The following passage may look familiar:

"On the fourth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I crossed ‎‎the border at a lonely spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which ‎‎had already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private car, ‎‎accompanied by a woman photographer. We passed a dozen Shiite ‎‎villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted ‎‎ourselves only with difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each one ‎‎insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days, they ‎‎had showered the Israeli soldiers with rice.‎ ‎ A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite ‎‎direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers were now wearing ‎‎bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic. ‎ ‎ What had happened? The Shiites had received the Israeli soldiers as ‎‎liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, ‎‎they started to kill them.

"When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon the Shiites were a ‎‎down-trodden, powerless community, held in contempt by all the others. ‎‎After a year of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and ‎‎military power. The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the Arab ‎‎world that has beaten the mighty Israeli army."‎

‎End of passage. I wrote it in an article called "Bitter Rice", which ‎‎appeared on March 22, 2003, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, and ‎‎which started with the words: "Beware of the Shiites. The troubles of the ‎‎occupation will start after the fighting is over…"‎ ‎ Barbara Tuchman died too soon. Otherwise she could add a chapter ‎‎about this war to her book "The March of Folly".‎

It should be remembered that Tuchman was very strict in the choice ‎‎of her examples. It was not enough that a government acted foolishly. In ‎‎order to gain a place in her book, two additional conditions had to be ‎‎met: that the results of the folly could be foreseen, and that there was ‎‎indeed someone who warned in advance of these results. (For example: the British king George III lost America because of a ‎‎number of foolish acts. This could have been foreseen, and, indeed, the ‎‎British politician and author Edmund Burke warned of them at the time.)‎ ‎ What is happening now in Iraq was completely predictable. It is an ‎‎exact repeat of all that happened to us in Lebanon. Otto von Bismarck ‎‎once remarked: "A fool learns from his experience. A wise person learns ‎‎from the experience of others." If so, how to define President George W. ‎‎Bush, who is not even able to learn from his own experience?

If I have already quoted myself, I may as well do it again. On February ‎‎8, 2003, in an article entitled "The Smell of War", I wrote: "This is not a ‎‎war about terrorism‎‏.‏‎ This is not a war about weapons of mass ‎‎destruction‎‏.‏‎ This is not a war about democracy in Iraq‎‏. ‏‎This is a war ‎‎about something else…There is a strong smell of oil in the air."‎

At the time, this sounded like defamation. Today it is already clear ‎‎beyond doubt that the American invasion had nothing to do with either ‎‎the "war on terrorism", nor with weapons of mass destruction, nor with ‎‎the crimes of Saddam Hussein or with democracy. This has been proven ‎‎and documented beyond all doubt, most recently by the testimony of ‎‎Richard Clarke, who has been Bush's man in charge of the "war against ‎‎terrorism". From the moment Bush entered the White House, he and his ‎‎handlers pursued one aim in the Middle East: to occupy Iraq.

The Bushes are oilmen. Among the big-money people who helped to ‎‎put the two Bushes, Sr. and Jr., into the White House, oilmen played a ‎‎leading role. They have decided that the American Empire needs to get ‎‎its hands on the vast oil reserves of Iraq and to establish a permanent ‎‎military base in the middle of the oil region, between the oil of the ‎‎Caspian Sea and the oil of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.‎ ‎ The neo-con fanatics, most of whom are right-wing Zionists, added to ‎‎this another objective: to eliminate the Iraqi threat to Israel, before ‎‎freeing Israel of the Syrian and Iranian threats. But this was a secondary ‎‎aim. It would not have succeeded in dominating American policy without ‎‎the decisive impact of Dick Cheney and the other Bush handlers, who ‎‎wanted to establish direct American military control over most of the ‎‎earth's oil.‎

This aim has been achieved. Iraq was conquered. 135 thousand US ‎‎soldiers uphold the occupation regime, with the addition of a few troops ‎‎of the satellite countries, such as Poland, the Ukraine, the UK, ‎‎El-Salvador and Italy. A small (and not very intelligent) official named "L. ‎‎Paul Bremer 3rd", no less, has become Governor of the new colony, and ‎‎he intends to "hand over sovereignty" to an Iraqi government he himself ‎‎has appointed.‎

That is to say, sovereignty over garbage collection and hospitals, but ‎‎definitely not over the really important functions, which will be firmly in ‎‎the hands of American "advisors". For this purpose, the biggest US ‎‎Embassy in the world is being built in Baghdad: over 3000 officials, who ‎‎will control every aspect of government in the country.

