Democratic Party anxiety: Hillary still sniping at Obama from behind

Democratic Party anxiety
Hillary still sniping at Obama from behind

Lead editorial in The Statesman, Kolkata and New Delhi, www.thestatesman.net, April 24 2008

Six weeks after the last Democratic Party primary, Pennsylvania as expected gave more votes to Hillary Clinton than Barack Obama, though the latter continues his unassailable lead in “primary delegates”. If Mr Obama had by some surprise defeated Mrs Clinton in Pennsylvania, her campaign would have ended. Now it moves on to Indiana and North Carolina under the same assumptions ~ that she needs to continue to win if she is to have a hope of becoming her party’s nominee for President while if she loses she may have to withdraw. The Republican Party’s nominee John McCain waits and watches in glee as the Democrats offer free cannon-fodder for him to use later in the year. Basically, Mrs Clinton says that Mr Obama is too inexperienced and weak compared to herself; Mr Obama says that her alleged experience is either exaggerated or of a highly dubious sort, and only he can provide real change after the Bush years. Democratic Party loyalists are worried that each of their two star candidates is making the other unelectable. One possible scenario that has done the rounds is that a divided Denver Convention in August will lead to the party choosing the stalwart Al Gore as the Presidential nominee who will then choose Mr Obama as his Vice Presidential running-mate, finally sending Mrs Clinton into the wilderness. The fact such unorthodox scenarios are being floated speaks of the deep anxiety among Democrats that they simply cannot seem to win the White House. (Bill Clinton won in 1992 thanks to a random factor named Ross Perot, Jimmy Carter in 1976 after the Watergate era.)
The world is affected by all this because of the American military actions that may be expected as a result. Mrs Clinton has said this week she would “obliterate” Iran if there was an Iranian attack on Israel - an event that seems far less likely than an Israeli attack on Iran. Mr Obama had earlier said he would attack Pakistan if necessary in the “war against terror”. Mr McCain also has built a foreign policy where “radical Islam” is supposed to be an American enemy. The world might wish that America looked within itself more than outside itself in the search for problems in election-season.

American Politics: Obama-Clinton Contest Affects the World

American Politics
Contest Between Obama And Clinton Affects The World

by

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, www.thestatesman.net, March 11 2008, republished at www.independentindian.com

In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War and protests about it, the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago was marked by bloodshed and rioting. The sitting (Democrat) President, Lyndon Johnson, had taken moral responsibility for the war and declined to run for re-election. His widely-respected Vice-President, Hubert Humphrey, was chosen in traditional “smoke-filled rooms” by party elders during the Convention. But the public had witnessed the Convention’s violence, and Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon. In the next election in 1972, Democrats banned party elders from any role and allowed the nominee to emerge solely from state-by-state primary elections. The result was the anti-war candidate George McGovern, who lost 49 out of 50 States to the incumbent Nixon.

Denver Convention

This year’s Democratic Party Convention in Denver in August may be the first to return to “smoke-filled rooms” (figuratively of course, given the absence of public smoking in modern America especially among “politically correct” Democrats). Almost 800 party elders, consisting of senators, congressional representatives, party functionaries etc, known as “superdelegates” may have to break the near dead heat tie among “primary delegates” who have committed to Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama after state-by-state elections.

It was not supposed to have been like this. A year ago Mrs Clinton had seemed an unstoppable favourite not only in the Democratic race but the overall Presidential race too, so much so that the incumbent Bush-Cheney Administration was dropping hints it would not mind seeing a new Clinton Administration taking over its foreign wars. (Mrs Clinton’s husband had become a friend of former President GHW Bush, President Bush’s father, in some relatively rare American nepotism at the top.)

Mrs Clinton had been so confident of being confirmed by now she spent her energy trying to show herself one of the boys, who could be Commander-in-Chief of the world’s largest military and who had voted in favour of Bush’s Iraq war. The idea seemed to be she would show herself just as tough as the Republicans and yet because she was female she would win in November 2008 by reminding women of her gender. Her support among middle-aged white women has remained solid and seems unshakeable but her strategy of being the presumptive anointed “pseudo-incumbent” has failed.

Mr Obama, attracting younger better-educated Democrats as well as the crucial set of cross-party independents and floating Republicans, besides African-Americans like himself, has taken ground Mrs Clinton left undefended; she has been painted by him as Republican-Lite, the archetypal Washington-insider, and a war-monger. Mrs Clinton has indeed recorded the largest contributions of any candidate from America’s “military industrial complex” of weapons’ manufacturers.

Mr Obama went into the recent Ohio and Texas primaries having narrowed large leads against him, and though he lost both has retained a lead in the delegate count. Last weekend he won Wyoming and is likely to win Mississippi — states normally remote in the political landscape but which have acquired significance to “momentum” now. It is expected that even after the major state Pennsylvania votes next month (likely in favour of Mrs Clinton) the contest will not end. A joint ticket could become unstoppable and has been hinted at by the Clintons. But Mr Obama has no reason to be an understudy because if he is not himself the Presidential candidate, it may be better to wait for the 2012 contest than be brushed by the Clinton negatives.

Republicans have surprisingly quickly agreed upon Arizona’s elderly senator John McCain as their candidate out of a raucous field. The single anti-war Republican candidate, Ron Paul, fizzled out. Mr McCain, like his main rivals Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, has been overtly jingoistic, strongly backed the Bush wars and has identified “radical Islamic extremism” as an American enemy. Mr McCain was a POW of the North Vietnamese decades ago and underwent torture, something he has not let anyone forget. His remark that America under him may fight “100 years” in Middle East wars, as well as President Bush’s endorsement of him, may put off a country that has been turning against war and is increasingly anxious about macroeconomics and international trade again.

Mr McCain may have to wait to see who emerges from among the Democrats before he announces his Vice-Presidential running-mate. Usual “ticket-balancing” considerations point to a young conservative or a senior woman or black political figure for obvious reasons.

Thus the Democratic Party leadership now unexpectedly finds itself in a crucial role in the next weeks and months. A raucous divisive Convention in August on the 1968 pattern will leave the Republicans gloating. Current controversy has to do with Michigan and Florida; both held unauthorized primaries ahead of time and were punished by the leadership in not being recognized. Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama both agreed not to campaign there. Will Michigan and Florida “delegates” be recognized and “seated” in Denver? Should they be split equally between the two candidates? Should there be a “do-over” primary via the mail in each now that the race has become heated, and if so, who will pay for it?

The crucial question for the Democratic Party is to decide who may defeat Mr McCain. Mr Obama’s  youth, race and Muslim middle name Hussein, will undoubtedly be used by the Republicans to attack him. Mrs Clinton carries a lot of baggage from her husband’s time: there was an unpleasant air of sleaze and mendacity during the entire eight years of Bill’s rule in Washington DC and voters will be wary to allow a re-run of the same. (The 22nd Constitutional Amendment forbids more than eight years for any President, and the idea is novel and untested that a First Lady can run on her own to get around that.)

Israel policy

Mrs Clinton’s foreign and military policy will be quite close to Mr McCain’s in its aggressiveness. Mr Obama opposed the Iraq war and is certain to keep playing that trump-card against both. Mr Obama’s foreign policy “weakness” has to do with being perceived by the pro-Israeli lobby as not hardline enough. He has said clearly he is pro-Israel and strongly so and that he found Israel’s own debate “much more open” than the American one. Mrs Clinton and Mr McCain both pass the “Likud test” with flying colours; Mr Obama’s statement that being pro-Israel is not identical with being “pro-Likud” may mean he does not.

The Democratic Party will have to figure out in its decision between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama where America’s voters in November 2008 are swinging on the issue of fighting aggressive wars. The other vital issue will be protectionism in international trade ~ some “superdelegates” have already started to demand pledges about trade-policies to “save American jobs”. The world will be affected by who wins between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama along two important dimensions, viz., whether America will be more likely as a result to (a) launch new wars; (b) become more protectionist in trade.

