While some people mock the upcoming US war on Iraq, many people miss the real importance of this war.

History shows that the Vietnam war fought by the USA in the 20th century was without any doubt a war the USA lost, and lost miserably. In an attempt to impose their own line of thinking on the Vietnamese people (communist or not), America fought a pointless war that killed thousands of Americans, even more Vietnamese, and achieved nothing at all.

The Iraq war that Bush and Blair are about to unleash on the world is a war the USA and Britain have already lost – long before the first high tech American weapon is fired. Because while Iraq will without doubt be destroyed in this war, the real victims will be the Americans and British. International relations between these two island nations and the rest of the planet are going to be set back two centuries, and the balance of power – earlier maintained jointly by might and diplomacy – will now tilt in the direction of the rest of the world. Like it or not, the USA and Britain need the rest of the world to survive – and they are about to ensure that the world will never trust them again.

All this because two heads of state failed to understand a simple fact – they are the heads of state of their own countries – not of any other. Their rights to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs (in the guise of unproven claims of Iraq’s aggression towards other countries) are limited to diplomacy – waging war, that too against a country as backward as Iraq, is unforgivable in this day and age.

Evidently, neither the USA nor Britain have been able to overcome their colonial past – and in both cases, they will pay a terrible price for this.

Tony Blair’s political career is effectively over, while George Bush will need a stupendous win (and use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons by Iraq) to win the next election – a win that is historically, logistically and practically impossible to achieve. His father’s political career did not survive the last war, but at least he still had a face to show.

The son, however, stands to lose more than just an election – no president of the United States has ever stood before a war crimes tribunal, but even at this point, George Bush has done enough harm to the United Nations and the world to answer to a lot more than just a few casual questions of presidential misconduct. He now risks as going down in history books as the president who managed to upstage Richard Nixon as the most reviled American president ever.

And even before the first shot is fired (and unless he is stupid enough to reveal and/or use weapons of mass destruction), Saddam Hussain will go down a martyr, forever to be held up as an example of a victim of America’s colonial ambitions and unbelievable greed.

What utter irony – the land of the free v/s freedom.