“Monstrous Martyrdom in Baghdad”
“Dreadful Massacre in Baghdad”
“Yet Another Massacre by the Coalition of Invaders”

No, it doesn’t matter if these headlines are accurate or not.

It doesn’t matter why missiles fall into Baghdad marketplaces, or even whether they’re our missiles or our enemy’s. It doesn’t matter why we blow up buses with women and children in them or why we use depleted uranium in populated areas or why we “Shock and Awe” when we do these things in a part of the world that has tremendous cultural and religious fear of and disdain for us.

It doesn’t matter whether their reasons for that fear and disdain are justified or not.

It doesn’t matter if our reasons for attacking Iraq are good or evil. Or whether or not they are justified and appropriate. Whether they are an altruistic liberation of an oppressed indigent population or the conquest of the same for their oil.

All of that is irrelevant.

Every videotaped or photographed Iraqi death or maiming, military or civilian, justified or unjustified, avoidable or unavoidable, will be shown over and over and over on Al Jazeera and in newspapers all over the Arab world.

So: this war, whose primary goal as sold to the American and British people is to reduce the threat of terrorism… is it working?

Is Osama bin Laden glad that we invaded Iraq or not? Will he now find it easier or harder to gain recruits?

Will coalition troops be welcomed into Baghdad in a floral procession after a quick Iraqi surrender, as some of the top Washington hawks have predicted?

To the last question, I, of course, hope that they are, despite my opposition to this war. But it would be naïve to expect that they will be.

And if we are wrong in our expectations of this war, what price will we eventually have to pay to have rid the world of this still questionable threat?