Was Churchill a Hitler? The Bengal Famine, the Raj and a Parlor Game -- Part 1

“I’ve nothing to offer but blood and toil, tears and sweat”, with those words Winston Churchill addressed the British parliament for the first time as Prime Minister. He continued “We’ve before us many, many long months of struggle and suffering” and called on the British people to “wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed on the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime”. He ended, defiantly that the aim is “Victory, victory at all costs- Victory, in spite of all the terror, for without victory there is no survival”.

On 13th May 1940 when Churchill addressed his nation and the world all that stood between Adolf Hitler and complete annihilation of modern civilization was Churchill and the British Empire. Poland had fallen the year earlier and triggered the war. US, thanks to the isolationists, was on the sidelines and promised help to Britain only on a cash basis. Stalin, for his own interests and because he felt abandoned by the Western powers, had concluded a treaty with Hitler. On 10th May 1940 Hitler’s war machine invaded France, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. In 46 days, by 25th June Western Europe, save England, lay prostrate at the feet of the Nazi Warlord.

In 2017 it is difficult, unless one immerses oneself in a bunch of books, to even understand a glimmer of how perilous the world was in that year. Soviet Union was plundering Eastern Europe. Japan had established a puppet regime in Nanking and flexing its muscles. France and the low countries were smashed by steel of the German war machine. By the end of the year Italy, which had joined Germany, was plundering Africa and Churchill, in a controversial order, had ordered Britain to destroy French navy lest it fall into Hitler’s hands. ‘Victory, at all costs’ was no empty boast. But what of his claim that ‘without victory there is no survival’? To answer that we’ve to understand the brutality of the Nazi regime. The invasion of Soviet Union and the siege of Leningrad, aside from the holocaust, show what a singularly evil empire Hitler presided upon. Descendants of former British colonies often nonchalantly toss moral equivalences that the Colonial regime and Nazi regime were essentially same and figures of economic decline and millions dead are often cited to justify the smug game of equivalence.

The Nazi Regime:

The Holocaust, while extensively documented and spoken about, for all its singular grotesqueness still is only a part of a larger systematic evil, the kind that the world had not witnessed until then. Historian Richard Evans in the concluding volume of his trilogy, ‘The Third Reich at War’, gives a vivid portrayal of the nature of the Nazi war machine. Selections from Evans’s extensively sourced quotes give a detailed grim picture of what the Nazi warlord planned for USSR.

“It’s inconceivable that a higher people should painfully exist on a soil too narrow for it, whilst amorphous masses, which contribute nothing to civilization, occupy infinite tracts of a soil that is one of the richest in the world”.  

“The German colonist ought to live on handsome, spacious farms. The german services will be lodged in marvelous buildings, the governors in palaces..Around the city, to a depth of thirty to forty kilometres, we shall have a belt of handsome villages connected by the best roads. What exists beyond that will be another world, in which we mean to let the Russians live as they like. It is merely necessary that we should rule them. In the event of a revolution, we shall only have to drop a few bombs on their cities, and their affair will be liquidated”

“In a hundred years our language (German) will be the language of Europe”

“ ‘We’re not going to play at children’s nurses; we’re absolutely without obligations as far as these people are concerned’. 

"They would not be provided with medical or educational facilities; not only would they be denied inoculation and other preventive measures, but they should be persuaded that vaccinations were positively dangerous to their health” Herman Goring declared in 1941, 'This year 20-30 million people in Russia will starve’."

A ‘hunger plan’ was developed whereby “practically the entire food production of the conquered areas was to be used to feed the invading German armies and maintain nourishment standards at home”. 

Evans, concludes that Hitler’s plans for USSR emulated what was already practiced in Poland but on a grander scale: “ethnic deportation and resettlement, population transfer, Gemanization, cultural genocide and the reduction of the Slavic population by expropriation, starvation and disease”

Hitler’s plans were for the “annihilation of the Bolshevik commissars and the Communist intelligentsia…The conflict will be very different from the conflict in the West”

Hitler, to be fair, drew his inspiration from British colonialism for he reasoned that if the British can subjugate and keep as a vassal state a land mass like that of India why could he not do the same to USSR or Europe. Hitler’s attitude toward eliminating intelligentsia was not too far removed from how Lenin and Pol Pot dealt with intellectuals and the intelligentsia. The terror of Hitler was in that he was the war lord of the greatest war machine that ever was assembled and he threatened the entire globe unlike Churchill or Lenin or Pol Pot.

The Colonial Regime:

The British colonial regime was by no means a liberal democratic representative government and surely one could argue that features of what Hitler spoke of inflicting on USSR could be seen as features of the colonial regime. If that was all there was to it then it would be a open and shut case but the history of British rule in India was a very mixed bag. 

India asked Lord Mountbatten, the last viceroy, to be its first governor general and after becoming a republic it continues to be a member of the British commonwealth. Almost all of modern India’s institutions, notably in education, judiciary, administrative and legislature, are all essentially creations of the Raj era. It is a fact that irks the cockles of the current nationalist sentiment that idolizes a distant memory as being unsullied and great, of course with little or no empirical proof.

Only the most superficial student of history would argue, like Subhash Bose thought, that the Colonial and Nazi regimes were interchangeable commodities. Where Hitler wanted to eradicate the Russians with false propaganda about vaccines the British established India’s modern health care system. 

The subject of Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education” is notorious for his uncharitable remark on the quality of India’s literary heritage but if a student of history looks beyond the churlishness one could see that for the first time India had a ruler who was seriously concerned about mass literacy and education for all. The debt that Indians owe to Sir William Jones and Monier Williams is inestimable. 

Lord Ripon, for example, was so popular amongst Indians that in the Madras state he was celebrated as “Ripon, our father”, in Tamil it rhymes, “ரிப்பன் எங்கள் அப்பன்”. It was thanks to Warren Hastings’s efforts that the Hindu scripture ‘Bhagavad Gita’ was translated into English and practically resurrected to life again. A Indian historian notes that “a history of Oriental studies is incomplete without a mention of Hastings….in his letters to his wife he used o quote from the Gita”. It is this Warren Hastings who was eviscerated by Edmund Burke in shining prose in his impeachment trial as being a man who “sullied the honor of India”. 

Historian S.Gopal’s in “British Policy in India:1858-1905” portrayal of the viceroyalty of Curzon shows the mixed bag that the Colonial regime was. Gopal records how Curzon was motivated to provide the best administration and focused on development and at the same time with his plan to partition Bengal practically gave birth to India’s Freedom movement. Curzon, Gopal says, invested heavily in railways, including bringing a British expert and extending the reach of railways, to provide famine relief. 

Curzon, thanks to a private donation, established a research institute for agriculture in Pusa. “Proposals were also made for the development of colleges and research institutes of agriculture in the provinces”. A far cry from the Nazi regime which was devising “hunger plan” to kill tens of millions of Soviets.

