Will there be war?

There was universal euphoria when the Berlin Wall was smashed into a million fragments November 10, 1989. The Wall was the forbidding symbol of the Cold War not only separating West and East Germany but the so-called Free World and a communist empire out to vanquish "the imperialist ogre of monopoly capitalism." So enthused was historian savant Francis Fukuyama that he burbled: "We may be witnessing the end of history… the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."

Fukuyama spoke too soon. Western liberal democracy shortly afterward ran into a huge hostile tangle of barbed wire in the Balkans. And history refused to end the way Fukuyama wanted it. This time humankind snared and killed in a different way. The focus was different, its load of ethnic venom just about as revolting as the Cold War. What transpired was "ethnic cleansing" magnified to unheard of levels. Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Albanians, ethnic groups suddenly emerged from the gnarled woodwork of history in the Balkans to inflict ancient hates and jealousies on each other.

Ethnic cleansing simply meant every enemy ethnic group had to die. The world had to remain pure for the ethnic conglomeration that considered itself superior. In the case of Slobodan Milosovic, it was the Serbs. And so in the name of this cleansing, another excuse for the Aryan purity Hitler and his cohorts would impose on Europe, the protagonists killed by the tens, sometimes by the hundreds of thousands. Mankind would not stop its gory ritual of the strong eliminating the weak. The poisoned seed that sprouted after Adam and Eve made love had traveled far.

No sooner had the words of Fukuyama withered on the vine than another savant spoke up. Professor Samuel P. Huntington of Harvard shook the twin worlds of academe and the international community. First, he wrote an article in Foreign Affairs that took fire. He followed up with a book titled "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remarking of the World Order." The central theme was this: "The rivalry of the superpowers will be replaced by the clash of civilizations." Huntington then bit off more than many others could chew or understand at the time: "Power is shifting from the long predominant West to non-Western civilizations. Global politics has become multipolar and multicivilizational." Wow, big words!

Then a pendulum swung from the shadows as Huntington singled out "Islamic culture" as explaining in large part "the failure of democracy to emerge in much of the Muslim World." Meaning perhaps they were destined to clash.

And so they did. Or at the very least, the United States and virtually the rest of the world believed they did when on September 11, 2000, just four years after Huntington wrote his book, two commerc ial aircraft hijacked by suicidal Arab nationals brought down the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in awesome sheets of terrorist flame. More than 3000 died. The world was never the same thereafter, particularly America and its leadership. President George W. Bush declared war on international terrorism, on Osama bin Laden, the bearded prophet of a jihad-exulting Islam. Afghanistan, erstwhile headquarters of Al-Qaeda, was razed to the ground. Taliban soldiery were rooted out from hundreds of caves and beaten by US forces to a pulp. Although Osama bin Laden and many of his Al-Qaeda consiglieri managed to escape.

This American war against international terrorism was drawn not from the manual of Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, the military genius who readily understood that diplomacy and war were just a note verbale removed. This new war emerged from the towering anger of George W. Bush and his counsel. In the case of Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the enemy was not a nation with geographical borders but the hordes of Al-Qaeda and allied terrorists. And they coined a name for the enemy "The Axis of Evil" where Iraq was the predominant evil. They coined a new military strategy called "preemptive action", just a notch short of preventive war.

And this is where we are today.

America has come close to a full-scale invasion of Iraq and almost all the stops have been pulled out. The claim is now made that the US President does not require congressional approval, nor that of the United Nations. Nor of Europe and Japan, or anybody else. The argument rides the old principle of a "just war". And this was is just an extension of the Gulf War George Bush the Elder started against Iraq but did not finish in 1990. Saddam Hussein has to be toppled. His regime has to be destroyed, his military establishment gutted, his frightening arsenal of war reduced to ash. This means the bacteriological and radiological weapons he has reportedly amassed and concealed, must be flushed out, rendered impotent. No longer will they be allowed to hang over humanity like a sword of Damocles.

This also means that America has to strike now. Why? There is every reason to believe Saddam Hussein is presently on the verge of assembling nuclear weaponry which he will certainly use to threaten or blackmail the US and impose hegemony on the Arab world. The time to stop Saddam Hussein and destroy his regime is now, it is argued. Inaction today would make the world hostage to a madman whose fingers can press nuclear buttons just months or a year from now. And we would all regret the day George W. Bush was stopped from exterminating Saddam Hussein, from reducing his "evil regime" to a scrap heap.

But the other side of the picture is just as frightening.

If America sends 250,000 troops to Iraq, the casualty rate could be staggering. In Vietnam, the US sent half a million soldiers to fight the ill-clad, ill-vehicled Vietcong. US war dead numbered 55,337 while more than 150,000 American troops were wounded. And still, America lost that war. In Iraq, where Saddam Hussein has easy access to gas and bacteria in canisters, US war dead could reach 25,000 to 30,000. When these start arriving in the US mainland in body bags, will mainstream America not recoil in horror? As they did in Vietnam? How about the world?

And again, war in Iraq may not be limited to Iraq. We do not know what Europe’s reaction will be, Britain, Germany, France and the like. They will take their war against terror just this far, not join the US to the end. But the Arab world will not take kindly to the total destruction of Iraq, the death by physical annihilation of Saddam Hussein. Israel could then be a target of missiles tipped with bacteria. Scud missiles spreading instant epidemic and instant death in a great number of Israel cities starting with Tel Aviv will hurtle out of Iraq.

And then again. War in Iraq could hurl fire bombs into the world’s economy, particularly if the Arab nations should shut off their oil wells. Asia, now emerging into a projected mind-century role as the world’s economic dynamo, would possibly react in outrage as its products wilt in the world market because of spreading economic crisis. America’s war on terrorism will go askew in an Asia that may not look kindly on the US invasion of Iraq. Pervez Musharraf in Pakistan, an astute pro-US tightrope walker, may face angered Islamic hordes. And disappear. I do not really know what could happen in the Philippines. GMA and her military may be hard put to keeping the lid on rebel resurgence in Mindanao. Our economy shall of course be hard hit, bleeding as it is already.

For America, it’s Hobson’s choice. Damned if you do. Damned if you don’t. I had always said in this column America could never win a war against international terror. The enemy was in the shadows, slippery and elusive as hell, not a nation with geographical borders. America’s army was ultra-sophisticated, state-of-the-art, trained for ground war, air war and naval war. The enemy this time was medieval, lurking always in the shadows, never fighting frontal battles, sly, treacherous, used to hardship, misery and penury. And not afraid to die. That makes a lot of difference. America is now avid for zero casualties in battle. And Kosovo was the archetypal war of this new war forged by the Pentagon.

George W. Bush, I think, is the last of his kind. And so are Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

They would go it alone. This may be understandable given the giddy macho heights of American culture, idolizing the individual. You have the Lone Ranger, Superman, Batman, Spiderman, not to mention the high testosterone performances of Clint Eastwood, Sylverster Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenneger, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, Errol Flynn and John Barrymore. And yes, we must also mention Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, Henry Kissinger and John Foster Dulles.

The Empire of Rome lasted 1000 years. The imperium of America has just flown out of the nest, hardly more than 50 years. The US leadership will not, will never take kindly to an enemy, actual or potential, now stalking the terrorist shadows reportedly to destroy America. And that is where the many faces: Its present body is Iraq, its devil head that of Saddam Hussein. America is determined they must be removed from the face of the earth.