What these politicians are doing is basically denying the relevance of morality in politics and preaching the Machiavellian self-serving doctrine of the “end justifies the means.” The logic is it’s good to destroy and kill and maim thousands of civilians if it means getting rid of their leader who never actually attacked you but could possibly think of doing so in a distant future; it’s good to leave millions of people without water, power, food, sanitation or security just as long as you bring American democracy to the region. The last time I checked the American Heritage Dictionary, Machiavellian was an ugly word suggestive of deceit, cunning and expediency. It will continue to be ugly, even if American dictionary compilers decide to change the hard-core meaning of the word and impose a new definition.

In effect, the ongoing looting and torching of museums, libraries, universities, schools, hospitals and other cultural and civic institutions in Iraq is not an attempt at regime change but at culture change. By stripping the Iraqi people of their collective heritage and destroying their ancient Mesopotamian roots, the Bush administration thinks it can recreate Iraq from scratch, reshape and remold its proud and nationalistic people and turn them into a nation of illiterates, thieves, cutthroats, and informants who willingly accept US occupation and Zionist hegemony. The Iraqis are well aware of these vindictive intentions. This is what the director of Iraq’s National Library had to say to Los Angeles Times about the American-led destruction of Iraq: “They burned the history of this country. Now we are standing here beginning from zero. Our memory is destroyed.”

Just think of the irony. When deadly tornadoes ravaged the four-block-long business district in Pierce City, Mo., last weekend, one devastated business owner had this to say to a visibly shaken Missouri Gov. Bob Holden: “How can we save this? This town is 130 years old and you just don’t find this anymore.” Yes, 130 years is definitely tragic, but at least the Missouri twister was an unpreventable natural disaster. Can anyone begin to imagine or comprehend how Iraqis must feel at the deliberate man-made destruction of thousands and thousands of years of their history and spectacular culture?

Where did US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld get his creative ideas of culture destruction and culture change? Probably while he was sifting through the history books at the Pentagon trying to find a creative way to contain the Iraqi threat to Israel. He probably hit upon the Third Punic war in 146 BC when the Romans physically destroyed and occupied what is today known as Tunisia and founded a new city of Carthage — a Roman one. They called it the province of “Africa” — a name that was eventually used to refer to the entire continent. In the same manner, by destroying Iraq and looting its cultural heritage, Rumsfeld thinks that the US can create the new American province of Iraq and ultimately rename and repopulate the entire Middle East.

At the heart of this diabolical plan to culture-change Iraq are the evangelical Christians of Samaritan Purse and the Southern Baptist Convention, who form a large part of Bush’s electoral base and who are deeply pro-Israel. Why on earth are these Islamophobic missionaries now camped in Jordan waiting to swoop like vultures into Iraq? The answer is simple. They’re there to confiscate what they perceive to be biblical land, retrieve it from the hands of the heathens and terrorists and triumphantly claim it for Christendom. This is what the Reverend Franklin Graham wrote in his book (“The Name”) published last year: “The God of Islam is not the God of Christian faith… The two are as different as lightness and darkness.” Richard Land, the chairman of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, had this to say: “The reason most evangelicals support Israel is that we believe in the bible.”

By and large, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are set in southern Iraq, in the land of Shinar or Babylonia, including the cities of Babel, Uruk, and Akkad. The cities of northern Iraq, Nimrod and Nineveh, are also part of Judeo-Christian heritage, just as they are integral to Arab and Muslim traditions. Till today, well-preserved remains of all these cities can be seen in Iraq and there’s the rub. Can religious extremists in the US and Israel afford to ignore such a goldmine of archaeological treasures? It’s no wonder that many Christian-Zionist missionaries have already started settling with the Kurds of northern Iraq, insisting that Jewish Kurds who migrated to Israel in 1948 must now be repatriated and given a voice in the interim government. In short, these evangelists believe that God gave the land of Iraq, indeed all the lands of Arabia from the Nile to the Euphrates, to the Jews forever. To them, the invasion of Iraq consecrated “the victory of the Cross over the Crescent,” to quote a famous line said by the French General, Henri Gouraud, as he kicked Saladin’s tomb after the fall of Damascus in July 1920.

Tragically, this crusader mentality is today prevalent in the White House. Just listen to the same venomous words of Michael Leedon, a senior adviser to Bush, who is perhaps the most vocal and violent of Bush’s evangelist team: “God willing, Judgment day is coming to the Middle East.” Let us not forget that Hulegu’s army included Christian soldiers from Armenia and Georgia sent by King Bohemond of Antioch-Tripoli and King Hethum I of Armenia, who both wanted to liberate Christian holy places from the Muslim “infidels”. An estimated 800,000 Muslims were massacred by the Mongols in February 1258; Christians and Jews were fortunately spared since Hulegu’s wife, Dokuz, and his chief general, Kitbugha, were both Christians. Like today’s neoconservative advisers to Bush, these two confidantes saw the destruction of Baghdad as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy heralding the Day of Judgment. The pleasant irony of course is that the Mongol conquerors themselves converted to Islam in less than a century after their invasion.

It is also quite telling that Jay Garner, pro-Likud American viceroy of Iraq and close friend of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, has set up permanent camp in biblical Ur, the reputed birthplace of the Prophet Abraham, where excavations in the 1920s and 1930s had yielded a great temple complex as well as royal tombs packed with sacrificed servants and gold treasures rivaling the riches of Tutankhamen. His choice of location is foreboding; it foreshadows the inevitable expulsion of Iraqi civilians and their replacement with Israeli settlers and missionaries like Franklin Graham. He has already started repopulating not only Ur but also the city of Qurna, believed to be the Garden of Eden, the mythic place where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers join and where the ancient Eucalyptus known as Adam’s tree stands as a symbol of paradise on earth. This city revered by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike is now home to the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment. In addition, the US State Department has organized and funded the Eden Again project, headed by a group of American geologists who hope to restore the Garden of Eden and to populate the city with people they refer to as “refugees and Westernized Iraqi exiles.” The same destiny awaits the fabled ancient cities of Uruk, Nineveh, Nimrod, Babylon, and many other medieval Muslim villages in the western reaches of Baghdad now abandoned by their inhabitants. In the marshland of Uruk (from which the modern name of Iraq is derived), Western archaeologists have now cordoned off what they believe to be the lost grave of Iraq’s King Gilgamesh, the hero of the world’s oldest epic poem recounting a devastating flood which has been linked to the story of Noah’s Ark. They hope to unearth Gilgamesh’s grave next year if and when the political situation allows. Just wait until you see wildcat settlements or giant armor-plated D9 Israeli bulldozers roaming the streets of Uruk, Ur and other ancient cities of Iraq looking for lucrative sites to excavate or demolish. Surely then George Bush and Jay Garner wouldn’t be able to masquerade as the Good Samaritans. Or would they?

This war reeks of Israeli revenge and the coming months and years will see Iraq turning into a grotesque mirror-image of occupied Jerusalem or the West Bank and Gaza — replete with the confiscation of land and revenue, the mass detention of civilians, the demolition of homes, the door-to-door searches, the roadblocks and 24-hour curfews. Even the very language and terminology of US Marines is becoming jarringly like that of the Israeli Defense Forces. Mark Franchetti in The Times recounts the words of US Marines who had just machine-gunned 15 civilian vehicles at a roadblock in Nassiriya. Here is Corporal Ryan Dupre venting the same hatred and spewing the same vindictive analogies as the Israelis: “The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy. I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin’ Iraqi. No, I won’t get hold of one. I’ll just kill him.”

Just think. While we were watching the bereavement, the wailing, the mourning and the funeral processions in Iraq, a callous Colin Powell was addressing a cheering AIPAC crowd of ecstatic Zionists. In a theatrical delivery, he told his pro-war Jewish audience what they wanted to hear. This war will make Israel “safe” and “secure,” he exclaimed in a rising crescendo, not forgetting to add the White House cliché “Let there be no doubt about the outcome. We will drive Saddam Hussein out.” Was this the appropriate time and place to hold such a radical war rally? Watching him perform that night in front of this ultra-radical group chillingly explained why he was fighting so hard to discredit UN weapon inspectors and to stop the process of inspections in Iraq by any means possible even to the extent of presenting forged documents of Iraqi uranium procurement.

Obviously, the Arabs and Muslims have been duped into thinking that America’s first black secretary of state is inherently good and peace-loving. They should have known better. Even in 1991, when he was questioned about the number of Iraqis killed in the Gulf War, Powell replied: “It’s really not a number I am terribly interested in.” Well, Mr. Powell better be interested this time round, because many people all over the world are counting the death toll and sooner or later he will be charged with legitimizing the mass murder of Iraqi civilians. Undoubtedly, there will be a day of reckoning as Bush predicts, but this time it will be the turn of Bush and his war Cabinet.

Clearly the major objective of this war is not to liberate the people of Iraq; they hardly count in the equation. The military goal is simply to destroy the country first, obliterate Iraqi culture next and then try to coerce the natives into accepting subjugation and invasion. Sharon is closely watching how his old friend Jay Garner establishes his rule and culture-changes Iraq from enemy to closest friend and ally. Seeing that President Bush wants to democratize Iraq and the rest of the Arab world, shouldn’t he have asked the Iraqis first whether they want to be liberated. Why not hold elections? Let’s vote and see how many Iraqis want Tommy Franks or retired Gen. Jay Garner as their governor. There’s no use pretending that President Bush is a savior who wants to liberate the Iraqis. In Iraqi eyes, he is not. And while we’re at democratization, why not hold global elections to see how many people want President Bush to be the “leader of the free world,” as his Zionist supporters now introduce him.

Egged on by radical Zionists, Bush has legitimized everything that was once thought to be in violation of common laws of decency and morality: Pre-emption, invasion, assassination, regime change, culture change, wanton destruction, mass detention, torture and the use of brutal overwhelming force. But history has shown us what befalls people who perpetrate such crimes.