America would have been acceptable if it did not have its political baggage about it. In December 1991, the fundamentalist Islamic Salvation Front had won handsomely in the first run of the elections in Algeria. It was declared an illegal outfit. It went on an offensive, more than 10,000 people died in the violence, and Algeria would, for the second time, be hostile to the West. In December 2005, Hamas won three quarters of the seats in the Palestine elections. The Western nations saw that as a dangerous trend, but not the people who voted them in. Hamas will rule Palestine, but the West will not have any role because of its opposition to Hamas, regarded in Washington as a terrorist organisation. But elections are held elsewhere so that it would return pro-Washongton administrations. Hamas obviously has support among the Palestinians. But this is not unusual. The Israeli terrorist group that created havoc in Palestine before the state of Israel was set up was headed by Manechen Begin, who later become the prime minister of Isreal.

Singapore thinks it is a Chinese island surrounded by a hostile Islamic sea, and first patterned itself to Israel in the Middle East, and then a United States outpost in the region. It remained afraid of Malaysia, and became globalisation's South-East Asian centre. It ignored its traditional entrepot trade with its neighbours, Malaysia and Indonesia, and thought it had a march on its neighbours by being as Western as possible. Mr Lee had a plan, and has faithfully followed it, but he has created a capitalist soceity with a communist heart. The people who carried this out kept their mouths shut and made themselves rich and western. The second generation of civil servants knew the value of keeping their mouths shut, and doing what they are told. It brought in the US armed forces into the island republic so that it assumed a Malaysian attack on the island republic would be an attack on the United States. But it could also be the other way. In any case, if the past is any guide, it would harm Singapore more than Malaysia. The US leaning towards Pakistan has not prevented India from attacking it.

AL-QAEDA SUICIDE BOMBERS ARE blamed for bombing three Amman hotels. Abu Musab Al-Zarkawi, who is believed to be dead, is the agent directly responsible, the television news and talk shows try desperately to inform the world that this bombings are the trade mark of Al-Qaeda. There is great effort to blame Al-Qaeda for the bombing although there is no hard evidence. But the United States and others have decided that Al-Qaeda is responsible. And that gets world wide play. But is it? Jordan is a soft target who could cause mayhem in the West's war on terror. Iraq is to the left of it, Syria to the north, Israel to the East. It need not be Al-Qaeda or the believed dead Al-Zarkawi, it could be any of the myriad of countries and organisations that could be responsibe. It could also be the West, which is why the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which we are told can investigate it, is rushing to Amman to aid the Jordanian authorities. But is the FBI going there as the Australian police authorities are going to Bali to help the Indonesian authorities investigate the bombing in Bali: to remove the evidence of their involvement?

THE UNITED STATES SHOULD cease and desist in Iraq and stop Israel from assassinating the Palestine leader, Mr Yassir Arafat. Otherwise the Middle East could well go up in flames. President George Bush should know better. The Muslim has lost his patience. Rhetoric like that finally made the front page of Malaysian newspapers, a year after the US invaded Iraq and now struggles out of this self-inflicted quagmire or anarchy and civil war. This dominated news coverage for three days last week. Malaysians are told, as often in a vacuum, not that they ought to know of these home truth but so they could praise the statesman in their midst. They know of this in excruciating detail because the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) held an emergency meeting in Putra Jaya last week. The chairman - lest you forget - is the Prime Minister, Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi. The newspapers and the official media could not control themselves to report in hallowed terms of what he had to offer but paid scant attention to other views. The 57 OIC members took a unanimous decision to stand up to the US and Israel.