That reminds one of the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain in France. ‎‎The Iraqis themselves will be reminded of the British colonial power ‎‎structure in their country, which operated through an Arab "king".‎ ‎ As far as the Americans are concerned, this could last forever. Not ‎‎for a year, not for two years, but for decades, like the Israeli occupation ‎‎of the Palestinian areas. But, unlike the Israelis, they call this "nation ‎‎building" and "establishing the first democracy in the Arab world". ‎‎George Orwell would have enjoyed it.‎

A minor factor was overlooked: the Iraqi people. But one really ‎‎cannot think about everything, can one?‎ ‎ When the armed resistance started, the Americans comforted ‎‎themselves with talk about "remnants of the Saddam regime", or ‎‎"terrorists", perhaps foreign agents of Osama Bin-Laden. More than any ‎‎other colonial regime, the Americans find it difficult to accept the most ‎‎simple fact in the world: that an occupied people will arise against its ‎‎occupier. And really, what have the Iraqis to complain about, after the ‎‎idealistic Americans, out of the kindness of their hearts, liberated them ‎‎from the evil Saddam?‎ ‎ Now the Americans are considering whether to bring in more troops. ‎‎The politicians ask the generals: how many more soldiers do you need ‎‎in order to control Iraq? And the generals ponder in all earnest: 10 ‎‎thousand more? 20 thousand more? If there had been one serious ‎‎person among them, he would have answered: "Even 500 thousand will ‎‎not be enough. When a whole people rises, foreign soldiers are ‎‎helpless."‎ ‎ The Americans were ready for the Sunnis to be dissatisfied. They had ‎‎been ruling the Iraqi state since it was founded by the British after the ‎‎first World War, and were going to lose their supremacy. But the ‎‎Shiites? After all, in the "democracy" that the Americans were about to ‎‎establish, the Shiites could expect a major share in power. But the ‎‎Shiites do not want to receive "power" in a country that stays occupied. ‎ ‎ Even before the war, we warned (don't worry, I am not going to quote ‎‎myself a third time!) that it was well-nigh impossible to maintain a state ‎‎of three mutually hostile peoples: the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds. ‎‎That is still true today. But perhaps a miracle is happening now: Shiites ‎‎and Sunnis are fighting together against the occupation. Who knows, ‎‎the common struggle may just, and for the first time, forge a real Iraqi ‎‎nation and prevent a bloody civil war along the road. Let us hope so.

Now the Americans are caught in a trap of their own making. Even if ‎‎they wanted to leave Iraq (which they certainly do not!), they would be ‎‎unable to do so. As the Hebrew saying goes, they can neither swallow it ‎‎nor spit it out.

There is really nothing they can do. They will sink ever deeper into ‎‎the quagmire, kill and be killed, destroy and be destroyed, with ever ‎‎growing brutality, in a kind of a new desert Vietnam. In the hourly news ‎‎on Al Jazeera, it is already difficult to distinguish between our soldiers ‎‎in Ramallah and the American soldiers in Falluja. What is happening to ‎‎us will happen to them, only on a larger scale.‎

How will this similarity influence Bush and his people? They might ‎‎say: One quagmire is enough. Let's get out of one of them. Let us ‎‎compel Sharon to make, at long last, an agreement with the ‎‎Palestinians, instead of babbling about "unilateral disengagement", ‎‎which will probably never happen anyhow.‎

But Bush and the Bushites could also say: If we are so much alike, let ‎‎us embrace Sharon even more closely. Such a reaction would find its ‎‎well-earned place in "March of Folly 2".‎

That might even be a good thing, allowing these two gentlemen the ‎‎pleasure of leaving the stage together.