The writer is Contributing Editor, The Statesman

It may be time for this blog to go (unless Ron Paul endorses Obama)

Will Ron Paul endorse Barack Obama? Almost certainly not even though Obama is clearly, among the three remaining candidates for US President, closest to RP’s positions. It may be time soon for this blog to go. I have said that if I had been an American voter, I would prefer Obama over McCain and Hillary by a mile, though between McCain and Hillary (both war-mongers) I would have reluctantly preferred McCain.

I continue to think Mrs Clinton’s bid may be violating the 22nd Amendment — the easiest way to see that is by asking the following hypothetical: suppose Obama becomes President and wins re-election; after 8 years in the White House, his wife then decides she wants to try to be President and runs for the office. The 22nd Amendment was intended to stop such things though the authors of the 22nd Amendment could not have foreseen the kind of nepotism the Clintons have been indulging in. Husband and wife are the same legal person in the eyes of the State in these circumstances. The First Lady and the President are the same legal person. In fact, Mrs Clinton has been using that to her advantage in the campaign — eg getting President Clinton to campaign for her.

John McCain probably fears a contest with Obama more than one with Mrs Clinton.

Why Hillary’s Obama attack is racist fear-mongering

CNN reports: Clinton’s campaign manager Maggie Williams responded to the photo controversy with a Monday morning statement that insisted the New York senator’s team “will not be distracted,” but did not directly address the substance of the allegation. ‘Enough. If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive, they should be ashamed. Hillary Clinton has worn the traditional clothing of countries she has visited and had those photos published widely,” said Williams.”

If Hillary Clinton or President Bush wear non-European attire in some country they are visiting, people will say, at most, isn’t that a cute diplomatic gesture, here are these European-Americans wearing non-European clothes for a little while.

But if an”African-American” like Senator Obama is seen wearing non-European clothes, and especially the clothes of a Somali Muslim on a visit to that country, the response of the racist subconscious is different: “there now you have him wearing his real outfit, what he really likes to wear at home if only he had the chance, he is only pretending to be a “European-American” like everyone else.”

Having fought racism in the federal courts of the USA for some 18 years now, I can empathise with the outrage the Obama camp is feeling about the insinuation from Hillary.

Subroto Roy

Is Ron Paul back? RP vs Obama would be the cleanest election

Justin Raimondo reports a scoop that Ron Paul remains in the US Presidential campaign.  America would have seen its cleanest, finest Presidential contest in living memory, perhaps in history, if RP had been the Republican candidate and Barak Obama the Democratic candidate.

“No to Kosovo” editorial in The Statesman

The Statesman of Kolkata and New Delhi, editorial February 20 2008 www.thestatesman.net
“Without American and British backing, there would have been no
unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo’s Muslim “Ethnic
Albanian” population. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair bombed the Serbs
heavily on behalf of Kosovo’s Albanians, and George W Bush has now
promoted the latter’s breaking away. In part this has been because the
Americans want to show they are not anti-Muslim ~ 90% of Kosovo’s 2
million people are Muslim ~ though Muslim anger at America will hardly
reduce itself because Kosovo’s Albanians are now waving American
flags. The USA has been purely self-interested in another way also:
the largest American military base created between the Vietnam and
Iraq wars is Camp Bondsteel, 40 km from Pristina, the capital of
Kosovo. There have been calls for Russia to station troops in Serbia
in response to the American base ~ making Kosovo a flashpoint for a
new Cold War between Russia and the West. America’s own short history
being hidden in mythology, US foreign policy has not been much guided
by proper historical understanding. By creating an American dependency
in recognized Serbian territory, the USA may have sown the seeds of
new Balkan wars. World War I began in 1914 when in next-door Sarajevo,
a 19 year old Bosnian Serb, Gavrilo Princip, killed Austria’s Archduke
Ferdinand and his wife, causing Austro-Hungary to declare war on
Serbia and hence on Russia, which in turn caused Austro-Hungary’s
German ally to enter on one side, and Russia’s ally France and
France’s ally Britain to enter on the other. Almost a century later,
Russia will today veto any move by Kosovo to enter the UN, and China’s
Foreign Ministry has urged talks between Serbia and the Kosovo
Albanians. India through our MEA also must urge the world community to
follow international law, and that means in this case saying no to
Kosovo. Serbia was vanquished and viciously subjugated for centuries
by the Turks at the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. Let not new Balkan or
world wars start needlessly over Kosovo again.”

If I was Pakistani, I would want Javed Hashmi as PM

If I was Pakistani, I would want Javed Hashmi to become Prime Minister now. Mr Hashmi was wrongfully sentenced by one of Pervez Musharraf’s kangaroo courts to 23 years in jail, and served four years in solitary confinement before he was released by order of the (since deposed) Supreme Court. He has earned the moral right to lead Pakistan now, and may also be magnanimous enough to let Musharraf go on his way in peace.

Is Obama the Democrats’ Reagan?

Senator Obama has been frequently compared to John F Kennedy.  But the similarity is only youthfulness and being a senator.  Mr Obama is hardly going to end up displaying JFK’s weaknesses.  A more apt comparison may be Ronald Reagan: Mr Obama is inspiring people with his magnetic smile and his vision-thing just as Reagan did.  Reagan did not win the first time he sought the Republican nomination and Mr Obama may or may not do so  yet.  But if there is a President Obama in the White House before long, he will have the youth of JFK and the charisma of Ronald Reagan and perhaps a better education and more integrity than either of them.

Goodbye Ron Paul, Hello Senator Obama?

Ron Paul seems to have all but thrown in the towel and gone back to surviving in his Congressional seat.  There is a case to be made that he may want to give up his seat and retire from politics at this stage, becoming an icon instead and a mentor in the Libertarian movement.  But in any case that does not help guide his millions of US supporters or the many people around the world who were encouraged by his candidacy.   Where do they turn?   Some will vote Libertarian perhaps.  But if the main reason  for supporting  RP was his anti-war plank, it may seem Barak Obama is the least bad choice available.  John McCain seems all ready to fight new wars and Hillary Clinton is the darling of the military -industrial complex.  It is sad to say Goodbye Ron Paul, Hello Senator Obama.

My (fictional) bipartisan voting record: if not RP then Obama

When I first went to the USA in 1980, I was a Jimmy Carter fan and I was surprised to see the animosity against him. In the 1980 elections, I would have voted for Carter over Reagan, in 1984 for Reagan, in 1988 for Bush Senior, in 1992 for Bush Senior, in 1996 for Dole, in 2000 for Bush Jr (I could not imagine he would be as bad as he was), in 2004 for Kerry. In 2008 I would have voted for Ron Paul. If forced to choose between McCain and Hillary, it would be McCain, but between McCain and Obama it would be Obama hands down. I.e., if not Ron Paul then Obama, if not Obama then McCain, and I would have wasted a vote before voting for Hillary and her husband. (I think a case can be made that her candidacy as it stands breaches the 22nd Amendment.)

In any case I can’t vote in America and never did. I voted for the Labour Party in England twice as a Commonwealth student at age 18 (though at age 48 I created the book Margaret Thatcher’s Revolution: How it Happened and What it Meant) and have voted for Mamata Banerjee twice in India’s elections as a vote against the entrenched communists. Generally, in Britain if the Tories are in power I would be Labour and if Labour is in power I would be Tory.

Huckabee steals Ron Paul’s ideas?

