IRAQ: Real WAR on REAL time

The fatwas and canonical edict played about of Iraq's conversion to an Islamic state should the US withdraw is again a trap bordering on the quixotic, as much as saying that 'Arab fighters are pouring in' to fight for its independence an intended slur on the bravery of the Iraqi people. If Iraq can reject the mighty US as 'Liberators', they can tell all else to 'bugger off' as they stand their ground to fight their war on their terms Little understood is who is carrying out these attacks on the Coalition; WHAT after all is this 'Iraqi resistance'? Homegrown resistance of indigenous fiercely independent Iraqis is a reality - they have no need for mercenaries from anywhere in the world to do them a 'quick-fix'.

IRAQ: Real WAR on REAL time

As things stand, the world was neither deaf nor blind. In one giant state of mindless arrogance Bush and his cronies activated the world's biggest military machine for a surge on Iraq. Intentions were as obscured on the 20th of March as much as realities of situation on the ground is today - some seven months down the line - each passing day brings us closer to an Armageddon, not of our making.

Predictions of thinking people around the world were rubbished, millions demonstrating to vent their anger were left with no mercy - beaten, gassed and thrown into jail. 'We will go it alone' warnings were sounded when other nations refused to fall in to the sheer madness of a war on the desert where the 'outcome was not in doubt' - to any sane person other than Bush, Blair and the Rumsfeld trio.

Meantime the world was left deciphering the REAL intentions of the so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom (originally Operation Iraqi Liberation, discarded because the acronym would read OIL). Muslims debated in earnest that this was a war on Islam, the US on the other believed that they would be accepted as 'liberators and not occupiers'. Clear message to the Muslims, the US was doing some kind of great favor, and Islamic financing was thus 'obligatory'. Monies and reluctant support for the Coalition rolled in from Muslim neighbors of Iraq. Had it not been for rigidity of the European stand, other Muslims would have happily committed troops, and armaments.

Ironically every effort by the beleaguered Saddam regime at its dying hours to tell the world that it was the Americans and not them that are lying - was bombarded by media onslaught that came in understandably in the wake of the war machines move. Over time and with no discovery of WMD's or the promised capture of Al-Qaeda fighters and leaders - the 'real villains' - the Iraq scenario looks like another mirage in the Arabian Desert.

It now seems the joke was on the West and not Comical Ali, that Iraq had no WMD's and that all have been destroyed years ago!

And now with daily tolls in American casualties, bombings and the relentless guerilla campaign waged by 'unseen' enemies getting more and more sophisticated, the word 'quagmire' is an acceptable icon - something that was not, even a few months back. With each death comes frightfully newer resolve to get to the bottom of it, to 'finish what we had started' - as also to 'throw out the occupiers'. More horrendous 'the millennium Jihad in the desert worth being a martyr' media speculation leaves us no more smarter to have a firm handle on a situation that is increasingly getting desperate.

While pacifist and thinking people around the world were certain as to the US follies i.e. things wont work out, they will be trapped in a quagmire worse than Vietnam etc - where we went wrong thanks to the din of the high decibel propaganda of the 'embedded kind' in the pre-invasion days, is to have a 'fair fix' on exactly how, the Iraqi people for one were viewing the whole episode breaking in to change their destiny.

The Third World and Islamic phenomenon of standing firm for the 'underdogs' happily kept us focused to the impossible - a possible Iraq military success - as also the media played a large part in keeping those fallacies alive. Expert after embedded Military experts inside CNN studios prophesied ever so virulently that there will be a Stalingrad-ish last ditch attempt by the mighty Iraqi Army, and street fighting's will ensure the US is done with - for good!

Most of us fixed to TV screens waited to see a slaughter of US forces, then count the human toll on Iraqi citizens who we decided were expendable. If it was not - the merciless bombings on Baghdad prior to its fall made every 4th of July firework display pale in comparison, because the US was not punishing Saddam Hussein in its madness and sheer impatience to 'get this over and done with' with quickly but, the Iraqi people who it had promised to 'Liberate'

For every bomb that fell on the historical city, for every time the sirens were sounded of an imminent salvo of death on its way, was also a time for the nucleus of the Iraqi resistance to be sowed. Anybody witnessing the assault with the slightest of gray matter in a skull full of dung heap would have realised that Baghdad was going to be a walk-in, not a 'WALK-OVER' - if only for the bargaining chip left dangling in our imagination of a 'chemical attack' of the 45 minutes variety! Never ever in the annals of military warfare have billions been duped to a more effective ruse - a LIE that seem to have beaten hands down the millions of lies that Saddam and his henchmen apparently so craftily invented, but on reflection was the unadulterated TRUTH.

