- "The single greatest achievement of George W Bush
- from an Indian perspective - is to have made us overcome our love of,
and respect for, all things American and to have transformed us into a
nation that is solidly opposed to US policy towards the world.
-
- "The extent of anti-Americanism among the middle
class has both shocked and shaken me. When Indians hear about Americans
failures, they cheer; when we hear about American foul-ups, we giggle;
and when we see Americans lecturing the world about the conflict between
good and evil, we first sneer and then we seethe."
-
-
- The Loneliness Of America
-
- As the war in Iraq enters its tenth day, there have been
two big surprises - one to do with the military campaign itself and the
other to do with the manner in which Indians have responded to it.
-
- It is now clear - no matter how much Ari Fleischer dissembles
or Donald Rumsfeld lies - that the war is not going the way the Americans
and the Brits had thought it would. A fortnight ago, I was in London and
heard the predictions that Tony Blair's supporters were making.
-
- Their view was that anybody who opposed the war risked
making a fool of himself or herself. What would happen was this: the Americans
would pound Saddam Hussein into submission by bombing the life out of Baghdad.
Then, ground troops, spearheaded by elite British regiments, would enter
Iraq to a rousing welcome from the local people. The forces would be hailed,
not as invaders, but as liberators and in five days or so, it would all
be over. Saddam would be dead, Baghdad would have fallen and Allied forces
would have shown the world that Iraq did possess weapons of mass destruction
after all (even if the Allies had to plant the damn things in the first
place to make a propaganda point.)
-
- At that stage, said advocates of the war, all the woolly-headed
British liberals and cowardly French politicians who had foolishly opposed
the war would be shown up as humbugs who shirked from the duty of liberating
an oppressed people and ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction.
-
- Well, it sure as hell hasn't worked out that way.
-
- Even George W Bush now admits that this might be a long
war. As for how long, that in Bush's wonderful words "is unknowable".
And on US TV, analysts now reluctantly concede that the war "is running
behind schedule", as though it is a live TV event that has inconveniently
lingered on after prime-time.
-
- Worse still, many of the assumptions on which this campaign
was launched now seem to have been mistaken. From all accounts, the Americans
commenced hostilities before they were ready because they had credible
intelligence that Saddam was at a certain location. They bombed that location
and believed they had killed him. When he turned up alive, they claimed
that he was, at the very least, seriously wounded. When this too could
not be sustained, they said they had probably killed his son Uday instead.
Even this has yet to be established.
-
- Then, there's the funny business of the cities that the
Allies claim to have captured. Each evening we are told that they have
conquered everything in their path only to be reminded the following morning,
that they are still '"encountering resistance". Thus, they "conquered"
Basra on the fourth day of the war, and still continued to fight to get
into the city for days afterwards.
-
- Next, there's the even funnier business of the Iraqi
resistance. If we believed the US media, then the Iraqi army and paramilitary
forces were in disarray. Nobody would fight; they would all surrender.
Only the Republican Guard would do battle but this would only happen in
the final stages of the war, when US forces reached Baghdad. Yet, each
day, the correspondents "embedded" with US regiments reluctantly
concede that "Iraqi resistance has been stronger than expected".
-
- Not that the Iraqis need to bother to fight. The Allies
seem to be losing more men to so-called "friendly fire" than
they are to enemy action. On Thursday, 30 US marines were shot by another
group of marines. Americans keep killing Brits by mistake. A British ITV
correspondent has been killed - it seems likely that he too was a victim
of "friendly fire".
-
- And finally, the question the world is asking: where
is the rousing welcome that the Allied liberators of Iraq were expected
to get?
-
- As far as we can see, the Iraqis may not be wild about
tyrannical old Saddam Hussein. But that doesn't mean that they want to
be bombed and invaded by oil-thirsty Americans who then expect to be thanked
for doing the Iraqi people the great favour of destroying their cities.
-
- None of this is to say that the Iraqis have a hope in
hell of winning. No country in the world can stand up to the might of the
United States. Nor can anybody face up to the might of the US media - when
a missile flattened a Baghdad marketplace we were told by American TV channels
that the suicidal Iraqis did it to themselves. And among the howls of outrage
over Iraqi treatment of Allied POWs (why is it OK to show Iraqis troops
surrendering but outrageous to show Americans in custody?) there has been
little sympathy for the scores of innocent civilians who have been murdered;
mere statistics in a round-up of "collateral damage".
-
- But it is now clear that the war is not going to be the
five-day picnic the Allies had expected. Many days down the line, after
hundreds more have lost their lives, after many other Iraqi towns have
been flattened, the Americans will probably be able to claim victory and
tell the battered and shattered Iraqi people that they have been "liberated".
-
- But the question will remain: was it worth it?
-
- Which brings me to the second surprise of the last week.
I wrote, four weeks ago, of being surprised to discover how many educated
Indians opposed the war in Iraq.
-
- But nothing had prepared me for the waves of anti-Americanism
that the commencement of hostilities seem to have unleashed.
-
- Indians - and especially educated Indians - like the
United States. We see American movies, we eat American hamburgers (how
significant that even McDonald's wrote a letter to the HT distancing itself
from the US!), we drink American colas, we like to go to the US on holiday
and we want to be able to afford to send our kids to American universities.
-
- The single greatest achievement of George W Bush - from
an Indian perspective - is to have made us overcome our love of, and respect
for, all things American and to have transformed us into a nation that
is solidly opposed to US policy towards the world.
-
- The extent of anti-Americanism among the middle class
has both shocked and shaken me. When Indians hear about Americans failures,
they cheer; when we hear about American foul-ups, we giggle; and when we
see Americans lecturing the world about the conflict between good and evil,
we first sneer and then we seethe.
-
- All this suggests that America is in more trouble than
it realises. It is still the greatest super-power in the world. But then
it was already the most powerful country in the history of humankind in
2001. And that still didn't stop 9/11 from happening.
-
- That horrible tragedy gave America an opportunity to
do two things. It had a chance to take on the menace of global terrorism
and to hunt down the Osama bin Ladens of the world. And it also had an
opportunity to finally confront global anti-Americanism and dispel the
anger and hatred that many people felt towards America.
-
- Under George W, it has blown both chances. Osama bin
Laden is alive and well and living in Pakistan. The world's Muslims hate
America even more than they did before 9/11. But this is the really spectacular
bit - even those of us who rallied to America's side in the horrible aftermath
of 9/11 have been alienated and distanced.
-
- Seldom can America have been so friendless. Seldom can
it have miscalculated as massively as it did about the likely progress
of this war (At least, not since Vietnam). And when victory does come,
seldom will have a victor have felt so alone.
-
- Which suggests that America's real problems will begin
after it defeats Iraq : how then will it win over the rest of the world?
Having won the war, it will lose the peace.
-
-
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- http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_223949,0005.htm
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