Hearing Mike Huckabee make a “victory speech” in Little Rock, I thought he was about to admit he is lifting Ron Paul’s ideas as and when he needs to. Ron Paul won’t mind I am sure if (and only if) Huckabee becomes a full 100% Paulista. Stealing political ideas is as common as stealing scientific ideas. E.g. Tony Blair passed off a lot of stuff as his own without admitting it really came from Margaret Thatcher’s Tories.  And of course it has happened in India too where Manmohan Singh and his fellow apparatchiks claimed to be economic reformers when they had never had a liberal idea in their life.

Ron Paul on US funding of Musharraf

January 10, 2008 The Ties That Strangle by Rep. Ron Paul

“I recently highlighted the irony of sending nearly $1 billion overseas in military earmarks as we close down bases here at home to save money. Our government’s flawed foreign policy troubles me especially in light of recent events in Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto’s assassination was a great tragedy. Pakistan is now more than ever teetering on chaos. And all the money we have sent Musharraf has inadvertently drawn a target on our backs. Musharraf, unfortunately, appears to have learned how to work our system, much in the way a career welfare recipient has learned to do the same. The perpetual welfare recipient promises to look for a job. Musharraf has promised to look for Bin Laden. Both are terrible investments of American taxpayer dollars, however with Musharraf, its been an astonishing $10 billion loss over the last few years. But it is even worse than that. With his recent actions declaring martial law, and dismissing the justices of the supreme court, he is to the rest of the world, and to Pakistanis, a wildly unpopular, power hungry, brutal military dictator. The perception by most is that we are propping him up while simultaneously urging Ms. Bhutto back into Pakistan as a lamb to the slaughter…..

More at

http://antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=12180

How Ron Paul could win

Ron Paul is the only principled anti-war candidate on the Republican side.  The 8-10% of votes he won in Iowa and New Hampshire were from loyalists who believe in his principles.  Those voting for the so-called front-runners receiving 33%, 25% or whatever now are fickle and unprincipled.  If one clear unambiguous front-runner emerges among the Republicans, where will those who oppose that person go?    Ron Paul’s “core” supporters may just be those 8-10% but he could yet seek to win over  those for whom he would be a second-choice above any unambiguous front-runner that emerges to whom he could then pose the main challenge.  I.e. he and only he is the antiwar candidate while the pro-war candidates may face a split vote which he might be able to put to his advantage.

Will America’s War-Party Win in November?

Ron Paul has been the most principled and most clear-headed US Presidential candidate. He has been the most articulate against all American wars that cannot be justified on traditional grounds of self-defence, and has also spoken of a Non-Interventionist foreign policy for the USA. The fact he is receiving not enough support in the New Hampshire primary to make him a so-called “front-runner” may indicate that America’s “War Party” — represented by everyone else like Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama, Mr Giuliani, Mr McCain, Mr Romney, Mr Huckabee, Mr Thompson etc — is likely to win in November 2008. That would be a great pity.

American voting starts: What the Iowa caucuses mean

The Statesman, Kolkata and New Delhi, lead editorial January 5 2008, www.thestatesman.net

American voting starts

What the Iowa caucuses mean

The US Presidential election process has finally started in the sense the first step has been taken in “warm-body” voting (as opposed to informal “polling” by marketers, news organizations etc). Iowa is a small quirky Mid-Western state where, amid the corn-fields, groups (or “caucuses”) of Democrats and Republicans met in schools, farm-houses and fire-stations to indicate whom they wished to see their party’s candidate in November. Mr Barak Obama is by birth half “black” and half “white” which, in American terms, makes him count as a “black man”, not a “white man”. In Iowa’s caucuses he has significantly trounced his main rivals for the Democratic Party nomination, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Mr Edwards was expected to “win” Iowa as he had invested most time and resources there; that he came second is bad for him. Similarly, Mrs Clinton is the nationwide poll front-runner among Democrats; that she came third and not second is bad for her. None of these three has anything like the experience of other Democratic candidates like Joe Biden or Chris Dodd but neither of them placed anywhere at all, and have now dropped out as a result. On the Republican side, the one-time front-runner Rudy Giuliani gave Iowa a deliberate miss, and expectedly came last. Iowa is deeply Christian and the Republican lead was split as expected between the evangelical Mike Huckabee and the rich businessman, Mitt Romney. But Iowa numerically means nothing and nor will the next early state, New Hampshire, where there at least is a “primary vote” using ballots. Indeed neither Iowa nor New Hampshire or any other early state is very meaningful – the date to watch out for is “Super Tuesday” or “Tsunami Tuesday”, 5 February, when a large number of states will hold their primaries, including heavyweights like California and New York. Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton will likely still remain standing after that on the Democrat side; Mr John McCain and perhaps a few others including the maverick Ron Paul on the Republican side. The world can expect America to be wholly self-absorbed until November’s Presidential vote is over.

The World is for Ron Paul — how about America?

Brazil for Ron Paul, Venezuela for Ron Paul, Canada for Ron Paul, Bavaria for Ron Paul, Europe for Ron Paul, Britain for Ron Paul, France for Ron Paul, Germany for Ron Paul, Holland for Ron Paul, Belgium for Ron Paul, Poland for Ron Paul, Romania for Ron Paul, Finns for Ron Paul, Hungarians for Ron Paul, Italians for Ron Paul, Israeli libertarians for Ron Paul, Australian libertarians for Ron Paul, Indian & Pakistani libertarians for Ron Paul — may we please hear from Taiwan, China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Africa, Arabia, Iran, New Zealand?

And how about America herself? Can America hope to lead the world again without Ron Paul as President?

Christian voters, just & unjust wars: Ron Paul v. Mike Huckabee

Ron Paul is far too modest and self-effacing, i.e. genuinely Christian, to speak much of his personal life as a Christian. But his views on just and unjust wars are clearly based on traditional Christian teaching. He may be the only candidate who has used the term “just war” in the debates. That is the basis of his opposition to the Iraq war and others. Compare that with the opposition of most US churches to the Iraq war(A), and contrast it with Mike Huckabee’s aggressive jingoism (B).

A. US church leaders oppose war on Iraq

http://www.warc.ch/update/up122/index.html

Update

2002: Volume 12
# May

Volume 12 numbers 2 & 3 (October 2002)
US church leaders oppose war on Iraq

“With heavy hearts we hear once again the drumbeat of war against Iraq,” the UCC collegium of officers said on September 13.
John Thomas, UCC
John Thomas, UCC     “As United Church of Christ leaders committed to God’s reign of justice and peace in the world and to the just conduct of our nation, we firmly oppose this advance to war.”

“Rather than lining nations up against an ‘axis of evil’, our nation should engage in honest and open consultation with parties around the world and especially in the Middle East to seek a non-military solution to the threat that Iraq may pose. That solution should begin with ending economic sanctions, which have only strengthened Iraq’s leader while weakening its people.”

Mainstream US church leaders are surprisingly unanimous in what they say about war against Iraq, and surprisingly ready to criticize the policies of their country’s government.

Leading the charge is the United Methodist Church. “President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are members of our denomination,” says Jim Winkler, staff head of the UMC’s church and society board. “Our silence now could be interpreted as tacit approval of war.”

In a forthright statement issued on August 30, Winkler said that “with unprecedented disregard for democratic ideals and with an astonishing lack of evidence justifying such a pre-emptive attack, the president has all but given the order to fire.”

“I ask United Methodists to oppose this reckless measure… Our church categorically opposes interventions by more powerful nations against weaker ones. We recognize the first moral duty of all nations is to resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among nations.”

WARC member churches have taken a similar stance. An action alert from the Reformed Church in America in August said that there were “serious questions about the wisdom and justifiability of the use of military force aimed at overthrowing the government of Iraq”. The general synod of the RCA in June had already voted to petition the US governing authorities “to use all possible political and diplomatic means to achieve US policy goals rather than using violence, which will only lead to further destruction and death of innocents and foment ill-will throughout the region”.

