"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators." Lieutenant-General Sir Stanley Maude, March 11, 1917, on the occasion of the Anglo-Indian Army of the Tigris entering Baghdad.

"Not as tyrants have we come, but as liberators." Adolf Hitler, February 27, 1933, on the occasion of the Third Reich’s invasion of Austria.

Both Maude and Hitler vainly fancied they could ‘free’ other nations and help them develop and progress by crushing them militarily and then governing them politically. President George Bush and Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Howard in their current invasion of Iraq are the twenty-first century equivalent of these misguided ‘liberators’. They are poor students of history, destined to repeat its mistakes rather than learn from it. Their justification for the invasion of Iraq was to limit terrorism and to remove weapons of mass destruction. Their stated intention now is to install a democratic "Iraqi" government in Baghdad to replace the dictatorship of Saddam Hussain. Such a regime, to quote The Sydney Morning Herald’s Adele Horin, would likely be "peopled by American generals and Iraqi crooks like Ahmad Chalabi".

The real victims of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ offensive are the innocent peoples of Iraq, suffering the brutal brunt of the latest, ‘smartest’, warmongering technology available to mankind. However, there are other casualties: the United Nations, now struggling more than ever to retain its relevance and dignity, and ultimately the global institution of democracy itself. The U.S. is intent, especially since the demise of Communist Russia, on extending its control to create, for the first time in history, a truly worldwide empire. Unlike Caesar’s Rome or Alexander’s Greece, the American Empire has the real potential to dominate the entire world culturally, financially, politically and militarily. It is, after all, ‘in America’s interests’ to do so; but that may not translate necessarily into similar interests to the rest of the world’s nations. Iraq is the first sacrificial victim to be offered on the altar of U.S. lead global rule.

Noam Chomsky, University Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, views the invasion of Iraq as a trial run to try and establish what the U.S. calls a "new norm" in international relations. The new norm is "preventive war", a doctrine that was announced in the US National Security Strategy last September. It sent shudders around the world because it said, in effect, that the U.S. would rule the world by force.

Many are of the opinion that this war against Iraq is likely to lead to the proliferation of both terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. While media attention has been focused almost exclusively on events unfolding ‘in real time’ in Iraq, North Korea has been launching rockets over neighbouring Japan and threatening stability in the region. The U.S. administration’s ‘spin doctors’ dissuade us from thinking this is serious and bid us to concentrate instead on helping it secure for itself its own base in the Middle East, complete with a vital supply of oil and other natural resources. North Korea is neither demonised nor attacked for a very simple reason: it has a deterrent. It has massed artillery aimed at Seoul, and if the United States attacks it, it can wipe out a large part of South Korea.

According to Chomsky, the U.S. is sending an indirect message to the world: develop weapons of mass destruction or some other credible deterrent or suffer our retribution.

Pundits are currently assessing the possible magnitude of this newfound democratic American push for liberating oppressed nations. Will it extend to Iran and Syria, for example? They share borders with Iraq and the US has plenty of bones to pick with each of their regimes too. According to a report by John Stanton (www.globalresearch.ca), from March 21 to March 24, 2003, US aircraft attacked the oil-wells of Khorramshahr, Abadan and Manyuhi. Iran has protested these violations of International Law, but to no avail. Pentagon officials declared the cause of the attacks to be "stray" cruise missiles and bombs. That is improbable, Stanton states, and claims they serve as a stark warning to Iran not to meddle in what has now become the American, British and Kuwaiti sphere-of-influence in the southeastern sector of Iraq.

Does the invasion smack of overtones of a latter-day version of Western Christian missionary zeal? Perhaps Bush, Blair, Howard and the Coalition generals see themselves as modern versions of French General Henri Gouraud, who entered Damascus in July 1920, kicked Salahuddin’s tomb, and exclaimed, "Awake Saladin, we have returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent." There’s no doubt that their presence in Baghdad has changed the world, but will it really be for the better?

It’s ironic that the land of Iraq, the cradle of civilisation and democracy, is now the target and potential springboard for American-lead aggression throughout the Middle East. The neighbours must be asking, "Who’s next?"