Two signal works on Indian philosophy, one by Dr S.Radhakrishnan and another by Deshpande, were undertaken under the aegis of Cambridge university. For all their faults the works in history by the likes of V.A. Smith were yeoman contributions. Sure, they all carried the faults of their time and handicaps of peeling back millennia of history that was layered but it is on their shoulders that any modern Indian academician can build upon. It is sheer idiocy and knavery to nonchalantly equate the Colonial Regime and Nazi Regime.

Without a doubt it’d be equally idiotic to argue that the Colonial regime administered India out of a milk of kindness. Exploitation and plundering of India happened like that of any previous invader, or, as for that matter, India’s own princes, most of whom were far from saints. British soldiers had ‘shooting passes’ which allowed them to shoot in populated areas. When Curzon tried to curb the grants of these passes a member of his council responded “that it would detract from ‘the respect for the white skin on which our hold on India so largely depends’”

Winston Churchill and India

It is time now to approach the central figure of the controversy, Winston Churchill and his attitude towards India as a colonial imperialist. 

Churchill was stationed in India as a young army officer between 1896-97. An indolent and unremarkable student Churchill underwent a Pygmalion transformation in those years as he devoured books by Gibbon, Macaulay, Plato and nearly 20 volumes of British parliamentary history. While Churchill discovered himself he showed little inclination to discover his host country that was considered the brightest gem in the British crown. Churchill was the perfect embodiment of Kipling’s verse which celebrated imperialism as “white man’s burden” to civilize the Orient. Indian’s would do well to remember that some of their most celebrated kings had no lesser paternalistic attitude towards lands conquered by them. The only difference between Raja Raja Chola and Churchill was their skin color. 

Churchill’s imperialism is best understood by his remarks on Jallianwallah Bagh massacre in the House of Commons. 

Edwin Montagu, then Secretary of state for India, and a Jew, sought to address the issue in the parliament and was cowed down by anti-semitic taunts. Churchill then rose and dismantled Dyer’s claims of having fired at a rebellious crowd. Refuting Dyer’s notion of having to install fear “Churchill knifed Dyer: ‘Frightfulness is not a remedy known to the British pharmacopoeia”. Then Churchill contrasted the British empire with Russian Bolshevik empire. Bolsheviks, he said, maintained their empire with “bloody and devastating terrorism which they practice”. He asserted that the British empire “never stood on the basis of physical force alone, and it would be fatal to the British empire” if they tried to do so.

Almost pleading for a contextual appreciation of Churchill’s racial attitudes his biographer William Manchester points out that racial intolerance, even until the 1940s, was “not only acceptable in polite society; it was fashionable, even assumed”. Manchester cites Churchill referring to a black man as ‘kafir’ and ‘mulatto’. Churchill’s attitudes towards were not only frozen but reinforced by a book like Katherine Mayo’s “Mother India”, a book that Gandhi called a “drain inspector’s report”. When told by a doctor that measles affected blacks Churchill retorted “Well, there are plenty left. They’ve got a high rate of production”.

The world in 1942:

What was the world like in 1942 when famine began ravaging across Bengal? 

On 22nd June 1941 Hitler’s war machine launched Operation Barbarossa and raced towards Moscow thus stunning the world, the Soviets and above all Stalin. Hitler, in chilling words, had written in Mein Kampf his precise opinions on Soviet Russia, the Bolshevik regime — “common blood stained criminals; that they are the scum of humanity” — and of Communism - a Jewish conspiracy. 

Max Hastings called the invading German army, “the largest invading force assembled in the whole of human history to this point”. The Nazi war machine proceeded inexorably to within 50 miles of Moscow. Evacuation of Stalin and his government was seriously considered. When the war was over Soviet Russia, more than any country, had bled by the tens of millions prompting Churchill to “pay a particular tribute” to their heroism in his VE-Day speech announcing the surrender of Germany. But, in 1941 that date was not even hopefully visible.

On December 7th 1941, “a date which “will live in infamy”, Japan, attacked the US at Pearl Harbor and crippled its naval power. The US, we should note, had an armed preparedness that ranked below that of Netherlands. With the US entering the war and the Soviets hanging onto their Fatherland by their teeth the War between Germany and Western Europe, particularly England, had become a World War.

As 1942 dawned it is impossible to state today the bleakness that enveloped the allies and how Germany stood at the verge of triumph. It was a state of affairs that continued well into 1944 even after D-day when the world largest amphibious invading force landed in the beaches of Normandy while the Red Army punishingly marched toward Berlin scorching every city in its path.

Until June 1941 England and Churchill faced the brutal onslaught of Germany all alone. Charles Lindbergh, legendary hero of the transatlantic flight, became a champion of isolationism in America as the spokesman of “America First committee”. Lindbergh campaigned actively against the FDR-Churchill Lend-lease pact. Lindberg reasoned that the US might aid the defeat of Hitler and thus open Europe to “rape, loot and barbarism of Soviet Russia’s forces, causing possibly the fatal wounding of Western civilization”. He openly was in awe of the Luftwaffe. 

Historian Richard Evans underscores how vital Soviet support was to the survival of the Nazi regime until Hitler decided to invade it. As late as 10th January 1941 “the Soviet union signed a new trade agreement which doubled the quantity of grain exports from Ukraine to the Third Reich”. “The Soviet union was supplying nearly three-quarters of Germany’s requirement of phosphates, over two-thirds of its imported asbestos….more crucially, more than a third of its imported oil”

Reflect on the fact that the Nazi war machine, having subjugated continental western Europe, supplied by Soviet Russia, was raining hell on London. A war machine that sliced its way to Moscow at lightning speed bore down on England. For nearly two years all that stood between Hitler and world domination was the British empire and its indomitable leader.

TO BE CONCLUDED

Note: References and citations of material used will be provided in the concluding part. 

Thatcher Is Dead. Long Live Thatcherism.

Bernard Shaw's play "Caesar and Cleopatra" has a preface titled "Better than Shakespeare". It was Shaw's contention that Shakespeare, a genius in portraying tragedy, failed to understand the heroism of a character like Julius Caesar and therefore his eponymous play on Caesar was flawed. Upon Margaret Thatcher's death many editorials and the redoubtable Paul Krugman have weighed in on her legacy. Almost all liberal magazines and op-ed writers, except the lunatic far left fringe, couched their appreciation of Thatcher in carefully worded statements that were a shame to linguistic clarity. Reagan and Thatcher will remain beloved in the minds of many of their citizens and in the minds of many across the globe. Yet they will remain the least understand by the academia and the ivory tower of preening intellectuals who wallow in the wooly term 'progressives'. They, like Shakespeare, cannot understand or explain the strength of a Reagan or a Thatcher or a J.P. Morgan or a Leland Stanford.

In an interesting parallel Thatcher and Reagan ascended to power in the gap of a year. Both were instrumental in reversing four decades of run away 'progressive' liberalism that yielded economic misery and devastated both countries. Richard Nixon, Republican, gleefully implemented wage controls, sought and recieved the support of the large unions, campaigned for universal healthcare (when Unions did not want it). Nixon is to the left of Obama. Both US and UK were wracked by runaway inflation or the more dangerous stagflation. The arrival of Thatcher and Reagan did not happen in a vacuum. 

A deep bench of conservative intellectuals, especially in the US, mounted the offensive on liberalism. Ayn Rand battled FDR along with H.L. Mencken and others, then followed Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and finally Milton Friedman. Buckley and Friedman provided the intellectual ballast for conservative revival. Friedman's lectures on public TV, assailing statist Keynesian economics while raising the edifice of free market, provided the intellectual platform for Ronald Reagan. Thatcher schooled herself in Karl Popper and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' was a modern classic in economics and a rage in the 50's. Hayek detailed how nations yield to statist fantasies and find themselves in a thralldom.

The day after the first post-war election Churchill, in his own words, 'woke up with a feeling of a sharp stab'. Churchill, who had rescued England and the world from the twin monstrosities of Nazism and fascism was roundly defeated by an England that was tired of being an empire. Churchill, justifiably, was seen as incapable of peacetime rebuilding. Clement Attlee, a liberal, took the helms, liberated India and set England on a course of liberalism for the next 40 years. Along the way the Anglo-French-Israeli misadventure in the Suez canal put paid to any pretension of colonial glory for England. England became a second fiddle to its bigger sibling across the Atlantic.

Until Thatcher became PM there was little difference in economic philosophy between Tory and Labor. The unions had a stranglehold on the economy and practically held the country to ransom as Edward Heath learned at the hands of the miners. 

What was life in UK before Thatcher? A liberal writer writing in the staunchly liberal 'The Guardian' gives a glimpse: "But if today's Guardian readers time-travelled to the late 70s they might be irritated to discover that tomorrow's TV listings were a state secret not shared with daily newspapers. A special licence was granted exclusively to the Radio Times. (No wonder it sold 7m copies a week). It was illegal to put an extension lead on your phone. You would need to wait six weeks for an engineer. There was only one state-approved answering machine available. Your local electricity "board" could be a very unfriendly place. Thatcher swept away those state monopolies in the new coinage of "privatisation" and transformed daily life in a way we now take for granted."

In another curious parallel both Reagan and Thatcher faced down crippling strikes and broke down the unions. Thatcher had her miners strike in her second term and Reagan had the PATCO strike in his first term. Both strikes were led by greedy unions willing to prove they were militant unions. Reagan fired the entire PATCO union. The miners lost broad public sympathy with their arsonous streak. Organized labor never recovered from those death blows. Both countries, thanks to that, have since prospered.

Between Thatcher and Reagan it was Thatcher who found the words to taunt socialists: "you want to make the poor poorer as long as the rich are less rich". Asked if she would do a u-turn on her policies a stout Thatcher retorted "u turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning". "There is no such thing as public money" said she. Yes, its not a revelation or a discovery. But such truths had been forgotten for decades under the assault of liberal Keynesian policies. Truths needed to be re-told and thats what Thatcher did and for that the world owes her gratitude.

It is not for nothing that 'The Economist' called her a 'Freedom Fighter'. Hugo Chavez was mourned by millions across the globe with little regard to how he mismanaged his country and plundered his country's economy, particularly its oil wealth and fashioned himself a ruler for life. Thatcher, as 'Economist' mourned, was the true 'freedom fighter'. She made England anew and left it a better place than when she ascended. Her biography, from a grocer's daughter to the most powerful and longest reigning PM in modern history in UK, is a story of inspiration and awe.

Paul Krugman in his oped 'Did Thatcher turn around Britain' had two graphs. One, showed that UK's GDP relative to France was in decline, year over year, from 1945-79 and then with Thatcher becoming PM, as if on cue, the graph starts rising. It continues till today. Another graph showed the wild gyration of the employment market which starts to decline, decisively, only from 1993 until the financial crisis of 2008. In fact Thatcher's economy saw an upswing of unemployment. Krugman archly asked 'if it took 20 years for her policies to reap benefit, were they creditable'. I wish he said the same of Obama. Thatcher was reversing the economic decline of nearly 40 years and re-shaping entire segments of the economy. It is bound to disruptive.

Thatcher's reluctance to be drawn into the Euro fantasy cost her the PM chair. Yet as the Euro zone  faces its worst existential crises Thatcher stands vindicated. The Brits owe her a measure of thanks.

Not even Reagan saw the turning of history with Gorbachev as Thatcher did. While Thatcher was not an imperialist in the mould of Churchill her conduct of the Falkland war and joining hands with Reagan to battle Soviet menace brought back England's lost glory. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait Thatcher famously told George H.W. Bush "George, now is not the time to go wobbly".

No obituary of Thatcher was complete without the word 'divisive'. Reagan, on the other hand, was not seen 'divisive' on a similar scale. During the heated 2008 primaries Obama would chide the Clinton era for being 'divisive'. Clinton retorted 'yes. Thats because we fought the fights that had to be fought'. UK was in a deeper mire of liberal nonsense and the entire country was being threatened by unions. Thatcher yanked back the country to life. It is difficult to say if she could have done so with lesser divisiveness. Countering decades of entrenched thinking her laser like opposition to those ideas with very firm articulation of free market could not come across as soothing.

Thatcher and Reagan were the products of an era without whom who knows what course history might have taken in two important countries. Before them nobody thought liberalism could be challenged. After them it was difficult to doubt the blessing of free markets. Both Clinton and Blair were intellectual heirs to Reagan and Thatcher. Clinton, the new-democrat, declared 'the era of big government is over'. Blair re-invented the Labor party and veered away from kowtowing to militant trade unionism. Conservatism was here to stay. When ideological opponents speak your language you have won.

"She and comparisons are odious". Thatcher is dead. Long Live Thatcherism.

9/11 And The Vietnam Albtaross: The story of George Coker

America's engagement in Vietnam is a sordid saga of venality and war crimes. It was an age and time that makes current partisan discord look like exemplary brotherhood. The civil rights struggle, the anti-war movement, military drafts, a president assassinated, the air thick with conspiracy tales, America was a cauldron. When many rushed to scold US on 9/11 with a thinly disguised criticism of its foreign policy what drove most were the memories of Vietnam, especially of a little girl running naked, screaming, when her village was napalmed. 

Nothing has weighed heavily on US foreign policy as Vietnam. The nation's psyche was wounded for decades. US never again got into a full fledged war until the Gulf War of 1991. In fact Saddam had calculated that America with its aversion to seeing soldiers return in body bags would not venture into a war. That US had scurried out of Somalia in between Vietnam and Gulf War emboldened not just Saddam but Osama too.

