...whatever the outcome of the attack. And about that, no one has any idea: not the Pentagon, the CIA, or anyone else. Possibilities range from the horrifying humanitarian catastrophes of which aid and relief agencies that work in Iraq have been warning, to relatively benign outcomes...--Noam Chomsky, March 20, 2003.

We should all learn to listen to wise old Professor Chomsky's advice before we go ahead and make any predictions in the future. The conventional wisdom held that an invasion of Iraq would be a replay of the 1967 Six Day War and be wrapped up in time for Spring Break. Well, once again, the conventional wisdom was wrong.

One of the possible catastrophes that aid agencies were worried about was a flood of refugees fleeing from Iraq to neighboring countries, like Jordan. It never happened. According to David Campbell of ABC News in a report filed from Ar Ruwayshid, Jordan on March 31, "Most people had expected the traffic to flow from Iraq to Jordan, as happened during the first few days of the Gulf War, when more than 1 million refugees poured into Jordan. But the Amman camp that served those refugees is now a ghost town," reports Campbell. Instead of a flow of refugees coming out of Iraq Campbell reports that, "At a dingy bus stop near the Iraqi border, streams of people have been loading their bags, saying their good-byes and resolutely heading back to their hometown: Baghdad. The crowd at the Ar Ruwayshid bus stop hasn't thinned since the war in Iraq began. If anything, it has grown, even though coalition strikes have continued to pound targets in and around the Iraqi capital. By the carload and by the truckload, 7,500 have already crossed back into Iraq, according to Jordanian border officials." A baker from Basra told Campbell he would walk back to his home town if he had to. Iraqis are now trying to return to their homeland from all over the world now, not just Jordan.

In the lead up to the invasion of Iraq it grew more and more unpopular around the world. The one trump card the pro-war camp in D.C. and in the media figured they had all along was the Iraqi people and their dislike for Saddam Hussein's government in Baghdad.

Instead, the Iraqi people have fought like lions in the Coliseum to defend their cities, towns and villages from the American and Anglo invaders. Instead of receiving a hero's welcome, the American-Anglo invaders are getting shot at from every direction, as few Iraqi soldiers have surrendered . They are clearly not being welcomed by the overwhelming majority of Iraqis. Instead of fleeing their country, Iraqis in Iraq are staying, and Iraqis abroad are falling over themselves to go back and fight the invaders. What's going on here? I think there are multiple factors involved in how the Iraqi population, both in Iraq and abroad, has reacted to the invasion. Here are eight of them:

1. It's just good old-fashioned nationalism. People will fight to protect their homes and hometowns, whether they like the regime in charge of the national government or not. Even most of the Soviet people rallied behind Stalin's government to beat back the German invaders during World War II. In the end, politics don't matter when a people are fighting an invader, no matter how repressive the government of the country is. You couldn't get a more repressive government than Stalin's regime.

2. The Iraqi government supplied every man, woman and child in the country with a three to four month ration of food. There's no need to leave for another country when you have a stockpile of food at home. One of the cheap shots aimed at Saddam Hussein's government by apologists for U.S. policy towards Iraq for the past twelve years was that the Hussein government was robbing from the U.N. run Oil For Food Program, something the former director of the program Dennis Halliday denies ever happened. Oil For Food has been essential to the survival of most Iraqis for the past eight years. Oil For Food was shut down when the invasion began, a happening most Iraqis would blame on the American-Anglo invaders. It's not difficult to imagine why Bush's March 17 promise to deliver humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people didn't inspire any wide spread revolts.

3. Iraqis have better memories than most American government planners do. They remember George Bush, Sr. urging them to rise up against Saddam Hussein's government in 1991, and then getting sold down the river by Washington when they followed Papa Bush's advice. They remember the past twelve years American-Anglo air forces have spent bombing the North and South of the country. They also remember twelve years of U.S.-Anglo backed sanctions against the country, which has depleted their hospital of badly needed medicines, and kept their electrical grids and water sanitation systems in a state of constant disrepair.

4. Iraqis are well aware of the harsh treatment of the Palestinian diaspora in other Arab countries. This is likely to be on the minds of Iraqis when they consider fleeing to other countries.

5. Reporter Jeremy Scahill, who spent months in Baghdad prior to the invasion, has noted more than once on Pacifica's Democracy Now! radio program that every major religious leader in Iraq, both Sunni and Shiite, has ordered the population to engage in a jihad against the American-Anglo invaders. A 50-year-old sergeant named Ali Jaffar Moussa, a Shia Muslim, took these orders to engage in a jihad against the American-Anglo invaders to heart. He drove a taxi loaded with a bomb up to a group of U.S. soldiers at the start of the second week of the invasion, waved to a group of U.S. soldiers in a gesture suggesting he needed their assistance and detonated the bomb, killing himself and four U.S. soldiers. It was the first time an Iraqi had ever killed himself in a suicide attack against an invading army, according to the Independent's Robert Fisk reporting from Baghdad. An ominous development considering the American-Anglo invaders thought the Shiite majority of the country would be a major ally in toppling Saddam Hussein's government. There is more to Iraq than Saddam Hussein's government.

6. Tribal militias have played a crucial role in harassing the American-Anglo supply lines on the march to Baghdad. These militias did not figure highly into the invasion leader's plans. Just another example of the fact that Iraq is a far more complex society than the invasion planners had imaged. Saddam is not the issue in the mind of the average Iraqi now that American-Anglo forces have crossed over into Iraq. The invasion and occupation is the issue, stupid.

7. Marching shoulder-to-shoulder with British soldiers in an invasion of an Arab country is not going to make you popular in the Middle East (outside of Israel). A recent article by Robert Fisk from Baghdad published in the Independent points out that Iraq is littered with the graves of British soldiers who died there during the U.K.'s colonial occupation of the Arabian Peninsula. Every Arab remembers who they fought to gain their independence and it's understandable why most Arabs would see American-Anglo armies in Iraq today as invaders and colonizers. This would be like the U.S. teaming up with Germany to invade Russia, or teaming up with Japan to invade China, and expecting to be greeted by the people as 'liberators."

8. World War II IS OVER! It ended in 1945. That was 58 years ago. Well before most people alive today were born. There was a reason why the American-Anglo forces that landed in France in 1944 were welcomed as liberators in Paris. They weren't landing in France to colonize the country for its natural resources, but to expel an unwanted invader. American-Anglo soldiers in Iraq in 2003 are the unwelcome invaders, who clearly have the intention of making a killing off of Iraq's oil resources, which explains why they have been met with bullets, bombs, grenades, and land mines by the Iraqis.

The Iraq invasion has proved to be one of the greatest political and military miscalculations of all time. Many Americans would like for the war to come to a quick end, but invasions and occupations don't work that way. It won't end when Saddam Hussein's hold on power finally collapses under the weight of American-Anglo military might. It won't end when Halliburton and Stevedoring Services of America have made a lot money off the re-building of Iraq. It won't end when Washington installs a puppet regime made up of discredited exiles who collaborated with the invaders. It is not likely to end until thousands of US and British soldiers have lost their lives carrying out a bloody and costly occupation. Invasions and occupations don't end until the invading army has withdrawn its forces from where it is not welcome.

It is difficult for words to describe the contemptuous racism that drives the notion that Iraqis would celebrate Cruise Missiles raining down on their cities as an act of "liberation" on their behalf. That the Iraqis need a White Knight in Shining Armor From the West to save them. To believe this is to deny these people their humanity. No other creature on this planet has a sense of place quite like human beings do. That's why the overwhelming majority of Iraqis have not fled from their country in the face of such powerful invader, and their diaspora is now returning in droves.

This phenomenon is no different than all the aid and assistance that got sent from around the country, and the world, to help New York City deal with the economic and human costs of September 11. We are all Iraqis now. Just as most of the world expressed sympathy and solidarity with the United States and New York City after the World Trade Center burned to the ground on September 11, now most of the world the mourns for the ancient city of Baghdad, and the nation of Iraq, as it burns from the American-Anglo bombs falling on it.

End the occupation. End the sanctions. Self-determination for Iraq.