In September, the general assembly council of the Presbyterian Church (USA) called on US political leaders to speak in ways that encourage peace, rather than war; oppose ethnic and religious stereotyping; guard against a unilateralism that perpetuates the perception that “might makes right”, and sets the US over against the larger community of nations; and allow UN decisions regarding the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq to run their appropriate course without undue pressure or threats of pre-emptive, unilateral action.
Where’s the just cause?

The Roman Catholic Church takes “just war” theology as seriously as anyone. September 13 saw a sharply-worded letter to Mr Bush from Wilton D Gregory, president of the US conference of Catholic bishops. Given the lack of “clear and adequate evidence of Iraqi involvement” in September 11 or of “an imminent attack” on the US “of a grave nature”, Gregory asked him, “what is the casus belli for a military attack on Iraq?”

“We respectfully urge you to step back from the brink of war and help lead the world to act together to fashion an effective global response… that conforms with traditional moral limits on the use of military force.”
Strike first?

Pre-emptive attack is a major concern in the church letters and statements.

Sharon A Brown Christopher”A pre-emptive war by the United States against a nation like Iraq goes against the very grain of our understanding of the gospel, our church’s teachings and our conscience,” wrote Sharon A Brown Christopher, president of the United Methodist council of bishops, in a letter to church members on October 4.
Welsey Granberg-Michaelson
Welsey Granberg-Michaelson     “The pre-emptive use of military force by the United States… establishes a dangerous precedent… [and] heightens concern in other countries about American respect for their integrity as nations, as well as for international law,” said church leaders in a letter to Mr Bush on September 12.
The letter was signed by the PCUSA moderator and stated clerk, Fahed Abu-Akel and Clifton Kirkpatrick, and the RCA general secretary, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, among many others.     Fahed Abu-Akel
Fahed Abu-Akel     Clifton Kirkpatrick
Clifton Kirkpatrick

The PCUSA’s Washington Report (September/October 2002) notes that in 1981, when Israeli warplanes targeted and destroyed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, the Reagan administration called the airstrike a shocking violation of international law, compared it with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and joined with other UN Security Council members in a resolution condemning it. Israel argued that the pre-emptive action was in its own defence. The US rejected this argument.

Earlier, in 1956, the US challenged three of its closest allies - Great Britain, France, and Israel - when they invaded Egypt in an attempt to overthrow the radical nationalist regime of Gamal Abdul-Nasser. The Eisenhower administration insisted that international law and the UN charter must be upheld.

The Report sketches the debate within the US establishment between the neo-conservatives who argue that the war against terrorism requires the US to assume an aggressive and unilateral role; the realists who argue against too strong a use of power as it will ignite an international backlash; and the “Wilsonians” who argue that the US should work with other countries and within the framework of international law.

James Rubin, an assistant secretary of state under Bill Clinton, criticizes the Bush administration for breaking with decades of US policy.

The September policy statement, The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Rubin says, “appears to make first strikes the rule rather than the exception” and is just “the latest in a series of actions by the administration that have been extremely controversial internationally and have raised troubling questions about our commitment to traditional norms of international politics.”

“These steps include the withdrawal from the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty prohibiting missile defences, the rejection of the Kyoto protocol on the environment, aggressive steps aimed at undermining the international criminal court, and the initial decision not to apply the Geneva conventions to the prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay.”
Sanctions and bombing

Church leaders didn’t stop at rejecting war against Iraq. They also addressed the undeclared war that has been waged by the US and the UK for more than ten years.

“The most severe impact of a military assault on Iraq would be on its already suffering civilian population,” says the United Church of Christ collegium. “Over a decade of containment and isolation, of crippling comprehensive sanctions, and of routine US and British bombing have created miserable conditions inside Iraq. The sanctions have induced poverty, malnutrition, and starvation on the most vulnerable of the Iraqi people, including millions of children. These civilians, innocent of the atrocities Saddam Hussein has committed, should not bear the burden of deprivation and death such a war would surely exact from them.”

The UN children’s fund has documented an increase in the under-five child mortality rate in Iraq from 56 to 131 per thousand in the sanction years 1990-1998. UNICEF projected that there would have been “half a million fewer deaths of children under five” in the 1990s without these economic shackles.
Humility and even-handedness

The Church of the Brethren, a historic peace church, in an October 14 statement by its general board asks the US government and people to “cultivate a deeper humility and accept more responsibility for the conflict with Iraq”.

It reminds them that “during the 1980s, the US materially and diplomatically supported the government of Iraq in its brutal war against Iran; the 1991 Gulf War did not resolve our conflict with the government of Iraq; the people of Iraq continue to suffer from economic sanctions imposed by the US and other countries, with as many as one million Iraqi citizens having died of sanctions-related causes; these sanctions are unjust, and furthermore, now have little effective impact on the government of Iraq; the negative effects of the Gulf War still plague both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians; [and] the US has evidenced a degree of unevenness in pressing and desiring enforcement of UN security council resolutions pertaining to the Middle East region, which now contributes to resentment both in Iraq and among its neighbours.”

The “degree of unevenness” refers to UN resolutions on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which are routinely ignored by Israel with Washington’s blessing.

There is another tactful reference to Israel in the September 12 US church leaders’ letter, which calls for a “regional weapons-of-mass-destruction control initiative”. Israel is the only nuclear power in the region.
Congress votes

Early in October, as Congress debated a war resolution, 450 ministers, priests and nuns from across the US fanned out on Capitol Hill in a three-day lobbying and prayer campaign. But on October 10, George Bush got the result he wanted, with the House voting 296-133 and the Senate voting 77-23 to authorize him to wage war on Iraq.

On October 11, a coalition of church leaders on both sides of the Atlantic urged Mr Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair to pull back from the spiral towards war. They reiterated that this could not be justified under the principle of a just war, but would be “illegal, unwise, and immoral”.

“A congressional decision has been made, and many regard this as the end of the national debate on war with Iraq. We are here to say the vote in Congress is simply the beginning of the debate,” said Jim Wallis, editor of the evangelical journal Sojourners and an organizer of the statement.
Pro-peace

The church leaders reject suggestions that they are unpatriotic, anti-American or naïve, and they have no more time for Saddam Hussein than they have for their own politicians’ war fever.

“President Hussein’s demonstrated behaviour leaves any thoughtful person horrified by his treatment of his own citizens and the citizens of Iraq’s neighbouring countries,” says the UMC’s Bishop Brown Christopher.

In the end, the church leaders are driven by a double conviction that is Christian and democratic.

Jim Winkler puts it simply, so simply that even Mr Bush can’t fail to understand.

Jim Winkler”The path upon which the president seeks to embark is counter to the teachings of Jesus [and] threatens the rule of law as a fundamental principle of democracy.”

“It is inconceivable,” Winkler says, “that Jesus Christ, our Lord and saviour and the prince of peace, would support this proposed attack.”