Robert McNamara, LBJ, Nixon are the three most culpable individuals in what turned out to be America's shame ranked probably only next to the original sin of slavery. That they were not indicted as war criminals is not indicative of any exclusive power of America but symptomatic of how weak the world bodies are in prosecuting any such person. If those deserved to be prosecuted they should very well be along with so many others.

While most of the above is common knowledge what is less known is how America got dragged into this body quagmire. Eminent historian and two time Pulitzer winner Barbara Tuchman, author of bestseller 'Guns of August', traces how America slid into this mess that was not of its making in 'The March of Folly". During the days of World War II the Allies had an uneasy relationship which on some counts was even blatantly hypocritical. Churchill was calling for the defense of liberty while he jailed Gandhi and declared that he had not become "his majesty's first minister to preside over the liquidation of the British empire". De Gaulle while mourning the loss of France and yearning to be its leader again was clear that France will remain a colonial power. Stalin, as historian Robert Conquest labeled him, was the 'breaker of nations'. The least guilty in this was US led by FDR. FDR would plead with all three, Churchill, Stalin and De Gaulle to be fair to nations in their post war plans.

What is now known as Vietnam used to be Indo-China. It was the playground of the French, the Japanese and Chinese. The French ruled Vietnam with an iron fist and in true colonial fashion. Try watching the movie "Battle of Algiers" to get a sample. With Ho-Chi-Minh in saddle North Vietnam slid into the deadly embrace of communism. In a conflict that drew a wide array of nations and competing agendas Vietnam became America's "Bloodland", to adopt the phrase of a historian. America went headlong into Vietnam when the French sowed chaos and sought to exit out. With the passage of time what remains in most  people memory is only the carnage that US left behind and that is married to notions of a superpower trying to bludgeon a country of bicycle riders under the pretext of saving them from Communist stranglehold.

If one traces the role of countries in Vietnam its mindblogging to separate friend from foe. In what is characteristic of wars at various junctures both US and China had allied with the murderous regime of Khmer Rouge in the background of the Vietnam war.

With such stories to be told Hollywood was not far away. The anti-war movie "Hearts and Minds" was highly critical of US policy in Vietnam. A scene featured a Vietnam veteran,  George Coker, saying "If it wasn't for the people, it was very pretty. The people there are very backwards and primitive and they make mess out of everything". The movie in Hollywood style omitted to mention who Coker was. Wikipedia notes aptly that this was a propaganda movie. Not surprisingly it garnered an Academy Award. What the movie omitted was George Coker has been prisoner of war in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton". Coker had suffered inhuman torture that would make water boarding and Guantanamo look like five star facilities. Wikipedia details:

"While in a facility on the outskirts of Hanoi known as "The Zoo", he was forced to endure a torture called "the wall", in which he, as well as other prisoners, was forced to stand facing a wall in his cell with his hands above his head from the time a gong sounded at 5:30 in the morning until it sounded again at 10:00 at night. After two weeks, the knee injury he suffered when he ejected had worsened, and he was taken to a hospital where the infection was drained. After a two day respite while he recuperated, "the wall" torture continued for two more months. Coker called this "probably my worst experience in Vietnam".^[1

Another Prisoner of War who was famously incapacitated due to torture in Vietnam is Arizona Senator and former GOP Presidential candidate John McCain. While critics of US foreign policy breathlessly recount tales of My Lai and napalming of villages the narrative becomes too stilted and blatant propaganda when it completely ignores the brutal realities of tortures by Vietnamese.

In what can be the very epitome of irony today US and Vietnam are close allies. John McCain and Hillary Clinton have visited Vietnam. Vietnam is a major outsourcing hub for software. Ultimately it was the market that triumphed. The victorious North Vietnam gobbled the south and the united country plunged into socialist abyss until recent times. The US failed to save South Vietnam unlike South Korea. South Korea under American tutelage (or hegemony as the critics remind us) became an economic power house. TOday South Koreans, thanks to American soldiers still dying in the DMZ ( I met a veteran wounded recently in South Korea), enjoy a free society that they can organize marches decrying US hegemony. The icing on the Vietnam-US detente is Vietnam requesting US help to stave of Chinese threat in the seas, New York Times, reports, quoting Nguyen Manh Hung, director of the Indochina Institute at George Mason University in Virginia, "Vietnam worries about Chinese in the South China Sea and America worries about interference in freedom of navigation,” Mr. Hung said. “Because of this, the strategic interests of Vietnam and the United States converge.”


The more and more I read on US foreign policy the angrier I get at the shibboleth of citing US foreign policy as reason for 9/11. That girl running naked with burning skin from a Napalm attack had more reason to be angry at US than the polygamist turned fundamentalist Osama Bin Laden and his thugs ever had. China, Japan, all of Western Europe, Philippines, India, Simgapore, Vietnam, South Korea are all beneficiaries of US economic policies and many owe their prosperity to US. It was US leadership, or hegemony, that saved Western Europe from Stalin. Communism laid waste continents and impoverished millions and it was US to the rescue almost always. What prompted Bin Laden was not any articulation of high liberal principles but sheer religious fundamentalism that was unique in that region. After the July 2004 London subway bombings Granta magazine ran an issue titled "the rise of British Jihad". That and about the apologists for terrorism in my next blog.

Road to 9/11: Harold Pinter's Anti-Americanism

On September 11th 2001 while America mourned several parts of the world mourned and in the same breath muttered "you had it coming". Sujatha wrote that the days USA's "gun boat diplomacy" are over and like a good father sent his son to USA to live and become, I guess, an American citizen. Aijaz Ahmed, living in USA, writing for Frontline divined that the 19 hijackers were thinking of the so many past injustices of USA.

When people complain of US foreign policy I hear the usual litany starting with Vietnam meandering through the past as far their erudition goes, perhaps the coup Teddy Roosevelt engineered to build the Panama Canal, to every present day conflict weaving an ugly tapestry of a hegemony run amuck. Yes, as in Vietnam, there are very justifiable blemishes on US foreign policy. No country in history with the economic and military size of USA could have an unsullied record. But to place America in the company of Nazi Germany or malign the US army like they were murderous blood lusty terrorists alone only betrays the pathological hatred of such opinion holders.

In spring of 2002, while the fires were barely put out and WTC was just mangled steel with 2500+ bodies still buried, Granta magazine asked eminent intellectuals across the globe to share their thoughts for an issue titled "What We Think of America". Orhan Pamuk, Ramachandra Guha, Amit Chaudhuri and many more including Harold Pinter.

