggests that American might is not irresistible. Although there can be little doubt that the US, with the immense firepower at its disposal, will manage eventually to complete its occupation of Iraq, the longer this painful and bloody process takes, the deeper will be the regional resentment. Meanwhile, Rumsfeld’s warnings to Syria and Iran could be construed as an early warning of the next targets on Paul Wolfowitz’s agenda.

One of the varied excuses cited by US officials for invading Iraq (the least disingenuous one can be found in a study prepared in 1996 for then Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu by Perle and Douglas Feith - the latter now a Rumsfeld subordinate - in which they described Saddam’s removal as “an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right”) is that the induction of democracy in Baghdad would serve to promote pluralism among its neighbours.

The first point to be made about that assumption is that it smacks exceptionally of hubris coming from an administration whose own democratic credentials, in terms of both the Florida fraud and the post-September 11 constitutional violations - stop well short of being exemplary.

The second one is that if popular revolts do break out, they are likely to be directed against the US and its client regimes, and the popular regimes that result may not be to Washington’s liking. In the shorter run, however, the likeliest symptom of heightened resentment will be an upsurge in terrorism.

Whether or not Saddam lives long enough to exult in the aftermath, chances are that Osama bin Laden will be smiling.

E-mail: mahirali@journalist.com