Páraic Réamonn

BBC Monday, 17 February, 2003, 15:08 GMT

“US churches seek peaceful Iraq strategy
Church leaders are among those against war

by Alex Kirby
BBC News Online

US church leaders are to ask Prime Minister Tony Blair to work for the non-violent replacement of President Saddam Hussein. They challenge Mr Blair’s claim that there is a strong moral case for toppling the Iraqi leader by force. Despite all the rhetoric, President Bush and Mr Blair have refrained from indicting Saddam Hussein for war crimes
They say the US is barely using its powers to support opposition groups within Iraq.
The leaders are due to meet Mr Blair on 18 February.
The delegation is headed by the Reverend Jim Wallis of the Sojourners’ Community, a Christian justice and peace group based in Washington DC.
It will tell Mr Blair a non-violent strategy for removing Saddam Hussein could work if it had Western backing. They believe Iraq is ripe for non-violent change because millions of Iraqis detest Saddam Hussein Civilians, they say, could cause disruption around Iraq, dispersed enough to avoid offering convenient targets for repression.
The realisation that open opposition had begun would embolden other Iraqis to take part in “more systematic acts of resistance”. This growing opposition would offer dissidents within the regime a place to which they could defect. The US delegation says non-violent resistance has historically relied on weapons like strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience and even non-violent sabotage. Widespread hatred Its hopes of success rest partly on the assumption that an authoritarian ruler requires services from the population, which he cannot indefinitely compel them to supply. The church leaders say the Iraqi regime is particularly vulnerable over oil - if a limited number of civilian oil workers downed tools they could create a crisis by themselves. If a limited number of civilian oil workers downed tools they could create a crisis by themselves They believe Iraq is ripe for non-violent change because millions of Iraqis detest Saddam Hussein, whose hold on power in any case relies on personal loyalties and repression. A few years ago, in the city of Karbala, they say, civilians effectively encircled troops sent to control them, and similar uprisings on a national scale could stretch the regime’s machinery of repression to breaking point. Crucially, the US delegation will tell Mr Blair the West is failing to give Iraqi dissidents the support they need - the other condition they need for success.
Under the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, they say, the US administration can give opposition groups goods and services - including training - worth up to $97 million. So far it has used $1m of that total. Glaring omission It will tell Mr Blair the choice is not between leaving Saddam Hussein in power and removing him through war, but that there is a third way.
Dan Plesch, of the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, told BBC News Online: “What the delegation is pointing out is something very embarrassing, that the US is not interested in trying for peaceful change, but only in something more squalid and traditional.
“It’s quite remarkable that despite all the rhetoric President Bush and Mr Blair have refrained from indicting Saddam Hussein for war crimes. “The delegation’s approach is certainly worth trying.”

(B) from Mike Huckabee.com

“Iraq is a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror.
The Democrats deny that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror even as we fight Al Qaeda there. Al Qaeda seeks permanent bases in Anbar province to plot and train against us.
General Petraeus and our troops are giving their all to provide a window of opportunity for the Iraq government to succeed, while the Democrats are running for the exit doors.
The surge is a military means to achieve the political end of sectarian reconciliation among the Iraqis.
Setting a timetable for withdrawal is a mistake. This country has never declared war until “a week from Wednesday,” we have always declared war until victory.
I am focused on winning. Withdrawal would have serious strategic consequences for us and horrific humanitarian consequences for the Iraqis.
I support a regional summit so that Iraq’s neighbors become militarily and financially committed to stabilizing Iraq.
Iraq is a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror. The Democrats delusionally deny that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror even as we fight Al Qaeda there. Al Qaeda is a major ally of the Sunni insurgents in their fight against the Shiite majority. One of the most significant events in the Iraq War was Al Qaeda’s bombing of the Shiites’ Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006. That bombing led to the dramatic rise in sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites we’ve seen ever since, furthering Al Qaeda’s goal of fomenting chaos and civil war. What’s in it for them? They need territory, a place to plot their evil and train their murderers for another September 11. Al Qaeda intends to keep and expand its bases in the Sunni area of Anbar province. But we’ve made great progress in denying Al Qaeda that Anbar sanctuary, where the Commandant of the Marines, General Conway, says that “we have turned the corner.” Fourteen of Anbar’s eighteen tribal leaders no longer support Al Qaeda.
General Petraeus and our troops are giving their all to provide a window of opportunity for the Iraqi government to succeed, while the Democrats are running for the exit doors. The surge has only been in place since the middle of June, but progress has already been made. It’s way too early to write an obituary for the surge as the Democrat defeatists are doing. Having unanimously confirmed General Petraeus to lead the surge, the Democrats should let him do the job they sent him to do and await his report in mid-September. They’re Monday morning quarterbacking while we’re still playing the game, and some of us are playing to win.
To pressure the Iraqis into seizing the day before darkness descends, President Bush and Secretary Gates have been emphatic that this window will not remain open forever. At the same time, setting a timetable for withdrawal tells our enemies they don’t have to win, they just have to wait. We have never in our history declared war until “a week from Wednesday,” we have always declared war until victory.
I am focused on winning. Withdrawal would have serious strategic consequences for us and horrific humanitarian consequences for the Iraqis. If we leave, Iraq’s neighbors on all sides will face a refugee crisis and be drawn into the war: Iran to protect the Shiites; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to protect the Sunnis; and Turkey to protect its control over its own Kurd population. Iraq is a crossroads where Arab meets Persian and Kurd, Sunni meets Shiite, so if it’s not a peaceful buffer, it can easily become a tinder box for the region. When we deposed Saddam, we emphasized Iraq’s central location as a prime place to establish democracy and have it spread. That was the potential dramatic upside. Now we’re faced with the potential dramatic downside that the terrorists are fighting to take advantage of: Iraq’s central location as a prime place to create chaos and have it spread .
I support a regional summit so that Iraq’s neighbors become financially and militarily committed to stabilizing Iraq now rather than financially and militarily committed to widening the war later. This summit will add more voices, Muslim voices, to the pressure to perform we’re already applying to the Maliki government.”

Ron Paul speaks against Busharraf

November 15, 2007  www.antiwar.com
Entangling Alliances
by Rep. Ron Paul

In the name of clamping down on “terrorist uprisings” in Pakistan, General Musharraf has declared a state of emergency and imposed martial law. The true motivations behind this action however, are astonishingly transparent, as the reports come in that mainly lawyers and opposition party members are being arrested and harassed. Supreme Court justices are held in house arrest after indicating some reluctance to certify the legitimacy of Musharraf’s recent re-election.

Meanwhile, terrorist threats on US interests may be more likely to originate from Pakistan, a country to which we have sent $10 billion.

Now we are placed in the difficult position of either continuing to support a military dictator who has taken some blatantly un-Democratic courses of action, or withdrawing support and angering this nuclear-capable country. The administration is carefully negotiating this tight-rope by “reviewing Pakistan’s foreign aid package” and asking Musharraf to relinquish his military title and schedule elections.

By the time he complies with the requests of the White House sufficiently to continue to receive his “allowance,” courtesy of the American taxpayer, his mission will be accomplished. A more friendly Supreme Court will be installed and enough of the opposition party will be jailed or detained to assure an outcome of the elections that will meet with his approval. All the while, our administration lauds Musharraf as a trusted friend and ally.

So much for a War on Terror. So much for making the world safe for democracy.

Free trade means no sanctions against Iran, or Cuba or anyone else for that matter. Entangling alliances with no one means no foreign aid to Pakistan, or Egypt, or Israel, or anyone else for that matter. If an American citizen determines a foreign country or cause is worthy of their money, let them send it, and encourage their neighbors to send money too, but our government has no authority to use hard-earned American taxpayer dollars to mire us in these nightmarishly complicated, no-win entangling alliances.

When we look at global situations today, the words of our founding fathers are becoming more relevant daily. We need to understand that a simple, humble foreign policy makes us less vulnerable and less targeted on the world stage. Pakistan should not be getting an “allowance” from us and we should not be propping up military dictators that oppress people. We should mind our own business and stop the oppressive taxation of Americans that makes this meddling possible.

Perverse Pervez: Soldiers unseating judge set world’s worst precedent

Perverse Pervez
Soldiers unseating judge set world’s worst precedent

Lead editorial in The Statesman, November 6 2007, www.thetatesman.net

There was something obscene about Pakistan Army soldiers entering the hallowed precincts of the country’s Supreme Court where they had no business to be, going to the Chief Justice and saying to him his services were no longer required. Something of this sort happened more than 800 years ago when Henry II sent his goons to murder Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Pakistan’s eight most senior Supreme Court Justices led by their Chief denounced the perversity immediately, and remain as that country’s supreme legitimate judicial authority. Their detention by house arrest and purported replacement by pliant toadies must be condemned worldwide. It is simply appalling that Pervez Musharraf’s American masters have merely “regretted” what has been happening. Our own reaction in Delhi hardly has been any better ~ but then the Congress Party has always had a soft spot for the word “Emergency” and almost always an evil eye for the judiciary and the Rule of Law. For the largest constitutional democracies to be pathetically silent about such obscenities in Pakistan bodes ill for the whole world.

ervez Musharraf has been in office illegally since October 1999. He had promised free and fair elections for the first time in 2007, and had promised also to shed his beloved uniform this month. Pakistan’s media, judiciary and civil society had become relatively free under his regime, lending him a little legitimacy. Instead of allowing that phenomenon to grow, he has now repressed it viciously, revealing again his own illegitimacy. As Imran Khan said, everyone had been taken in by Musharraf’s “fake sincerity” for a few years. Not anymore. Musharraf has now lost whatever little credibility he had tried to acquire. Any elections held under this regime will have to be bogus. Why might have the Supreme Court been about to rule that his latest election as President was illegal? Simply because, wearing the uniform of Chief of Army Staff, he has been drawing Government wages and therefore holds an “office of profit” already, contradicting the separation of powers implicit in the Constitution. Among his opponents, Benazir Bhutto has been a failure so far, as had been expected by all but woolly-thinking Bush Administration analysts. Nawaz Sharif languishes in impotent exile. New clean, competent leadership potential may exist in persons like Imran Khan, Javed Hashmi and Pervez Hoodbhoy, even perhaps young Fatima Bhutto, Benazir’s niece. But for now, Pakistan must live with an abomination.

American Democracy: Does America need a Prime Minister and a longer-lived Legislature?

 

NB: I published this a year ago during the 2006 US midterm elections; it may remain of interest on this blog today.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
Does America need a Prime Minister and a longer-lived Legislature?
First published:The Sunday Statesman Editorial PageNov 5 2006, www.thestatesman.net

republished www.independentindian.com

by

Subroto Roy

The politics of the United States in the last few decades has become so opaque, it is hard to see what goes on, beyond the banal superficialities. Competitive commercial television, an American institutional invention, is hardly the most suitable keeper of any nation’s historical and political heritage, nor a source of accurate collective political memory, and without political memory it is not possible to understand the present or anticipate the future. Yet most modern Americans are compelled by circumstances to comprehend the national or state-level politics of their enormous variegated land of 300 million people only through the very coarse filter provided by commercial television.

Television obviously demands passivity, dissipating a viewer’s ability to reason about or reflect on any information being offered. A newspaper report “Plane crash kills 120” in a front-page column, causes the information to be absorbed in context along with the rest of the day’s news. If the radio says “An aeroplane crashed today, and all 120 passengers aboard are feared dead”, the same event is felt through the invisible newsreader’s voice, the listener being left to imagine the awfulness of what happened. But for TV to report the same event requires pompous self-conscious studio-anchors, helicopters at the scene, interviews with weeping relatives, and instant analyses of the crash’s causes, all under a banner of “Breaking News”. The average viewer is left not so much sympathising with the victims as feeling enervated and anxious about air-travel and the world in general — besides being left ignorant of the rest of the day’s happenings.

In reaching mass-audiences with advertisements of commercial products, TV quickly obtained the general surrender of radio in American homes, though radio still controls  the time modern Americans hear spend in their automobiles (and they spend longer a larger fraction there than any other people). Newspapers signalled their abject surrender to TV by “dumbing down” their front-pages with large photographs as pathetic reminders of yesterday’s TV events, or headlines that sound racy, sensational, glamorous or with-it. Given the transient nature of all news and expense of printing it on newsprint, actually reading newspapers (as opposed to looking at advertising supplements) has become in the age of TV a minor middle class indulgence, although the editorial pages of a handful of “national” newspapers remains the last refuge of serious political discussion in the USA and elsewhere.

American politics filtered through commercial television has caused all issues and politicians, whether national, state or local, to tend to become like products and brands available to be bought and sold at the right price. Yet American television also produced a serious reaction to its own banalities by starting in the early 1980s news-reporting and analysis on “Public Television” and also on “C-Span”. “Public Television” (as opposed to commercial or cable networks) produced what came to be known as the “MacNeill-Lehrer NewsHour”, which set the benchmark for all political news and commentary in the USA and indeed across the globe to this day. C-Span took the unusual step of sending television cameras to silently record all political events, especially the seemingly least significant and most tedious of legislative committee meetings or political speeches, and then broadcasting these endlessly 24 hours a day along with very dry political analysis and comment. Both provided a little (“highbrow”) sobriety to the otherwise drunken political culture created by American commercial television. Along with a small number of newspapers like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor and USA Today, MacNeill-Lehrer and C-Span and the odd Sunday morning news-show on commercial TV, gave America’s politically conscious classes their access to information and analysis about their own country and what was being done in its name in the wider world. At least that was so until the 2003 attack on Iraq — during which acceptance of the US military procedure of “embedded reporters” ruined America’s traditions of a free press. Since 2003, growth of political coverage on the Internet especially via “blogging” has caused more candour to penetrate American politics and to explode the dissimulations of the “mainstream media”.

Besides politics via television, the other main factor affecting the attention-deficit disorder, short time-horizon and lack of perspective and depth afflicting modern American discourse, has been the rigid time-table of a Constitution written for a long gone era. Every even-numbered year is an election year in America, and that election is held in the first week of November. Hence on 7 November 2006 America will go to the polls, as it did in November 2004 and as it will again in November 2008. Each requires the entire lower legislative house to be newly elected.

Now two years may have been a long time in the late 18th Century when the US Constitution was written, and transport and communications between the Capitol and the new States was hazardous or time-consuming. But in modern times two years are over in the blink of an eyelid. Members of the American House of Representatives must then spend their time either talking about public money and how to spend it (as only they are authorized to do), or private money and how to earn it in order to stay elected and be able to talk about how to spend the public money. Inevitably, these two activities get confused with each other. The two year term of the American lower house may well be the shortest anywhere in the world, and may deserve to be doubled at least.

The upper house elects two senior politicians from each of the 50 States (regardless of its size or importance) for a 6 year term each, with one-third of the house returning to face the electorate at each of the biennial national elections. These 100 Senators at any given time have often constituted a fine deliberative body, and, along with the executive governors of the larger States, the pool from which America’s presidents and vice-presidents get to be chosen. Yet the Senate has also often enough palpably failed in its “advice and consent” role vis-à-vis the American President — whether in the matter of America never becoming a member of the League of Nations because of Senate isolationism despite Woodrow Wilson having invented it (something the British and French found so bewildering and frustrating), or the modern Senate caving in to the jingoism unleashed by the father-son Bush Presidencies only to then say “Oops, we’ve made a mistake”.

Another fundamental institutional problem at the root of modern American politics today is the lack of separation between the Head of State and Head of Government. This not merely causes people with the wrong ambitions and abilities to want to become President (because they lust in juvenile fashion to fire cruise missiles or fly onto aircraft carriers), it also causes the business of serious governance to frequently stop getting done because of endless paralysis between the President and Legislature. Churchill perspicaciously observed: “The rigid Constitution of the United States, the gigantic scale and strength of its party machinery, the fixed terms for which public officers and representatives are chosen, invest the President with a greater measure of autocratic power than… by the Head of any great State. The vast size of the country, the diverse types, interests and environments of its enormous population, the safety-valve function of the legislatures of fifty Sovereign States, make the focussing of national public opinion difficult, and confer upon the Federal Government exceptional independence of it except at fixed election times. Few modern Governments need to concern themselves so little with the opinion of the party they have beaten at the polls; none secures to its supreme executive officer, at once the Sovereign and the Party Leader, such direct personal authority.” There is an argument to be made for the American President to become more of a constitutional figurehead representing the thoughtful will of the Union and all the 50 States, while an American Prime Minister comes to be elected by the Legislature as a more subdued, sober and competent Head of Government. It would be a healthy development for America’s domestic and international politics, and hence better for the rest of the world as well.

China’s India Aggression

China’s India Aggression

German Historians Discover Logic Behind Communist Military Strategy 

by

Subroto Roy

First published in The Statesman, November 5 2007, www.thestatesman.net, republished www.independentindian.com

There are four main aspects to the China-Tibet-India problem over the last century, some of which are only now becoming apparent. The first is historical prior to the 1949 Communist takeover, in which the British, Tibetans and Kuomintang were participants in background discussion and events. The second is historical too, namely, the appeasement by Nehru and his diplomats of the Mao-Zhou Communists and betrayal of normal Tibetan and Indian interests in the period 1949-1959. The third is political, to do with reaction, confusion and conflict among Indian Communists leading to the CPI/CPI-M split in response to Communist attacks upon Tibet and India. The fourth is military, to do with the 1962 war itself, the nature of the surprise Chinese attack and Indian defeat.

Chinese claims

A 1954 Beijing publication not only claimed Tibet but alleged vast areas of Asia to be Chinese: Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, NEFA (Arunachal), Assam, the Andaman Islands, Burma (Myanmar), Malaya, Singapore, Thailand, Indo-China, the Sulu Islands, the Ryukyus, Korea, Formosa (Taiwan), the whole of East Turkestan (Sinkiang), Kazakhstan, Siberia west of the Amur River, maritime provinces east of the Amur down to Vladivostok, and Sakhalin (viz., Coral Bell in FS Northedge (ed) Foreign Policies of the Powers, 1973).

America’s CIA reported in a secret 1962 analysis, declassified in May 2007, that the Left faction of India’s Communists had been repeating what Mao Zedhong said to Ajoy Ghosh: “that Tibet, Sikkim, Bhutan, and NEFA are provinces peopled by the same race, that China had a historic right to these territories, that the McMahon line was not valid, and that the Indian government’s raising of ‘the bogey of Chinese aggression’ had resulted from its realisation that Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and India would be deeply affected by the social and economic revolution in Tibet” (CIA The Indian Communist Party and the Sino-Soviet Dispute, Feb 1962, page 76). Referring to Chinese designs on Mongolia, Kruschev’s USSR condemned its fellow-Communists: “… The true schemes of the Chinese leaders (are) obvious. They are permeated through and through with great-power chauvinism and hegemonism”, Pravda 2 Sep 1964, quoted by Bell, op.cit.

China’s 1962 India war was rationally consistent with carrying out precisely such an expansionist policy in Sinkiang and Tibet. As the German historians Hermann Kulke and Dietmar Rothermund have stated most succinctly, the NEFA conflict was merely a deliberate diversionary tactic which has worked brilliantly for decades:

“The consolidation of the Chinese hold on Tibet, as well as on other areas of Central Asia… (required military infrastructure) to maintain it and a ring road was constructed which led from China to Tibet and from there via the Karakorum Range to Sinkiang and Mongolia and then back to China. At a crucial point some Indian territory (Aksai Chin) obstructed this connection. Beyond Aksai Chin was the terrible desert, Takla Makan, which was a major obstacle. Faced with the dilemma of violating Indian territory or getting stuck in the desert, the Chinese opted for the first course and quietly built a road through Aksai Chin. In the meantime, they provoked incidents on the northeastern border so as to divert attention from their real aims. They also published maps which showed the border in Assam at the foot of the mountains rather than on the watershed. The watershed line had been settled by the McMahon border commission, which had also included a Chinese delegate who initialled the protocol, although it was not subsequently ratified by the Chinese government. Actually, there was no disagreement about the watershed line at that time when debate was focused on a different line, supposed to divide Tibet into an Inner and Outer Tibet on the same pattern as Inner and Outer Mongolia. Inner Tibet was to be under Chinese influence and Outer Tibet under British influence. But Communist China made use of the fact that the agreement had not been ratiied and accused India of clinging to the imperialist heritage with regard to the Himalayan boundary. This harping on the legal position in the northeast was a tactical move made in order to build up a bargaining position with regard to Aksai Chin where the Chinese could not raise similar claims… Finally, a border war broke out in October 1962. It was a typical demonstration war conducted with great finesse by the Chinese. They completely perplexed the Indian generals by pushing a whole division through the mountains down to the valley of Assam and withdrawing it again as quickly as it had come. The Indian strategic concept of defending the Himalayan boundary by cutting off the supply lines of the enemy if it ventured too far beyond the border could not be put into operation: the Chinese were gone before the supply lines could be cut. But why did they do this? They wanted to divert attention from their moves in the northwest, where they did reach the Karakorum Pass in a swift offensive and did not withdraw as they had done in the east.” (History of India, 1998, pp 321-322).

Chinese casualties were some 1,460 dead, 1,697 wounded, Indian casualties some 3,128 dead, 3,968 captured, 548 wounded, each as reported by itself. JK Galbraith, the friendliest and fairest observer India may have hoped for, found our Army populated by “tragically old-fashioned” peacetime generals full of bluster, while brave soldiers under them remained woefully ill-equipped and came to be outgunned and out-manoeuvred.

Mao Zedhong’s racist reference to the people populating NEFA being of Chinese origin was misguided, even nonsensical. On such a basis, China might claim Japan or Korea next, as might West Africa claim sovereignty over North and South American blacks or Mongolia over Turks and Afghans. NEFA’s five administrative divisions ~ Kameng, Subansiri, Siang, Lohit and Tirap ~ are populated by indigenous animistic tribes including the Momba, Mishmi, Abor, Miri, Dafla and Aka, each with defined areas. The 1883 Survey of India showed these areas administered de facto by British India from Assam. The 1908 Edinburgh Geographical Institute’s map by JG Bartholomew showed most of the same to be part of Bhutan, a British Indian protectorate, as did earlier 18th Century maps.

Less than legitimate

Communist China’s claims of sovereignty over NEFA (Arunachal) in any case derive from its claims of sovereignty over Tibet. Britain, India and other nations guided by international law have allowed that Lhasa, though long independent, may acknowledge Chinese suzerainty ~ but only subject to the condition of traditional autonomy. The 1907 Anglo-Russian Treaty stipulated Tibet would be dealt with officially through China, leading to the Henry McMahon Commission of 1914 which followed the normal international cartographic practise of the watershed defining the boundary in NEFA. That came to be generally followed by British and Indian maps of NEFA since. The CIA’s official 1959 map of the region concurred and the United States Government explicitly instructed Galbraith, its New Delhi Ambassador during the 1962 war, that the American position was the same as the British and Indian. There appears to be no record of any serious Chinese cartography of the region ever ~ Chinese maps prior to 1935 agreeing with the British Indian position but disputing it afterwards, placing Tibet’s boundary along the margin of the Assam plain. China was ravaged by war, civil war and revolutionary excesses during much of the 20th Century and hardly had well-preserved national archives at a time when its own capital and central government was changing several times.

China’s Communists, being themselves in political power for decades somewhat less than legitimately as a one-party dictatorship, have been loath to admit all such inconvenient facts, and instead continue in their hegemonic mode. A new liberal democratic China guided by law on the Taiwan pattern may have to be awaited before this conflict comes to be resolved.

Can American blogging beat fascist trends?