Orhan Pamuk and Harold Pinter, both Nobel Laureates, perfectly bookend the range of emotions most feel about America. Pamuk, coming from Turkey, has a gentle portrait of USA told through a story of his childhood involving an American boy. Pinter's essay was an address he delivered On Sep 10th 2001, a day before 9/11. Pinter said the address is still relevant. Pinter eviscerates USA for the NATO bombing of Serbian forces of Milosevic. Pinter called the USA a 'rogue state', 'a fully fledged, award-winning gold plated monster...it knows only one language-bombs and death". Doris Lessing, another Nobel Laureate, wrote a meandering piece, "America, it seems to me,has as little resistance to an idea or a mass emption as isolated communities have to measles and whooping cough".

Harold Pinter scolded the USA for the NATO bombings in Bosnia and went on to organize funds for Slobodan Milosevic, need I add a word after that. Doris Lessing was a communist, a typical worshipper from afar who never lived under communism.

It is this 'gold plated monster' that sent thousands to the beaches of Normandy. Flagging off the D-Day landings Eisenhower said "half of them will not come back alive". America, Lessing says, allows ideas and emotions to wash over with little resistance like a populace stricken by measles. Sure, is that why America put its money and men defending Western Europe and her own beloved England. Referring to FDR's 'lend lease program' to England, Presidential historian Robert Dallek, chuckled, "what lend lease, there was no collateral to be lent against. FDR basically hoodwinked the people and supplied Churchill". Lessing jeers that Americans have short memories. She with a long memory forgot that US had to be dragged into both World Wars. It is a matter of conjecture that had US entered, what was seen as European conflict, earlier in WW-II much loss of life could have been stopped.

Torn between two wars, a terrorist attack that reshaped the psyche of a country and an economic recession, it was only USA that rushed its C-14 helicopters across the globe to save the thousands battling for life in Tsunami stricken Banda Aceh in Thailand. Note, there was no oil or any strategic advantage in Banda Aceh.

George W. Bush hiked the aid given to Africa to combat AIDS. A 2006 Washington Post article says he tripled the aid. Bill Clinton, through his 'Clinton Global Initiative', has negotiated with drug companies to supply AIDS drugs at a fraction of their prices. Why should American companies sacrifice their hard earned profits?

"Black Hawk Down" is a famous blockbuster that portrayed the infamous incident in Somalia. UN aid to famine stricken impoverished Somalis was being hijacked by war lords. US decided to take out one notorious war lord and the ensuing scuffle was absolute humiliation. The black hawk helicopter was shot down, the soldiers were killed and their bodies were dragged in the streets. This is the incident that is said to have crystallized Osama's vision that America could be hit. 1993 America was a different place. Cold War was won. NASDAQ and DOW soared, American economy was overheated. Clinton was battling for re-election. America was in no mood for war in a war ravaged Africa which had nothing to offer. Today millions of children face near certain death in Somalia due to continued famine.

When Russia imploded after the failed coup by the hardliners again it was America that rushed in to prevent USSR from self-incinerating. Yet again during a recession precious money was funneled to USSR to secure the nuclear war heads. David Hoffman, Pulitzer winner for his portrayal of Cold War arms legacy in 'Dead Hand', writes scathingly 'not one of USSR nuclear facilities met Western standards".

The Marshall Plan, Reagan's "Mr Gorbachev bring this wall down", Nunn_lugar aid for USSR, saving South Korea, rebuilding Japan, rebuilding Western Europe, saving millions in Bosnia and much more was all America.

Indira Gandhi came running to LBJ for wheat to feed India. USSR too, depended on US for food. Yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat could not feed itself. Well after the bloody collectivization drives in Ukraine and killing millions of Kulaks it was the Yankees to the rescue. By the way but for US Zhou-En-Lai would have marched to Delhi and given a Bhai-Bhai lesson to Nehru.

Ask anybody today, including most Americans, who started the Vietnam war. The answer would be America. Truth, of course is different. America was dragged into it by France and brought itself great shame by its conduct. However here too a wrinkle is often ignored. We only hear how USA napalmed villages. We never hear how American GI's were brutally tortured by Viet-Cong, torture that makes Abhu-Ghraib, however shameful, look like picnic. Google the words "Hanoi Hilton". I'll blog on this separately.

Every international institution owes its independence (however arguably) and robustness to American taxpayer money. USA pays more than 60% of UN's bills. No other country comes close. IMF and World Bank, both born out of US leadership, have saved millions across the world, unarguably unless  you are a bleeding heart liberal and a closet communist.

Hearing criticisms of inciting a coup in order to build Panama Canal Teddy Roosevelt reminded his critics that the coup he  incited were only 51st in a steady stream of coups. The canal helped world trade for 100+ years and was recently turned over to Panama. For over 200 years it was dream and TR, in what would be the 'American Century', turned it to reality. Of course one could argue over the morals of the coup. What would miss the point is that coups were par for the course and TR's coup, not entirely engineered by him but only aiding what was already underway, helped world trade and millions.

The Granta issue highlighted a critical dichotomy. Those from erstwhile communist countries were more sympathetic to USA than those from well heeled western democracies. Only a pathological hater like Pinter could call NATO bombings as evil and fund raise for Milosevic. He and others like him are beyond the pale of reason.

An American GI was distributing sweets to children in a street side in Iraq. They were ambushed in a terrorist attack. When Time magazine interviewed an insurgent and referred to the incident asking "what about the many children", the insurgent replied "Allah will understand, we had to get that one soldier". To equate both is not just fallacious reasoning but a very facetious reasoning.

So was really US foreign policy the angering element in fashioning the ghastly attacks? Osama had zero interest in anything as remote as articulating an alternate world vision or in standing up for some high liberty. He launched a religious attack, pure and simple. One can keep papering over it but thats what it is. One crude question to puncture the logic would be this:"If US foreign policy begets terrorism then how come it was not the Vietnamese or Filippino's or Grenadans or Haitians or heck even Panamanians or Cubans, why was it only the Saudis?". A peek into Osama's persona and his evolution into a jihadist is for another day.

Road to 9/11: Fundamentalism Run Amuck

In the days after 9/11 it was fashionable to say "we condemn the atrocity but..." and then lecture down to America that America practically invited the attack. The reasons offered were projections of each persons own animosity towards America. Ranging from Sujatha Ranagarajan writing for a South Indian vernacular magazine to Noam Chomsky, considered the greatest genius in Cognitive psychology, the advices were variations of a meme: America's super power attitude, propping up dictatorial regimes, middle east policy, military adventurism etc. That the 19 suicide attackers left no note made it convenient for each person to trot out his or her own theory as to why they did it. Recently I finished reading Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer winning "The Looming Tower:Al Qaeda and The Road To 9/11". Around the same time Osama's killing happened and Washington Post published an article titled "Five Myths about Osama Bin Laden". The first myth was that Osama was trained by CIA.

A columnist for Frontline, a fortnightly from Chennai, helpfully wrote about the possible motivations of the hijackers, "Betrayal of the Palestinians, the destruction of Iraq! One can reasonably assume that these two great devastations of the Arabo-Muslim world were vivid in the memory of those 19 hijackers on September 11 this year". (Note the Iraq war the author refers here is the 1991 Gulf War that was fully supported by UN, Gulf States etc). Palestine. Iraq. Support of US to middle east potentates were all the most repeated reasons.

Lawrence Wright, based on extensive interviews and deep research, unravels the puzzle of who the actors and what were  their 'possible' motivations. As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches I thought I shall write a few blogs on this topic and allied issues not just as a book review but as a history that not many are aware of and would lack the patience to accumulate by reading a 600 page book (its a page turner).

The suppression of free speech, the military state etc are offered as reasons that fueled terrorism since legitimate expression of dissent was prohibited. The support offered by US to such middle east oligarchies notably the Saudi Royal family is cited as cause. Bollocks.

Anger at suppression of democracy or democratic processes was the least of concerns for the hijackers or Al Qaeda. In fact Bin Laden, Zawahiri, Azzam all pay fealty to fundamentalist Wahhabi sect that was founded by US educated Sayyid Qutb. Sayyid Qutb quit USA only because he was disgusted that USA was un-Islamic. Most left wing people who espouse social justice, affirmative action etc decried what they called US hegemony and used 9/11 to pillory US. What is worse is that they did not realize that Al Qaeda'a intellectual godfather Sayyid Qutb,Wright notes, hated egalitarianism. Qutb used to quote the Koran, "we have created you class upon class".

Sayyid Qutb rebelled against Nasser, not for more democracy, but because he said Nasser's Egypt was not Islamic enough and required to be overthrown. Sayyid was arrested, tortured and finally hanged.

Anwar Sadat is supposed to have told Golda Meir, "if you make peace with me you will go back to Israel a hero. If I make peace with you when I go back to Egypt I will be assassinated". Sadat's wife had made it easier for women to get divorce. Sadat, after the Yom Kippur War, made historical peace with Israel. His prophecy came true tragically. Sadat was assassinated. How was his killing justified? How did they justify killing a fellow Muslim? Sayyid Qutb's ideology of 'takfir' helped. By declaring that a muslim has become un-islamic by his/her acts, a takfir, the respective person is removed from being protected as a fellow muslim. Wright acidly notes, "the pious Anwar Sadat was the first pro-medern victim of the reverse logic of takfir".

Democracy was repugnant to the followers of Qutb. "Democracy was un-islamic. Therefore anyone who voted was an apostate and forfeited his life". Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian Nobel laureate, was declared an 'infidel' and suffered a near fatal knife attack.

Often the apologists for terrorism speak fondly of how youth get attracted to terrorism due to lack of education and opportunities in life. Wright quotes a study of political prisoners in 1970's Egypt, "majority were sons of middle-level government officials, educated in science and engineering,...,They were not the alienated, marginalized youth that a sociologist might expect. While tomes are written excoriating the CIA coup in Iran to install the Shah as examples of US hegemony and US support of totalitarian regimes little have we heard on how Islamists engineered a coup in Sudan to install a Islamic regime. It is Sudan that was home later to Bin Laden before he ventured to Afghanistan.

In the murky world of middle east the attempt on Mubarak was another watershed event. Egyptian police abused a thirteen year old boy and blackmailed him into infiltrating Zawahiri's organization that was suspected of a hand in the attempt on Mubarak. The boy and another friend were used by Egyptian agencies to kill Zaawahiri and his associates in Sudan during a meeting. Sudanese intelligence discovered the plot and the boys were abandoned by the Egyptians. Many members of Al Qaeda objected to putting the boys on trial. Zawahiri, to prove that the boys had attained manhood, stripped them and then shot them. The boys confession and shooting was videotaped. The outrage infuriated the Sudanese government which chased Zawahiri out.

Bin Laden's own journey was an odyssey that culminated in 9/11. Incidentally, Wright says, Bin Laden hated Yasser Arafat. In Bin Laden's opinion Arafat was a secular and not islamic enough.

The presence of American troops in Saudi after the 1991 Persian Gulf War is cited consistently by Bin Laden as something that offended him. It did not matter that American army was stationed in Suadi at the behest of the government which feared Saddam more. Bin Laden loathed the fact that the gulf states took US help to stop Saddam Hussein. Incidentally Bin Laden hated Saddam (Iraq was more westernized than any other gulf state). Bin Laden tried convincing the Saudi king that he would stop Saddam with his mujahideens from Afghanistan. By the way nowhere in the book Wright establishes any link between CIA and Bin Laden (a fact confirmed by Peter Bergen, the only US journalist who interviewed Bin Laden).

What not many lay readers know is that Americans troops stationed in Saudi, not anywhere near Mecca, is nothing compared to how French troops entered Mecca itself at the behest of Saudi king. In 1979, yet another Islamist group, took Mecca by siege during Haj period. It shook the Islamic world. Saudi King after vacillating and unable to clear the holiest shrine invited French troops who then entered Mecca where no non-Muslim could ever go. (Saudi Arabia denies this happened). For something that the US had nothing to do with Khomeini blamed US and for good measure blamed Israel too. Needless  to say Anti-American demonstrations including burning down of an embassy ensued. It was the Bin Laden family that provided vital clues to the French on the building details.

An event that crystallized Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization was, according to Wright, the botched bombing in Amen on Dec 29th 1992. The bombing was supposed to kill American soldiers going to Somalia as part of an international relief effort to that impoverished country. The bomb went off but killed no American. A Yemeni and and and Australian had died. Bin Laden's deputy and mentor, Abu Hajer, justified it based on a fatwa by Ibn Tamiyyah. In a chilling rationale that defied any sane logic killing of innocents was justified. Wright, ends the chapter with a ominous note, "Al Qaeda would concentrate not on fighting armies but on killing civilians".

The last chapter, titled, "Revelations" rounds it all of. On 9/12, the day after the carnage, Soufan a Muslim FBI agent went to interrogate Abu Jandal who was apprehended for the Nairobi Embassy bombing. Abu Jandal, Wright says, 'was confounded by Soufan and what he represented: A Muslim who could argue religion with him, who was in the FBI, who loved America'. Sofan asked about the innocent women and children who died in that bombing. In particular Soufan asks about a woman on a bus 'who was clutching her baby, trying to protect him from the flames. Both had been incinerated'. Jandals reply was "God will give them rewards in the Hereafter". About them being innocent he reasoned cruelly, that the bombings took place on a Friday when Muslims were supposed to have been in mosques. If she was not in a mosque what was she doing on a bus. She was not a Muslim then but a 'takfir' and deserved to die.

Time and again the recurrent theme in the biography of each actor is a fiendish fundamentalism that cloaked itself in causes that were never consistent or helpful to the people they were supposed to help. Palestine, American imperialism etc were all fig leaf causes only to hide their desire of establishing a Caliphate. Re-establishing an Ottoman style Caliphate was their desire. In a post cold-war world the only remaining obstacle was USA.

No wonder Lawrence Wright got a Pulitzer for a landmark book. Wright patiently pieces together the jigsaw puzzle and leads us through the twisted world of terrorism. I shall continue with a couple more blogs. The 9/11 hijackers chose to meet in Hamburg for a reason. After 9/11 US citizenry was aghast at how agencies did not share information. The reasons for that and more await a little.

America's and Obama's Moment of Glory

Its Diwali time in America. Its the one metaphor that can capture the mood of the country. America has slain a beast that had brought unfathomable destruction to lives and the American way of life. 9/11 has a very personal meaning for me. Our family, my wife in particular who worked in Wall Street, endured unspeakable horror and anxiety. That was a day, as an Indian, I felt comforted that I was in America. I was sure that my wife would reach home safely. Volumes have been written about that day, Giuliani becoming America's mayor, the steely resolve of New Yorkers, civilians committing suicide to foil the plans of barbarians and so much more. I shall not rehash those now.

My favorite columnist Lance Morrow wrote a vitriolic column in Time laying out the "The case for rage and retribution' . "A day cannot live in infamy without the nourishment of rage. Let's have rage. What is needed is a unified, unifying, Pearl Harbor sort of purple American fury, a ruthless indignation that doesn't leak away in a week or two" and Morrow asked Americans to "relearn why human nature has equipped us all with a weapon (abhorred in decent peacetime societies) called hatred". In prescient words he closes, "the worst times, as we see, separate the civilized of the world from the uncivilized. This is the moment of clarity. Let the civilized toughen up, and let the uncivilized take their chances in the game they started".

All these years many have mocked that America, with all its technical glitz and unparalleled power, could not bring to justice one individual. Not many realized that the America we see in movies is not the America in reality. This escapes even the well informed many times. Very coincidentally Time magazine's cover story for this week is Robert Mueller, chief of FBI. The story highlights that  prior to 9/11 FBI did not have agents devoted full time to gather intelligence. Today there are 580 in a new category devoted for intelligence. Now consider tracking a fugitive like bin-laden (in the domain of CIA) who does not use any modern amenities that can be tracked or hacked. Add to that the fact that he lives amidst his fellow tribesmen of undying loyalty. Now compound it with other bizarre facts like not having, almost nil, 'humints' (human intelligence agents), zero agents who even knew rudimentary Pashtun, the language of the fugitive. On 9/11 Bush realized the archaic nature of communications equipment aboard Air Force One. After the demise of communism America took a well deserved holiday and basked in the glory of being not just the super power but a hyper power where the second in line was so far behind that it did not matter. 

Americans are fast learners and learn from mistake so learn we did. America cultivated humints, prosecuted a just war, reshaped a country and then got distracted in an unwise war of choice. No wonder Osama was free for close  to 10 years. The details of his capture are now common place and any reader can find it himself/herself.

This is Barack Obama's moment of glory. While candidate Obama, like any politician, adopted lofty sentiments to shine himself up, President Obama has been a hard nosed realist. Much to the frustration of his voters time and again Obama has reiterated or continued many of Bush's policies that he once decried. What amazes me in the continuity in officialdom despite the fact that key positions are political appointments. When Bush took over he retained George Tenet, a Clinton appointee, as head of CIA. After 9/11 many thought Bush would fire George Tenet as a scapegoat. Bush did not. Obama retained Robert Mueller, a Bush appointee, as head of FBI. Obama literally angered his voters by retaining Robert Gates, another Bush nominee, as secretary of Defense. When Obama got elected but was still yet to assume power he started communicating with Robert Gates. Gates acknowledged that if he got calls from both Bush, his then current boss, and Obama, the president elect, he would give higher priority to Obama as  the incoming CEO. Today when Obama has won a richly deserved glory not one of his republican opponents demurred in praising him. Heck even Rush Limbaugh praised Obama.

While the groundwork for killing Osama began in Bush's tenure Obama deserves all credit for what is a very perilous mission. We are told that for 40 tense minutes anxiety, to put it mildly, hung in the air in the situation room at White House. Any misstep could have landed in a diplomatic hot water or could potentially have crippled Obama's re-election. Like Truman said, "the buck stops" at the President's table. Across the spectrum there was lavish praise for Obama. Krauthammer too. 

It was a week that started with political theater when Obama appeared almost a weakling stooping to disprove Trump's, a republican candidate to be, racist ridiculous charge that Obama was not born in USA thus constitutionally illegitimate. Then he went on a road trip to carry on his battle with republicans over deficit control. On Saturday, in the White House correspondent's dinner, he joked and laughed at Trump and at himself too. All this while he was contemplating an operation that could redefine his presidency. During the campaign when John McCain in a very stupid maneuver suspended campaigning Obama chided him saying 'a president should be able to multi task'. 

Hollywood has a despicable habit of caricaturing CIA as trigger happy thugs, bumbling idiots, insensitive boors, oil hungry organizers of coups and so on to everything except honorable, intelligent officers in the service of their country. Whether its dismantling A.Q.Khan's nuclear bazaar or capturing Al Qaeda operatives or this phenomenal feat CIA has time and again proved that its an organization that keeps America safe. 

Now there are those who rush to say, "we condemn Osama BUT..." and then launch into broadsides on American foreign policy plainly frustrate me. This is the real world there are no angels in the world. Starting with Noam Chomsky down to Tamil bloggers I've heard enough of this moral equivocation. Is American foreign policy completely benign? Of course not. Nor do I wish it to be. Has America made completely egregious condemnable crimes? Yes it has. There is My Lai. Then depending on how much one hates America one can have his or her pick from justifiable to the patently unfair listing of imagined crimes. Chile, the Shah of Iran, Grenada, Haiti, Philippines, VIETNAM then there is Iraq. 

Lets sample Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is considered the greatest genius on cognitive psychology and linguistics yet he is mostly known for his perpetual vitriolic and acerbic criticism of USA and Israel (he is a Jew). Every book store will have some screed of Chomsky's, invariably 100% the blurb on the jacket would declare "Chomsky, the man whom New York Times, calls 'arguably the greatest intellectual alive'". 

Chomsky draws a contrast between Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the US led war in his interview to Frontline, "This is quite different from the Soviet invasion. The Soviets were facing a major mercenary military force, backed by the United States and other powers. They also had additional constraints: they never bombed cities or destroyed them, and they never used what amount to weapons of mass destruction, like carpet bombs or daisy-cutters". A very specious distinction to put it mildly. Soviet Union destroyed civilians as policy unlike US. The civilian casualties in Soviet repression ranged from 1-2 million. If this is not intellectual dishonesty pray what else is?

Nothing angers me more than the tongue in cheek condemnations of 9/11 which are laced "yet did not US bring about the attacks due to its policy". The 19 hijackers came from well heeled families who were not even remotely touched US policies. If even one hijacker was a Palestinian or a Vietnamese or a Chilean or a Filippino or a Haitian I could remotely understand. Those 19 thugs had nothing but hatred fueled by religious fundamentalism.

Krauthammer in a searing column in Time eviscerates these foreign policy clingers, "Al-Qaeda always invents some excuse, some historical injury to justify its barbarism. Today Iraq, yesterday Palestine and, when all else fails, Andalusia, a bin Laden staple that refers to the Muslim loss of Spain to Ferdinand and Isabella (in 1492!). Various casus belli are served up as conditions change. Only the gullible and the appeasers buy them. Now we're told that the Iraq invasion has increased al-Qaeda recruiting". He adds damningly, "In fact, the 1990s was the decade of Muslim rescue: the U.S. intervened militarily, and decisively, to save three Muslim peoples--the Bosnians, the Kosovars and the Kuwaitis--from conquest and catastrophe. Yet it was precisely during that era of good feeling that al-Qaeda not only recruited for but also conceived, planned and set in motion the worst massacre of Americans in history. So much for the connection between American perfidy and anti-American terrorism." Only a conservative columnist can provide that crystal like clarity in brief passages. The entire column is a compelling read. 

"Oh was not Osama America's Frankenstein?". "American recruited fundamentalists to defeat communism unmindful of long term consequences". Both only carry a shade of truth but serves as convenient mental constructs to simplify a world thats labyrinthine. 

New York Times, in a manner that only the Times can do, published a nice section called "A survey of Books on Osama" has highlighted some good books on Osama that were reviwed in the Times. Choose especially Lawrence Wright's Pulitzer winning "The Looming Tower". Wright painstakingly lays out the winding roads that map out Osama's radicalization from Holywood watching anti-communist to jihadist anti-American. The crystallizing event for Osama is the stationing of US troops in Saudi after Gulf War-I. A war that US fought, mostly at the behest of Saudi and other Arab nations which were shivering to their boots lest Saddam run over them.

I am sick of hearing complaints about US unilateralism. Western Europe was resurrected after the ravages of war by unilateralism on the backs of American taxpayers. Hundreds of billions of dollars under the Marshall Plan stabilized western Europe. When a Libyan town faces genocide from its ruler only American cruise missiles and American tax payer money rush to its aid. Oil, Oil, Oil, Oil. Yes there is oil involved but did pontificating France put its money and weapons on the table. As a commentator observed US is NATO and NATO is US. Nicholas Kristof, resigned to pragmatic real world, wrote,"Critics argue that we are inconsistent, even hypocritical, in our military interventions. After all, we intervened promptly this time in a country with oil, while we have largely ignored Ivory Coast and Darfur — not to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. There’s no doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions.But just because we allowed Rwandans or Darfuris to be massacred, does it really follow that to be consistent we should allow Libyans to be massacred as well? Isn’t it better to inconsistently save some lives than to consistently save none?". Arguments anyone. Today in Iraq and Afghanistan women go to schools, vote in elections and even contest elections. In the entire Middle East today Iraq is the only country to hold a democratic election, even the ever waffling UN certified that the elections were fair and free. 

Vietnam is another albatross. Who went there first and instituted a regime of terror? Who terrorized Algeria? Which country treated North Africa as its foot stool? The lover's of liberty and egalitarianism the preening French. The conduct of France in African colonies would make American imperialism look like picnic. Vietnam is a blot on America. 

When Soviet Russia marched into Afghanistan Margaret Thatcher asked Indira Gandhi, as key member of NAM, to condemn it. Indira refused saying it was not aggression. This same India today rushes to condemn US. Non-Alignment. Bollocks.

When America gets attacked the custodians of human rights and flag bearers of anti-imperialism smugly lecture us about our evil ways. We never hear such lecturing when Russia is attacked as a direct consequence of its brutal suppression of Chechnya. I love to see Hindu N.Ram tie himself up in knots condemning US imperialism while being palanquin bearer for Russia's state sponsored terrorism. 

After 9/11 N.Ram worked himself up into a lather foaming at the mouth advising America to "go all out to bring its authors to stern justice - justice under the rule of law and through the law courts, by marshaling and laying out evidence to convince the world, through the collective agency of the United Nations, and through pro-active international diplomacy". The title of that editorial in the Frontline Issue dated Sep 29th 2001 is "Dangerous implications of America's unjust war". Remember it was referring to the Afghan War not the justifiably contentious war of choice that Iraq was. Not content with his pontificating he orchestrated a scolding of America by Noam Chomsky at Chennai. What could be better than having a white American, that too Jewish, to scold America.

On Jan 24th 2011 Chechen rebels attack Moscow airport and kill 35, here is N.Ram's editorial in HIndu dated 26th Jan 2011, "in recent years, the virus of terrorism has spread to other predominantly Muslim territories in Russia's south and mutated to patently jihadist insurgency, which has joined hands with al-Qaeda to create an ‘Islamic caliphate' across the Caucasus...Monday's atrocity should serve as a wake-up call for Russia to curb terrorism in the Northern Caucasus as it prepares to host the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and the 2018 World Football Cup".

Russia should curb terrorism so that Winter Olympics could go on unimpeded. That when the casualty was 35. When America is attacked in the most stupendous manner killing 2600 any declaration of war is unjust we must supplicate the UN, marshal evidence, wait for a constable to serve summons to bin-laden. Today Barack Obama served the summons as bullets to bin-laden. A Fox news viewer aptly summed it, "I am happy to know that the last man Osama saw before dying was an American".

Incidentally NYT asked Chomsky as to whether he ever thought of renouncing his American citizenship given how much he hates America. Chomsky replied, airily with no hint of sounding hypocritical, "America is the greatest country on earth". 

As the news broke out around 10:30 PM EST crowds gathered in front of White House and Ground Zero in NYC. Today as I was speaking to my father the metaphor of Diwali struck me as appropriate

I found the picture above (From NYT) very interesting. Its a photo of the scene in the situation room at the White House. The President of USA is sitting on the side while some military person is sitting at the head of the table and conducting the operation. Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers" talks about America has one of the lowest "power distance" equations where people are more comfortable approaching or challenging a superior. This is important when results matter.

This killing does not mean that the hydra headed terrorism is finished. Far from it. This is a pivotal turning point. A powerful symbolism but only a symbolism. It is elementary knowledge that Al Qaeda has many local variants across the globe and they are still very much alive or awaiting to come alive. Obama reiterated that. Every sensible columnist has cautioned on triumphalism. 

The picture below says it all. I pass through this place every week. 

A passerby at Ground Zero in NYC

Near White House.