This benign empire -- the first of its kind, it was said -- would tutor distant peoples in the ways of modernity while winning their compliance and earning their gratitude. It was then that the US launched its unprovoked invasion of Iraq, just by branding the country as a threat for its alleged possession of WMDs, although the attack was universally considered anachronistic in a post-colonial world of early twenty first century.

Neither the ruse of WMDs, nor the mantra, chanted by George Bush, of the dawn of democracy in the region could cut much ice. It was then that the claim of democracy was unveiled by Bush, with so much elan three years ago, to create a new order in the Middle East that became his sole justification for invasion and occupation of Iraq, especially when his earlier claim of Saddam Hussain being the doomsday merchant of WMDs had fallen by the wayside. But soon his experimentation with democracy also turned sour within the scripted framework of Washington.

In Palestine and Lebanon, democracy brought into the government people who weren't exactly to the liking of the US and its surrogate Israel. Both publicity avowed to subvert Hamas in Palestine within hours of its electoral victory. In Lebanon, Israel is waging a proxy war for the US to destroy Hizbollah despite its impressive electoral gains in the last election. Even in Egypt, the most compliant and servile of America's satellite Arab states, an open-door democratic experiment was quickly abandoned when it became clear that incumbent president Hosni Mubarak could be seriously embarrassed by it.

The unraveling of earlier US plans and assessments in Iraq and the region sent its neo-con policy planners scurrying back to their drawing boards. What emerged from there as an end-product is what is now being articulated by Condoleezza Rice as being the new objective of American policy in the region -- the birth, even if caesarian, of a "new Middle East."

This shifting of goal posts was necessary for George Bush as his earlier ploys did not work. Consequently, Dr Rice is now hawking the idea of a new Middle East. So much so that -- against the mounting death toll and bloodbath in Lebanon -- Dr Rice, while attempting to justify them, has described the mayhem as the "birth pangs" of the new Middle East. It has already taken the toll of one thousand civilian deaths, almost a million displaced, four UN peace keepers killed, and sixty percent of Lebanon's infrastructure destroyed.

Shocking though her "birth pangs" theory may have sounded to some it wasn't for the first time that the world had heard such callous justification of a partisan policy. Another female predecessor of Dr Rice, Madeleine Allbright, when asked to justify the death of quarter of a million Iraqi children because of her country's vengeful sanction, glibly defended the toll as being worth the price for keeping Saddam Hussein on a leash. Rice's justification is in spite of her country's complicity in the crimes committed by Israel against humanity.

In the meantime, the fact that Bush and his associates are getting geared up for a new brand new Middle East, after the reverses of their flirtation with democracy, indicates that democracy will certainly not have pride of place in the new Middle East they are envisaging. At best it will occupy the back seat. And Israel, as a regional bully, will ensure the keeping of the neighbouring Arab states in thrall of the US and itself.

Even if it is not spelled out, the new Middle East is obviously intended to be built in place of, or on the ruins of the old order, because they can not co-exist. In other words, the death knell of the old order will certainly be heard before the birth pangs of the new are felt in the region, and beyond.

The existing order is already in the throes of turmoil and is likely to give way to a new one anytime. In fact, a prelude to it was written jointly by the imperialist powers, Britain and its muscle flexing successor, the United States, at the end of the Second World War. Its prominent feature was the patronage by the imperialist powers of local monarchies, autocrats, and unrepresentative governments, since this was considered a safe bet to contain the challenge from the rival Soviet power during the Cold War.

In tandem, the Anglo-US powers also actively opposed and uprooted progressive Arab forces wherever possible. Gamal Nasser's Arab nationalist movement, the first truly pan-Arab movement, was singled out for destruction, just the way Saddam's regime was made the bete noir in our time. At the same time, the supine, conservative, and autocratic regimes were pampered. However, the second prong of the US agenda of domination of Middle East was the sponsorship of Israel.

The success of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran changed the old equation. Although the US lost in Iran it gained in Algeria with the apparent success of an organised imperialist backlash against a genuinely democratic Islamic movement. But the rise of Israel as Washington's praetorian guard has invited its own backlash and spawned movements, such as Hamas and Hizbollah, which are different in their roots and structure from the traditional movements that the Arab world had been exposed to before. These are grassroot movements drawing their sustenance and staying power from the ordinary people. They are people-oriented and run by ordinary men without pretension of elitism.

The disaster unfolding in Lebanon is not a tableau of imperial tyranny at work. The discerning observers see in it the vision of western power imploding. According to the last available figures the US spent $422 billion on defense, annually. The remaining two "Axis of Evil" nations, North Korea and Iran, together spent $8.5 billion. Yet the West is not winning its conventional war against other states -- let alone prevailing against "terrorist" groups whose infrastructure and targets are not amenable to destruction by military force.

Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS.