So the countdown to war has begun.

President Bush’s obsession with Saddam, not unlike Captain Ahab’s with his whale, has already cost the United States dearly in the goodwill of millions of people around the world. “We are doing everything we can to avoid war,” the president said recently in his weekly radio address, “but if Saddam Hussein does not disarm peacefully, he will be disarmed by force.”

At the UN, as the administration prepared a final diplomatic push to prevent the Security Council from defeating a resolution authorizing military action, with Iraq being given till March 17 to satisfy a US demand backed by Britain and Spain to surrender its “weapons of mass destruction” or face the consequences, France and Russia made it official: They will vote against it.

Over the last six months, President Bush’s pitch for war has bombed around the world. With the exception of Israel, there is not a single country anywhere, as evidenced by the millions of demonstrators who continue to take to the streets in protest, where the mass sentiment is responsive to the kind of unilateralist and militarist posture the American president has adopted.

The US has not only defied the international community, but it would appear embarked on a project of bullying or buying off Security Council members whose votes it needs to go to war, offering them generous packages of aid and arms, thereby establishing, as commentator Ira Shorr was quoted in the current issue of Nation magazine as calling it, a “coalition of the wanting.”

Consider this: In the middle of offering rosy scenarios about “rebuilding Iraq,” American briefers last week were not above reminding us of the fearsome military power now arrayed at Iraq’s door, over its skies, and in the waters of the Gulf.

A projection of that power, unveiled by the air force, is a new 20,000 pound bomb that creates its own “mushroom cloud.” Against whom is this bomb going to be used? And how many civilians will it kill as invading American troops “destroy Iraq in order to rebuild it,” to paraphrase that well-known statement by a US commander in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive in 1968?

How will people in the Arab world react, for example, to a “split television screen,” as retired Gen. Anthony Zinni invoked the nightmarish image before a congressional hearing recently, of American soldiers killing Arabs in Iraq and Israeli soldiers simultaneously killing Arabs in Palestine? It will clearly not endear them to a US from which they are already alienated on account of its pro-Israel policies.

The long and short of it is this: The United States, with its limited area on this planet and relatively small population cannot appropriate a disproportionate share of the responsibility for what the world should look like in this new century. It is at the United Nations where the global dialogue of cultures should find its venue of expression. That’s not, however, the way Bush, a president of sublime and complacent ignorance, sees it. “When it comes to our security, we really don’t need anybody’s permission.”

Yes, he does. Anybody who comes to our part of the world to launch a devastating war in it, fraught with uncertainties, against our will and over our pleas, a war that is likely to impact unpredictably on our social, political and economic destiny, does need our permission very much indeed. And that of the international community.

President Bush, again not unlike the driven Captain Ahab, does not like to hear anyone berate him about the potential dangers of his obsession. When Larry Lindsey, his economic adviser, told him that the war would cost $200 billion, the man was fired. When Eric K. Shinseki, the army chief of staff, said that it would take “several hundred thousand soldiers to occupy Iraq,” Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said dismissively: “Way off the mark.” And when we ordinary Americans marched around the country in great numbers to protest preparations for war, it made scarce impact on the White House.

Bush soldiers on. As the resolution at the Security Council comes up for a vote later this week, with several countries still opposed to war after six months of intensive debate, it will be interesting to see whether the US, even at this late date, will consent to a few more weeks of diplomacy not only to assuage the concerns of these undecided members but to give room to the notion that a peaceful solution is still possible.

I wouldn’t bet the family jewelry on that, if I were you. A Strangelovian war scenario is now in full gear, with the countdown already begun.