As I write this, we are roughly three and a half weeks into Gulf War II. The tanks are rolling into Baghdad, there’s rioting and looting in the streets, and the Iraqi government seems to have collapsed. Perhaps by the time you read this, it will be over. Perhaps it’s time to start asking some questions, or rather, repeat some of the questions that many have been asking for months now.

Will Bush’s little experiment in rewriting the geopolitical rule book be successful? Obviously in strictly military terms it has been mostly successful so far. But what happens after the war? Will democracy work in Iraq, and will it eventually spread to other countries in the Middle East? History both backs up and discredits this idea; it worked well in Japan and Germany, but the former communist bloc is an absolute disaster.

Will the Bushies even try to establish a real democracy in Iraq, or will they simply set up a puppet government to do our bidding? Along the same lines, will they truly return the vast oil fields to the Iraqis, or will Shell, in whose custody the Iraqi oil industry has been placed for safekeeping and resuscitation, just hang on to them so the United States and Britain can take all they want?

Will other countries begin utilizing the practice of pre-emptive war? Will other countries begin subverting the United Nations? Will the outcome of this war be one of stabilization or destabilization? Will the bloodshed have been worth it?

If what the Bushies keep telling us is true, then the answers to the above questions will be favorable: we will be seen as world heroes, and there will be a lot of people who will have to eat their words. However, if things go as I and many others fear, it will simply be business as usual for American imperialism. As of right now, we can do little but sit back and watch the TV, waiting for our answers.

As anthropologist, philosopher, and activist Laurens Van Der Post said, “I have often thought that the most important issue of our time is how we overcome evil without becoming another form of evil in its place.”