On April 10, during a pro-war demonstration in New York, Gov. Pataki told a cheering crowd: “The war started here on Sept. 11, 2001.” Like President Bush, Pataki is just one of countless US officials busy justifying the invasion of Iraq and promoting the lie that the Iraqis were responsible for the death of 3,000 people in the World Trade Center. Nobody mentions Osama Bin Laden anymore. Nobody mentions the fact that half the population of southern Iraq will die from cancers linked to the use of US uranium-tipped shells and missiles. Nobody mentions the chaos, lawlessness, looting and torching prevalent in postwar Iraq under US leadership and occupation.

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 missionari