By Claude Mills, staff reporter 
British Royal Marines from 42 Commando secure the area around Umm Qasr in southern Iraq, on Tuesday. - Reuters
SOMETIMES, IT seems, it is necessary to burn the village in order to save it. If you watch the 'surgical' explosions and burning oilwells in Iraq broadcast on the Cable News Networks, and the rising head count of slaughtered civilians and soldiers, it becomes clear that the Americans will indeed conquer Iraq, but it may be a pyrrhic victory.
After the first couple of days when the coalition forces made rapid advances in Southern Iraq, the Americans suddenly seem surprised and miffed that the Iraqi are fighting back. 'Hey, it's no-fair', they say. The Iraqis are dressing like civilians, and oh, horror, they are shooting at us. The Iraqis use guerilla tactics, they are not 'shocked and awed', dust is everywhere, and worse, the Iraqis have resorted to suicide bombers. Oh, the indignity of it all!
Why can't the Iraqis just die like good little turban-heads? And what's with all those flipping Jihads?
Even those Iraqis eager to turn against the regime are caught between the American guns, and the bloodthirsty Baath party with their goons, the Fedayeen, the Iraqi paramilitary force. The tide of public opinion continues to swell against the conflict.
Last week, billions of people around the globe read in horror as word got out that American soldiers killed seven women and children after a van they were riding in failed to stop when troops from the Third Infantry Division waved them down, reportedly fired warning shots, and then fired into the van. It's a PR nightmare, and one report coming out of Iraq quoted one high-ranking official as saying it was caused by the 'fog of war'.
FOG OF WAR
The 'fog of war'. A marvellous turn of phrase, isn't it?
When did it all go wrong? Operation Iraqi Freedom is not only a conflict involving weapons and troops, but an information war that is on in earnest.
The Americans expected to flood the Arab world with pictures of humanitarian aid, American soldiers feeding hungry people and giving medical attention to sick children. Wasn't Iraq supposed to be the United States' 'un-Vietnam' where they could exorcise their personal demons?
Even Iraqis who despise and fear Saddam Hussein can be expected to recoil from a foreign invasion. Damn the infidels! is the new rallying cry. The propaganda ministries are at full tilt, cranking up emotions that amplify the grief and plays upon nationalistic sympathies.
Every death and maiming of a child, a sister, a lover, a mother or a neighbour, no matter how unintentional, creates a groundswell of new enemies, and stokes an outrage that eclipses politics or differences. General Hazem al-Rawi, a spokesman for the Iraqi armed forces, announced that 4,000 volunteers from 23 Arab countries stand ready to carry out suicide attacks against American forces.
The coalition forces now face fighting reminiscent of the 1993 battle of Mogadishu, a historical event that was made into the movie, 'Black Hawk Down', where 150 American troops were trapped in the streets of Mogadishu, and fighting armed civilian militants at 360 degree angles without much cover.
Will Iraq be the 21st century Vietnam? It is too early to tell, but I am already tired of the incessant boasting by the US military about the surgical accuracy of the attacks but yet, I am finding it doubly difficult to buy into the anti-war 'blood-for-oil' hysteria.
I do not doubt that Saddam is a brutal dictator, but I am yet to be persuaded that he is a clear and present danger to the world. The US feels it has a moral duty to spread democracy, and when it is not propping up repressive regimes and brutal dictators like Augusto Pinochet, the late Ferdinand Marcos and Duvalier, the US is a bastion of democracy. I am not amused by this sort of 'gunboat diplomacy'.
You can't force Mickey D's, Girls Gone Wild videos, globalism, Western-style democracy and baseball on a people who have no interest in it. The sad thing is I don't believe that the US would be so gung-ho about 'liberating' the Iraqi people if Iraq had no oil.
IS IT A BLACK THING?
I feel no sympathy for the mealy-mouthed U.N's charges of irrelevance in the face of the US invasion of Iraq. Why didn't the UN step in to stop the slaughter of 800,000 Africans in Rwanda? The United States, Belgium, France and the UN Security Council all had prior warning about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and could have prevented it. The Americans were interested in saving money, the Belgians were interested in saving face, and the French were interested in saving their ally, the genocidal Hutu government.
Maybe, there is some truth to the argument that no one cared because it was just a bunch of black savages killing themselves. What do you think?
Still in 1994, the UN sent a peacekeeping force to Bosnia when the President of the US at the time stated that if the negotiations between the Serbs and the Albanian ethnic minority in Kosovo failed and war resumed, there would be a very real risk that it could spread beyond Bosnia, and involve Europe's new democracies as well as its NATO allies. Is it because the persons dying in that conflict were 'off-white', or because of the geographical location of the conflict?
Whatever the reason, it is clear that the US most times acts in its own self-interest. Remember the invasions of Grenada, Panama and later Haiti? The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with the benefits going mostly to the U.S. business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labour, and the accumulation of enormous profits. That's what this war is all about.
The US is a relative newcomer in the colonialism game, so I guess it is just making up for lost time. I am hardly ever confused by its motivations, not even in the 'fog of war'.
You can e-mail me at cmillsy@yahoo.com