And there we were, the 'regime' toppled, statue and all - as much as Saddam survives, as much as Osama Bin Laden survives - and will continue to survive 'so help us Allah' - would be a passionate balm on bruised egos of Muslim's the world over, as also the stupidity of the so called 'Coalition of the Willing'; willing to kill, maim and destroy - so 'help us God'.

Iraq was the worlds first overt international coup detat, and the results will be no less horrifying for the 'new General's', brimming in ecstasy of their half-filled hourglasses of professed successes of ghastly mediocrity. Tragedy is, one can tell the time with such a devise, but cannot for once count the grains of sand it contains. In the shifting quicksands of Iraq, 'bogged down' is an understatement. Getting sucked in with lives getting sucked out - is more appropriate.

Whatever may have been the US intentions for war, to expect a people who have become used to living under an attributed 'Hitleristic demonic dictatorship' for over thirty years, to embrace overnight the unknown and uncharted psalm of Western democracy, replete with Sunni triangles or Shiite quadrangles in the only former secular state in the region, is stretching impatience and seminal oligarchy to its limits.

The fatwas and canonical edict played about of Iraq's conversion to an Islamic state should the US withdraw is again a trap bordering on the quixotic, as much as saying that 'Arab fighters are pouring in' to fight for its independence an intended slur on the bravery of the Iraqi people. If Iraq can reject the mighty US as 'Liberators', they can tell all else to 'bugger off' as they stand their ground to fight their war on their terms

Little understood is who is carrying out these attacks on the Coalition; WHAT after all is this 'Iraqi resistance'? Homegrown resistance of indigenous fiercely independent Iraqis is a reality - they have no need for mercenaries from anywhere in the world to do them a 'quick-fix'.

Common sense should guide us to events before the fall of Baghdad. It is more than likely that Iraqi General's were 'bought off' to ensure a 'knife through butter' entrance of the Coalition into the capital and their will be more theories available as the days wear on. However what should not delude us is, this perhaps is the only instance in the world where more than a million man Army, a complete administration of decades, a bureaucracy and civil service, indeed a very well greased machine decided to go underground - and disappear without a trace. While Bush, Blair and Rumsfeld did a quick jiggle and twist routine on the world stage, proclaiming a resounding victory - somewhere down the bleary sands of Iraq an entirely new maneuvering of forces is all set creating a resistance, that history is destined to marvel.

The Occupiers in their sheer humbuggery and not really having a definitive enemy set about erasing the 'Baathist remnants' they identified were the real adversaries. Forgotten was unemployment among hungry millions, following years of economic sanctions and ravages of a war, raises the spectre of arguably hundreds of thousands volunteering for guerilla warfare for no other reasons, but because they have nothing better to do?

The age old and by now hackneyed 'divide and conquer' regime of the British fell vulgarly flat with blatant American misuse at attempting a split among Sunni's and the Shiites. Forgotten were lessons from Iraq's recent history that people from both Muslim sects fought shoulder to shoulder with Shiite Iran for nearly a decade - and that was NOT a sectarian war by any account, but a secularist war against 'fundamentalists'.

There is simply no easy way out for the Coalition other than having to fan out the hatred that started the war process in the first place. Moving in on a 'regime change' in Saudi Arabia will be received with polemical accolades from many anti-royalists, democracy aspiring Muslims worldwide. The nail of Al-Qaeda blame on the Saudi Royal family (Bin Laden is after all a product of the House of Saud - albeit a poor cousin of the current rulers) would be an acceptable 'coffin' to satiate the curiosity of the Western media, for finally there will be 'proof' of an institutionalized Al-Qaeda lurking below the newly discovered term 'Wahabist', the apparent demons in the Islamic Diaspora that the Saudi royalty ascribe to.

The major problem the US has to contend with in Iraq is that, we have a classic guerilla war with a difference. While there is a lot of Western heroism attached to military convoys rolling out miles after miles of desert strips, it is quite another to confront urban guerillas in streets and shanties of towns and capital's. While guerillas can attack with ease as they have a huge support and re-supply base within the population where they can evaporate without a trace, Coalition fire can and will endanger civilians and the conflagration in days ahead will reach catastrophic proportions.

Unlike the massive bombings before the fall of Baghdad where the world had no clue as to the suffering of Iraqi people, in the next 'virtual reality show', there will be a fair chance for us to find out what 'unrestrained fire power' (the symbol of American strength) can do to soldiers on the ground

For the Iraqi's this time around the enemy will be close at hand, and not from some 30,000 feet above the ground with 'laser guided pin-point accuracy'.

Tune in to Real War on REAL time ladies and gentleman!