MORAL authority, like water, has a top-down approach, which means it flows from highs to lows, leaders to followers, superiors to subordinates, elders to youths, parents to children and nations to people. The United States has gone to war in Iraq to bring democracy for the Iraqi people. But it has ignored the world opinion and the United Nations, creating a moral crisis for its action. How does a country, which has no regard for the opinion of others, claim that others didn't do the same?

If Saddam rules Iraq like a dictator and the United States, which once brought him to power, wants to topple him now, neither has regard for the Iraqi people. Saddam burns the oil wells for the Iraqi people and the US protects those wells for them. The United States vows to remove Saddam for the liberation of the Iraqi people and Saddam vows to destroy the infidels to protect their freedom. The United States accuses Saddam of using civilians as shield for his soldiers and Saddam blames the United States for killing civilians, missing military targets.

It is the Iraqi people who are getting crushed between two intransigentforces. The images of ordinary Iraqis running for shelter, lying in hospital beds or slamming their foreheads in grief over death of their loved ones, conjure the prospect of hell they haven't chosen for themselves. Yet they suffer and will continue to suffer the death and destruction of a war that is likely to change nothing in their lives, if not from one dictator to another. The United States had earlier brought to power a leader for the Iraqi people, who turned into a dictator. If the United

States now wants to change him and bring another leader for them, there is no guarantee that it will not repeat the same mistake.

But the biggest question is where is democracy if nobody is heeding the voice of the Iraqi people? "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ought to go down in history as the most absurd oxymoron of all times. It's like Al-Qaeda calling the 9/11 "Operation American Freedom" to liberate the American people from the tyranny of their minority president. If asked the Iraqi people wouldn't approve of US military action in the same way the American people haven't approved of 9/11.

Yet the ruthless attack on Iraq goes on, because America has an issue with Saddam. The American missiles are hitting targets, raining down on buildings, bridges, installations, mosques, and hospitals, the wrath of a superpower roaring in the explosions. Where does one hear freedom ringing for the Iraqi people in the wailing sirens, screaming people and pattering gunshots? Torn limbs, splattered blood and ruins of houses imprecate the horror that a superpower exacts the

The devastation in Afghanistan, and now in Iraq, all tied to the terror unleashed on the American territory on 9/11, are the logical conclusion of reprisal tactics taken too far. The innocent civilians, who died in Afghanistan, and now dying in Iraq, are no less the victims of mindless carnage than those, who died on 9/11. But there is a terrible calculus perpetuated in the lengthening trail of these retributions. Osama bin Laden, George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Saddam Hussein, idolaters of brute force, have equally misjudged that death and destruction are the only way to settle differences.

On close scrutiny, there is very little difference between the two sides. Terrorism is war of the weak, and war is terrorism of the strong. Osama bin Laden executed the blast of the century in the Twin Towers to let out the pent-up rage over the US policy in the Middle East. But what did Saddam do wrong? He had invaded Kuwait, and got himself clobbered in 1991. What happened after that?

The United States claimed that Saddam was developing the chemical and biological weapons of mass

Saddam killed 5000 of his own people, meaning the Kurds, in 1988 using poison gas in the Kurdish town of Halabia. In 1991, 6000 retreating Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by the US army with ploughs mounted on the front of tanks. If you further peel off the layers of hypocrisy, the materials and technology to develop WMD were supplied by the US and British governments along with some private corporations.

In the next layer, there was no condemnation when the Kurds died. If one peels the onion even more, not a single word of condemnation came from the US government after Iraq had used gas in its war against Iran. Further down, the United States used 17 million gallons of agent Orange in Vietnam. Saddam was an American recruit, and he followed the footsteps of his mentor until Frankenstein challenged its maker.

As the coalition force, which is primarily US and British with a dash of Australians, enter deeper into the Iraqi territory, it reveals the inanity of the American accusations. No sign of chemical weapons yet, and no sigh of relief from Iraqi people "liberated" by

their coalition "friends". The Iraqi people haven't streamed out on the streets to greet their liberators and we are yet to see the groundswell of popular support for the coalition force in Iraq.

Washington and London have an explanation for that: the Iraqi people are not showing their true emotions, because they are afraid of Saddam's goons. Television images of coalition soldiers putting bandage on a wounded child or giving water to scrambling Iraqis show contrived situations of desperate bid to win some hearts. When juxtaposed with the images of an Iraqi farmer shooting down an Apache helicopter with an old-fashioned gun or an Iraqi fisherman hitting a drone plane in the Iraqi sky, the contrast looks all the more strident.

Nearly half of the stockpiles of missiles in US warships have been already fired. Before the other half is exhausted, the coalition forces are likely to capture Baghdad. The United States will have Iraq and its oil, the British companies will get business contracts and the Australians will get the hyena's share of the lion's kill. A country, homeland of many ancient civilizations, will lose its glory and the Iraqi people their freedom.

Many years later, Saddam will be dead, his sons, if still alive, will be old and decrepit, and Iraq's resources will be depleted from plunder. Bush and Blair will be long gone from office, while the experts will still analyze the outcome of this war. The people around the world will debate how democratic governments could behave like monsters.

If the United States promises to liberate the Iraqi people and bring democracy in Iraq, it has already lost the moral ground to do it. If Saddam is a dictator, who was once viewed as some military crackpot, if not an American stooge, he is now the hero of the Muslim world. He may be ousted from power, but he has been put in the hearts of millions of men, women and children around the world.

The public opinion has responded to Saddam. If democratic governments respond to public opinion, America might take a few tips about democracy from him. It must learn to respond to global public opinion, and not to the American public opinion alone, if it must retain its place as a superpower.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.