Are we so blind as to miss the symbolism altogether? Fourteen hundred years after Hussein's martyrdom in the sands of Karbala, another epic drama in blood is being enacted on the same land made holy by his sacrifice.
Grandson of the Prophet (upon whom be peace), Hussein fought for justice. On the orders of the then Ummayad ruler, Yazid, his small band of followers, including women and children, was surrounded, denied food and water, and then massacred, an event resonating through the annals of Islam like no other and mourned by Muslims of every sect.
Why is Najaf holy? Because there lies buried the great Ali, Caliph of Islam, husband to Fatima (daughter of the Prophet), father of Hassan and Hussein. Not far off is Karbala where Yazid's army put Hussein and his followers to the sword. Every inch of that soil consecrated by blood and washed in emotion.
Didn't the Bush White House and the Cheney/Rumsfeld war party read up on their Islamic history when they set in motion the invasion of Iraq? Had they no idea that the moment an invading army, evil in its heart, set foot in Iraq instant comparisons would be drawn with the army of Yazid?
Aided powerfully by those two mighty engines of disinformation, CNN and BBC, American propaganda is at its most sinister, and most desperate, when it asserts the division of Iraq along sectarian lines. Fallujah is Sunni, Najaf is Shia. The Sunnis were the beneficiaries of Saddam's rule. The Shias would be predisposed to welcome the occupying Americans.
Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make ridiculous, a process we see unfolding in Iraq. The Mesopotamian Valley is one of the cradles of human civilisation.
The Iraqi people are culturally amongst the most advanced in the Middle East. Were the Americans putting so low a value on the intelligence of the Iraqi people as to think they would be taken in by such facile propaganda?
Do American helicopter gunships and tanks make any distinction between Shias and Sunnis? Do smart bombs and missiles discriminate between one and the other? Now that Shias under the leadership of the intrepid Moqtada Sadr are up in arms against the Americans, are American bombs targeting his followers alone and sparing others?
The Anglo-American axis (no coalition this) is encountering a bitter truth. Its invasion of Iraq has ignited fires from whose flames a national resistance has emerged, Sunnis and Shias attaining a unity of purpose unknown in the modern history of their country.
The overriding aim is to defeat the Americans and their sidekicks the British. Everything else is secondary and can wait. In passing, spare a thought for Britain: the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Churchill reduced to its weirdest hour by a foolish prime minister.
This was supposed to be an easy ride. It has instead turned into the frontline of resistance to American imperialism. History was supposed to have come to an end after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism. A new history is being forged in Iraq.
In the Bush administration's rush to disaster notice an alarming parallel with Nazism. When German might was at its strongest in 1939-40 no country in Europe, except Churchill's Britain, dared cross Hitler.
Three years later with the German Wehrmacht stretched from Stalingrad to El Alamein, the terror of German arms had lessened, one reflection of this being the emergence of resistance movements in German-occupied Greece, Yugoslavia and France.
Immediately after September 11, the world held its breath as it tried to figure out what the US would do. Now that the US has over-extended itself from Afghanistan to Iraq, fear of America is tempered by a cooler appraisal of American strength and weakness.
Centcom commander Gen Abizaid wants more troops in Iraq. Where will they come from? If from the Korean Peninsula, which is one possibility, then at least one thing becomes clear: should, for whatever reason, Comrade Kim Jong Il choose to raise the temperature, the US will be hard pressed for a suitable response.
Before the Cheney/Rumsfeld war in Iraq, American power looked invincible and ubiquitous. Iraq, like Vietnam a generation before it, has exposed the limits of that power.
The people of Iraq are not interested in Sheikh Osama bin Laden or Al Qaeda. They never were. They don't want to mine the Persian Gulf and stop the flow of Iranian and Arab oil to wherever this oil goes. They are tired of American lies and just want the Americans out of their country.
They don't want the gifts the Americans say they have brought with them: 'liberation' on the tips of marine bayonets, 'democracy' through a bunch of American puppets like the laughable Chalabi, 'reconstruction' through tainted corporations like Halliburton.
They just want the Americans out and after they leave they'll fix their own sewers, hospitals and schools. Sell their oil and from its proceeds go about reconstructing their country run over and destroyed by aggression as wanton, brutal and evil as Hitler's in the Second World War.
In a crucial respect the Nazis were better, more culturally benign, than the Americans have been in Iraq. In the countries they conquered, the Nazis looted art treasures and brought them to Berlin. Art was looted, not destroyed.
Compare this to the vandalizing of the Baghdad Museum, home to one of the richest archaeological collections in the world. American forces lifted not a finger to avert this catastrophe.
Weren't they aware such a place existed? Or did the preservation of Iraq's cultural heritage, infinitely richer than anything the United States can boast of, simply not figure in their calculations?
In all this what are the lessons for Pakistan? The realization, above all, that Iraq is not an isolated event. It's part of a larger American design, pushed by friends of Israel sitting in the Bush administration, to eradicate the very notion of resistance from Muslim minds, thus making Israel more secure and extending American control over Muslim oil for another hundred years.
Isn't it high time Pakistan learnt to say no to the US? Look at the mess we got ourselves into in Wana. The Pakistan Army had no quarrel with the Zargulkhel tribesmen of Waziristan. But intense American pressure induced the army to launch an operation it shouldn't have.
Thanks to the resistance of the tribals the army called off the operation and opted for negotiations. In effect, declaring victory and coming away, vindicating the dictum that among mortals second thoughts are always best.
Just imagine if the operation had succeeded. The Americans would have been pressing the army to launch more, a course of action that could have set the entire tribal belt on fire.
With godfathers like Uncle Sam, who needs enemies?. The government alone is not at fault, however. Things are no better on the other side of the national divide. Benazir Bhutto says not a word against the US, convinced that the road to power in Islamabad runs through Washington. Nawaz Sharif is a guest of the House of Saud, a conglomerate not famous for taking extreme positions.
As for the Mullahs of the MMA, their thunder is worse than their bite. Half the time it is difficult to make out whether on any particular issue they are for real or just holding forth for the benefit of the galleries.
With such a cast of characters no wonder Pakistan faces a crisis of leadership. But the mother of all questions: the world of Islam under threat from a string of American lackeys within, and American aggression without, what is to be done?
The first step, the starting point of rectitude, is to appraise Iraq correctly. Frustrating American designs in Iraq, defeating the Americans in Fallujah, holy Najaf and timeless Baghdad, is at this historical moment the highest affirmation of the Islamic ideal.
Email: ayaz.amir@dawn.com.