All it did was to united the targets of its attack into a shared cauldron of collective memory. The United States came into the Middle East with a deliberate plan to enslave it, in one form or another. It believed might alone was enough. But the Arabs, not just in Iraq, have a long memory which would inhibit any power with similar ambition. Israel understands this only too well. Which is why it must humiliate the Arabs into submission. Not that it would work. For like the Jews the memory of past historical and cultural wrongs is what unites the Arabs. Washington thought it could split the Arabs by dealing with them through their Orientalist eyes. But the Arabs refuse to be so characterised. It is this which puts the United States in a pickle in the Middle East, as it did so many powers in the past from the dawn of history. Memory is what keeps a people's hopes alive. The Palestinian in a refugee camp in the Gaza or in the Levant adds this to the weight of his isolation in his own country, and links it to his past. He shares that with Arabs from all over the Middle East. The United States' professed values are in shambles, its justification for war in Iraq is in shambles, and all it stood for is in shambles. It has to resort to untruths and lies to convince itself, not those they target, that it here for the larger good. As Julius Caesar would have justified why he crossed the Rubicon stream in 49 BC, and set ancient Italy aflame.

There is no international law which can accuse Malaysia or even Pakistan of what it did. The United States continues to strengthen its nuclear weaponry programmes while it threatens others from getting into it. It unilaterally decided the only nuclear powers should be restricted to those who have the technology. No new comers are allowed in after the cut-off date. The racist rationale behind it clear enough: nuclear weapon technology should be confined to the Judae-Christian countries of the West; others should not be. But Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan broke the barrier; several more are on the verge. Israel and South Africa have nuclear weapons, but their role is played down for the two countries are inextricably linked to Washington over it. The others are not. The idea of Muslim countries like Iran and Libya and communist North Korea is frightening enough in Washington, free lance transfer of technology more so.

The US government report on religious freedom consigns Malaysia amongst nine countries - the others are Belarus, Eritrea, Moldova, Turkey, Brunei, Indonesia, Israel, Russia - with laws that favour a particular religion and sidelines others. The allegations are in the International Religious Freedom Report 2003, the fifth in a series by the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour. It is to warn these and other countries to behave if they want to be accepted as civilised - difficult for a Muslim country to be, but try and it might strike gold - and worthy of Washington's embrace or to damn countries it wants to make an example of. If, on the other hand, you have lots of oil and allow US corporations to rape it, these strictures can be ignored. Local traditions and customs are ignored, the lists do not lie, and if you object, it is you that is at fault. The Western dominated news organisations are quick to damn you for being in the list. Nothing would come out of it if you protest. For you would lose the slanging match.

Singapore does not understand or accept this. Which is why a think tank in the republic holds a seminar next month on the Malay mind, with two prominent Malaysians, neither Malay, leading it in an attempt find an instant answer. Could cultural forms be understood and learnt at seminars like this if the national mood is to drag the other side's nose to the ground? When Singapore positions itself, with Israeli help, as a Chinese island in a hostile Malay sea, as Israel in the Middle East, and believes its military might could flatten its neighbours armed might at the onset of hostilities, and conducts its talks with its neighbours as it does, is it not inevitable that many in Malaysia believe that this issue must result in open hostilities? Especially when it was Singapore that began the military arms race with Malaysia when she bought tanks in the late 1960s. And continue to taunt the Malaysian armed forces by her military aircraft straying deep into Trengganu and Kelantan and back into international waters when the RMAF jets scramble from Kuantan.

At the same time, there is no interest in a new view. When President Bush visited the Middle East last week, he was careful to meet only those he could manhandle to push his "vision" to remake the Middle East in the US image. Even the road map to peace between Palestine and Israel is a US-induced piece of diplomatic garbage only guaranteed to ensure the problem is not resolved. I am not surprised Hamas broke off ties with Abu Mazen, the Palestinian prime minister. All this ensures not peace but continued conflict. Neither Palestine nor Israel can allow it to work. No peace process can work if it is imposed as cynically as this Road Map is. Not when the power imposing it misrepresents and terrorises the group whose acceptance is crucial.

