First it was Osama Bin Laden; then it was Saddam Hussein; now we have a new sinister face on George W Bush's "wanted" list: Moqtada al Sadr, head of the al Mahdi militia. Another Iraqi public enemy No 1. Another turbaned image of Islamic terror to hunt down, dead or alive. Lock and load, people
But hang on. Isn't this latest incarnation of Muslim evil a member of the Shi'ite religious denomination? Aren't they supposed to be the good guys? Weren't the Saddam-oppressed Shia majority in Iraq supposed to be strewing flowers at the feet of the American liberators? Weren't they supposed to be taking over on June 30, "democracy day" in Iraq?
That has a hollow ring to it today. The Americans are now liberating Shia civilians in Baghdad with Apache helicopters. As they try to root out al Sadr's militia, they will only deepen the hatred felt by many in the Shia community towards the western occupiers.
In less than a year, America has succeeded in alienating a significant portion of the very people they rely upon to run the country in their strategic interests. In other words, manage the civilian population, while American companies secure the valuable Iraqi oil reserves. This is blundering of heroic proportions, even for George W Bush.
Not only does America have the minority Sunni Muslims in Fallujah stringing up anyone in a western 4 x 4. Not only are the Kurds in the north of Iraq actively preparing to sue for independence. Now members of the largest ethnic grouping, accounting for 60% of the entire population, are taking pot shots at them – and at us.
The Brits in Basra killed 15 in fire-fights yesterday as the sit-in of the town hall by Shia militants continued. Even our celebrated "soft-hat" occupation is now looking impossible to sustain in this previously peaceable Shia city. The silence from the British government over the weekend of mounting violence was deafening. Where was Jack Straw wringing his hands and vowing to resist the men of violence?
Yesterday, the PM finally emerged blinking into daylight, recycling tired homilies about doing what is right and not running away when things get tough. But even he knows that time is running out for his and George W Bush's crusade to secure the Middle East for Christ.
Can there be any doubt now that the Iraq invasion was one of the greatest errors of judgment in the history of modern British foreign policy? The weapons of mass destruction which we went to war to eliminate didn't exist. Even the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, now accepts that the war was based on a false prospectus. There was no connection with al Qaeda before, but there is now, as Iraq has become a training ground for international terrorists.
We signed up to an American adventure in the Middle East that has placed Britain in the frontline of international terror. There was further confirmation of this yesterday as the US and UK intelligence claimed to have foiled a chemical bomb plot in London. The PM has sacrificed British security for no strategic purpose, other than to support George Bush's re-election campaign.
The confident predictions of a war without casualties, made on the eve of conflict by gung-ho organs like the Sun, have been proved wrong as Iraq has turned into a bloodbath. Six hundred Americans are dead and 2000 wounded. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are dead – though with characteristic callousness, the American military refuses even to count them. In Vietnam the US at least gave a "body count" of communist insurgents killed in action. In Iraq, they just pretend they never existed.
But the families of the dead and injured won't forget. The more America treats ordinary Iraqis as expendable, the more it will inflame the situation. One hundred thousand troops are not enough, not nearly enough to impose martial law on this war-torn and desperate land.
America will have to double its cohorts if it is to have a chance of making military occupation work and preventing civil war. This will increase the number of targets for terrorists and the number of body bags being sent home to America.
Already domestic opinion in the US is getting restive. How many more dead will America tolerate to secure this God-forsaken and ungrateful land? A thousand? Ten thousand? Hardly. Iraq was always a sideshow to the real war against international terrorism. As the various commissions and panels in Washington deconstruct the White House justification for war, ordinary Americans are beginning to realise this.
This was Bush's war, not theirs. I doubt if American public opinion will tolerate a death toll much into four figures. No way will they accept casualty rates on the scale of Vietnam, which ultimately cost 50,000 American lives and one million Vietnamese.
So, is it only a matter of time before America pulls out? How might it be done? Well, I suspect the June 30 date for handing over to Iraq will not
be postponed, despite the calls by both the Republican and Democrat leaders of the Senate foreign affairs committee.
Bush will arrange a handover of sorts. A flag will be run up. Hands will be shaken. Solemn and binding undertakings entered into to ensure the continuance of peace, democracy and prosperity. Then the provisional American administration will be out of there. Nothing must be allowed to mar the Republican convention and the campaign to re-elect the president in November, and if that means leaving Iraq to its own devices, at least for a while, then what the heck? It's their country isn't it?
The United Nations will be called upon to go in and clean up the mess. Britain will no doubt hang on like dummies until the last minute. If this fails, Iraq will be left a wasteland of communal rivalries presided over by warring local warlords, rather like Afghanistan. American oil companies will enlist local militias to help them gain access to the oil along with legions of special forces relying on US air support.
If George W Bush is re-elected in November, he will no doubt try again to impose the Pax Americana on Iraq. But it is looking increasingly as if this will not happen. And if Bush is replaced by his Democrat rival, John Kerry, in November then the American withdrawal will almost certainly continue. Kerry will not want to get bogged down in his disgraced predecessor's war.
Tony Blair will make pious conference speeches about how difficult it is to transplant the delicate flower of democracy, but how right, how very right, it was to try. However, the result of the Iraq debacle will be a strengthening of the forces of international terror. In Middle Eastern folk-lore, America, the greatest power in the planet, will have been repelled by a few RPG-wielding militias.
This could be the most serious long-term consequence of the Iraq disaster. Across the planet, groups of fanatical fundamentalists will be emboldened to take on the west, wherever and whenever it shows itself. And that really could signal the start of the next world war.