When Caliph Mustasim of Baghdad sent an army to confront the Mongols, Hulagu broke a dam on the Tigris River, cutting off the Abbasid retreat, and slew 12,000 men. A terrible siege of Baghdad followed, in which the Mongol army fired palm-tree logs from catapults into the city – foreshadowing the cruise missiles of a later age. But the real nightmare began when the walls were breached. Now in possession of the greatest city in the Arab Middle East, the Mongols preceded to destroy both it and its people. No one knows how many civilians were murdered in cold blood, but, by all accounts, at least several hundred thousand – and perhaps over a million – lay dead in the aftermath of Baghdad’s destruction.

There is very good reason to recall this black period in history at this time. It is not an exaggeration to compare what may very soon take place in modern Iraq to what this land suffered at the hands of the Mongol hordes 750 years ago. For today, in military circles, a very fascist little phrase is being used, in a noxiously casual manner. The phrase is “Shock and Awe”. It is no longer a secret that the U.S. military, as the opening salvo in its rape of Iraq, plans to drop 3,000 bombs and missiles on this ancient land. The immediate result of such an attack has been described as a 21st Century Dresden, referring to the infamous Allied fire-raid in World War II, which killed tens of thousands of German civilians. Never in history has so powerful a nation displayed such groundless, wanton bloodlust as we do now. Never in history has a country with such positive potential as America gone so monstrously astray. The men and women in our government who have brought us to this moment are war criminals, whom I hope will one day stand trial for their actions, as did the Nazi mass-murderers at Nuremburg.