If the US aim was to help Israel by destroying its most potent military threat, Iraq, it cannot now be sure. For what the Iraq invasion has done is to unite the Muslims in the Middle East, Shia and Sunni, that Israel and the United States would face opposition from them for a long time to come. The US cannot leave Iraq except in defeat, and the Muslims would unite to that end. It would not happen today, but I fear the longer the US remains in Iraq, the more nebulous the gains it had hoped for in deciding to destroy the Saddam Hussein regime. It could well be Israel that would rue the day the Anglo-American force marched into Iraq. There is, if what is talked of in the Arab street is true, a surfeit of Muslim gallants prepared to sacrifice themselves, in the name of Islam, to rid the Middle East of the likes of the United States. Suddenly, the United States has opened up more fronts than it can deal with.

There is another. Pope Urban in 1069 planned for the destruction of the growing Muslim power as President Bush in 2003. Both viewed it as an opportunity to stop the unstoppable: the growing power of Islam. The Crusades Pope Urban unleashed is now in another name by another leader who believes he has God on his side. Both faced an enemy born in Tikrit: Saladdin and Saddam Hussein. And victory, for President Bush, is as problematic as for Pope Urban. Few in Iraq or the Middle East have any illusions why the Anglo-American coalition of the willing to be bought and corrupted must be in Baghdad. The two most sophisticated, and westernised, of Middle Eastern Muslim states, are Lebanon and Iraq. Lebanon in the 1980s and Iraq in 2000 were also hotbeds of anti-Israel extremism, and the Anglo-American blitzkreiging into Iraq in 2003 is as blighted as the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It took Israel 18 years for Israel to disengage from Lebanon. It would take as long, if not longer, for the Anglo-American invaders. It does not matter now if President Saddam Hussein survives or not.

It does not matter now if the Anglo-American adventure captures Iraq or not. The battle is lost. All it can now is destroy the country. If it does not rebuild it, as it would not, or if it seizes Iraq and governs by fiat, after the tumult and the shouting, the Arab world would be ranged against it. And its only ally in the Middle East, Israel, would find it politic to keep its distance from Washington and London. But it believes it can brazen its way through. It could at one time. Not any more. For it has burned its bridges with the international community.

The NAM summit is next week. The US-UK-Australian lurch to war is stopped in its tracks, more because the UK and US, principally, undermined their own case, and threatened Europe with dire consequences if they did not go along. Germany, France and now Belgium baulked. There is Anglo-Saxon talk of NATO's and EU's irrelevance, and of the US punishing both and Belgium with a cutback in US aid and help. What caused it is the veto the three countries used so NATO would not yet come to Turkey's aid, should Ankara is under attack if war breaks out. The US defence secretary, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, sneered at the Franco-German-Belgium veto, adding the majority supported the Turkish demand. He spoke too soon. The US has cast its veto on more than 50 UN Security Council resolutions, often with a minority of one against and 15 for, especially when the resolutions were against its client states, like Pakistan, Morrocco, Israel, Egypt. That was considered right because it is Washington which does it. It is wrong when others do so. Washington believes what is allowed Zeus is disallowed the cow.

Iraq is explainable as an ideal Washington enemy. It has oil. It is an enemy of Israel. It has an easily demonised dictator in charge. It has a belief in a modern, industrialised Middle East, with Baghdad as its epicentre. It could rally the Arab masses to overthrow the corrupt monarchies and theocrasies that dot the Arab world, and, more deadly, lead the attack on Israel. North Korea is none of these. Pyongyang is more than Carthage, and surrounded by nations culturally conditioning themselves to shake off the United States umbrella. There is a tendency to dismiss North Korea as a state of no consequence, but for all its faults and shortcomings it is an industrial power as South Korea is. If they were ever to unite, their combined industrial strength would be such that it would be amongst the five most industrialised nations. Seoul developed under Washington's tutelage, and Pyongyang under Moscow and Beijing. Neither is a pushover.

It now becomes clear by the day that what was used to blow up the two nightclubs in Bali was manufactured in the United States and by Israel, under licence, and sold only to friendly governments. The Indonesian government is one which gets it. It is called C4. If it had been the East European variant, Semetex, Washington would have implicated Russia and others. (Rebels always carry AK-47 and Semetex; never M16s and C4). So, how did C4 come to be used in Bali and by JI at that? There are other doubts. The explosive used looks like a virtual nuclear weapon, which the United States used so profusely in Afghanistan? One explosives expert said the extent of the damage -- 47 buildings destroyed, more than 100 cars destroyed, and the area all but unusable and unoccupiable -- could not have been caused by C4 but by something more sinister. Is it not possible, then, it must be Al Qaida because it passed on this virtual nuclear device to JI to carry out this threat so Washington and the world can be convinced that both are linchpin targets in this war on terror?

THIS WAR ON TERROR IS, like a chameleon, now a war on ghosts. For all the rhetoric, threats, warnings, military buildup, we do not know who or what they are or want. There is Osama bin Laden, who Washington and sundry terrorism experts eager for their 15 minutes of fame decided is the terrorist-in-chief who dispenses at will mayhem and terror. His regional consultants and supporters, in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, are another army of ghosts which Washington, and Australia now, want to bomb. The world has gone mad after the brilliant terrorist attack on the remaining global superpower's symbol of military and financial might. The Bali and Mombassa bombings attacked Washington's regional sheriffs, Australia in Southeast Asia and Israel in the Middle East.

If people are consistently shortchanged, as now, with no debate or consultation or concessions nurtued in arrogance and authoritarian irrelevance, they would take matters in their own hands. That happens in distant countries -- Sri Lanka, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, the list is endless -- and there is no reason why it should not here when one more authoritarian compliance would, in future, break the camel's back. The unpalatable reality in Malaysia is a society living at several mutually incomprehensible social and cultural levels. An UMNO divisional leader discusses matters of state over a RM500 lunch, thinks of it as his birthright, when many a family, at the bottom of the heap who elected him makes do with less a month. Often he is from this family, only that he forgot it in his greed and irrelevance.

When the Chechen rebels stormed the Moscow theatre, it dramatised a hidden war in which Russian troops all but pursed a scotch earth policy to lay waste Chechnya. It did not work. The war is now brought to the Russian capital. About 120 of the 900 at the theatre and 50 Chechen rebels died. A better than one Chechen rebel for more than two Russians innocents shows, in the way these attacks are judged, gave the Chechen rebels the edge. Just as the one in three in Israel's favour gives the Palestinians the edge: Tel Aviv had promised to kill ten Palestinians for every Israel killed, a ratio it cannot keep without a horrendous reaction of incalculable proportions. It is simplistic to dismiss the Chechen outburst, as indeed the Palestinian, in terms other than what they are, a quest for territorial confidence.

Malaysia is not the democracy it is made out to be. Democracy is not about regular elections -- flawed at the best of times in the best of conditions in the most democratic of countries -- but of how stridently the citizen can challenge the government once it takes office, and how it reacts to losses. In the West's standard for fair play, elections is the only criterion for a democracy. So, democracy is about to burst upon Afghanistan, the communist dictatorships under Russia's imperial yoke overnight have become secular democracies, Pakistan is not a democracy as Singapore and Malaysia are. But there are exceptions. It is right for President Musharraf to rig elections so he could be president on his terms, but not for Burma to have elections on its terms. Israel can flout UN security council resolutions with impunity, but let Iraq do it, and the world gathers to bomb it out of existence.

But the more damage is in the lands of its distant supporters, all on the bandwagon because of a distinct hatred or fear of Islam, or the opportunity it gives to rein in its political opponents, the more so if they are Muslim. The war on terror has become a political shorthand to curtail, often harshly, the popular growth of its opponents. The United States insists upon democracy, but not when Islamicists adopt it to achieve power. So it encourages all governments with Islamicist opponents to act harshly against them. All it would is an energised Islamic movement, acting not in concert but in comfort that they do not fight alone, that other Islamic groups elsewhere find the same restriction, and find comfort in each other's frustrations. It is this, more than anger at the United States per se, that unites the Muslim nations. It is made worse because Washington's view of the Middle East is conditioned by its links with Israel.

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