Ms Naomi Wolf has given a persuasive argument in The Guardian and elsewhere, including her new book and on the radio, to suggest the USA has been headed in a fascist direction. And of course whatever America does today, at least some other countries will follow tomorrow. About ten years ago, I gave a public lecture on “Transparency and Economic Policy”, which now appears at my main blog www.independentindian.com and is republished here. I think Ms Wolf’s analysis is excellent but unduly pessimistic for reasons I had outlined in that lecture. What we have seen since then too is the growth of blogging itself — and that is an antidote to fascism and totalitarianism.

Subroto Roy, Kolkata, India

“Transparency and Economic Policy-Making

An address by Professor Subroto Roy to the Asia-Pacific Public Relations Conference, (panel on Transparency chaired by C. R. Irani) January 30 1998.

 

This talk is dedicated to the memory of my sister Suchandra Bhattacharjee (14.02.1943-10.01.1998).
1. I would like to talk about transparency and economic policy-making in our country. For something to be transparent is, in plain language, for it to be able to be openly seen through, for it to not to be opaque, obscure or muddy, for it to be clear to the naked eye or to the reasonable mind. A clear glass of water is a transparent glass of water. Similarly, an open and easily comprehensible set of economic policies is a transparent set of economic policies.

The philosopher Karl Popper wrote a famous book after the Second World War titled The Open Society and its Enemies. It contained a passionate defence of liberal institutions and democratic freedoms and a bitter attack on totalitarian doctrines of all kinds. It generated a lot of controversy, especially over its likely misreading of the best known work of political philosophy since the 4th Century BC, namely, Plato’s Republic .[1] I shall borrow Popper’s terms ‘open society’ and ‘closed society’ and will first try to make this a useful distinction for modern times, and then apply it to the process of economic policy-making in India today.

2. An open society is one in which the ordinary citizen has reasonably easy access to any and all information relating to the public or social interest — whether the information is directly available to the citizen himself or herself, or is indirectly available to his or her elected representatives like MP’s and MLA’s. Different citizens will respond to the same factual information in different ways, and conflict and debate about the common good will result. But that would be part of the democratic process.

The assessment that any public makes about the government of the day depends on both good and bad news about the fate of the country at any given time. In an open society, both good news and bad news is out there in the pubic domain — open to be assessed, debated, rejoiced over, or wept about. If we win a cricket match or send a woman into space we rejoice. If we lose a child in a manhole or a busload of children in a river, we weep. If some tremendous fraud on the public exchequer comes to be exposed, we are appalled. And so on.

It is the hallmark of an open society that its citizens are mature enough to cope with both the good and the bad news about their country that comes to be daily placed before them. Or, perhaps more accurately, the experience of having to handle both good and bad news daily about their world causes the citizens in an open society to undergo a process of social maturation in formulating their understanding of the common good as well as their responses to problems or crises that the community may come to face. They might be thereby thought of as improving their civic capacities, as becoming better-informed and more discerning voters and decision-makers, and so becoming better citizens of the country in which they live.

The opposite of an open society is a closed society — one in which a ruling political party or a self-styled elite or nomenclatura keep publicly important information to themselves, and do not allow the ordinary citizen easy or reasonably free access to it. The reason may be merely that they are intent on accumulating assets for themselves as quickly as they can while in office, or that they are afraid of public anger and want to save their own skins from demands for accountability. Or it may be that they have the impression that the public is better off kept in the dark — that only the elite nomenclatura is in position to use the information to serve the national interest.

In a closed society it is inevitable that bad news comes to be censored or suppressed by the nomenclatura, and so the good news gets exaggerated in significance. News of economic disasters, military defeats or domestic uprisings gets suppressed. News of victories or achievements or heroics gets exaggerated. If there are no real victories, achievements or heroics, fake ones have to be invented by government hacks — although the suppressed bad news tends to silently whisper all the way through the public consciousness in any case.

Such is the way of government propaganda in almost every country, even those that pride themselves on being free and democratic societies. Dostoevsky’s cardinal advice in Brothers Karamasov was: “Above all, never lie to yourself”. Yet people in power tend to become so adept at propaganda that they start to deceive themselves and forget what is true and what is false, or worse still, cannot remember how to distinguish between true and false in the first place. In an essay thirty years ago titled Truth and Politics, the American scholar Hannah Arendt put it like this:

“Insofar as man carries within himself a partner from whom he can never win release, he will be better off not to live with a murderer or a liar; or: since thought is the silent dialogue carried out between me and myself, I must be careful to keep the integrity of this partner intact, for otherwise I shall surely lose the capacity for thought altogether.”[2]

3. Closed societies may have been the rule and open societies the exception for most of human history. The good news at the end of the 20th Century is surely that since November 7 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell, the closed society has officially ceased to be a respectable form of human social organization. The age of mass access to television and telecommunications at the end of the 20th Century may be spelling the permanent end of totalitarianism and closed societies in general. The Berlin Wall was perhaps doomed to fall the first day East Germans were able to watch West German television programs.

Other than our large and powerful neighbour China, plus perhaps North Korea, Myanmar, and some Islamic countries, declared closed societies are becoming hard to find, and China remains in two minds whether to be open or closed. No longer is Russia or Romania or Albania or South Africa closed in the way each once was for many years. There may be all sorts of problems and confusions in these countries but they are or trying to become open societies.

Under the glare of TV cameras in the 21st Century, horrors like the Holocaust or the Gulag or even an atrocity like Jalianwalla Bag or the Mai Lai massacre will simply not be able to take place anywhere in the world. Such things are not going to happen, or if they do happen, it will be random terrorism and not systematic, large scale genocide of the sort the 20th Century has experienced. The good news is that somehow, through the growth of human ingenuity that we call technical progress, we may have made some moral progress as a species as well.

4. My hypothesis, then, is that while every country finds its place on a spectrum of openness and closedness with respect to its political institutions and availability of information, a broad and permanent drift has been taking place as the 20th Century comes to an end in the direction of openness.

With this greater openness we should expect bad news not to come to be suppressed or good news not to come to be exaggerated in the old ways of propaganda. Instead we should expect more objectively accurate information to come about in the public domain — i.e., better quality and more reliable information, in other words, more truthful information. This in turn commensurately requires more candour and maturity on the part of citizens in discussions about the national or social interest. Closed society totalitarianism permitted the general masses to remain docile and unthinking while the nomenclatura make the decisions. Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor said that is all that can be expected of the masses. Open society transparency and democracy defines the concept of an ordinary citizen and requires from that citizen individual rationality and individual responsibility. It is the requirement Pericles made of the Athenians:

“Here each individual is interested not only in his own affairs but in the affairs of the state as well; even those who are mostly occupied with their own business are extremely well-informed on general politics – this is a peculiarity of ours: we do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.”[3]

5. All this being said, I am at last in a position to turn to economic policy in India today. I am sorry to have been so long-winded and pedantic but now I can state my main substantive point bluntly: in India today, there is almost zero transparency in the information needed for effective macroeconomic policy-making whether at the Union or State levels. To illustrate by some examples.

(A) Macroeconomic policy-making in any large country requires the presence of half a dozen or a dozen well-defined competing models produced by the government and private agencies, specifying plausible causal links between major economic variables, and made testable against time-series data of reasonably long duration. In India we seem to have almost none. The University Economics Departments are all owned by some government or other and can hardly speak out with any academic freedom. When the Ministry of Finance or RBI or Planning Commission, or the India teams of the World Bank or IMF, make their periodic statements they do not appear to be based on any such models or any such data-base. If any such models exist, these need to be published and placed in the public domain for thorough discussion as to their specification and their data. Otherwise, whatever is being predicted cannot be assessed as being very much more reliable than the predictions obtained from the Finance Minister’s astrologer or palmist. (NB: Horse-Manure is a polite word used in the American South for what elsewhere goes by the initials of B. S.). Furthermore, there is no follow-up or critical review to see whether what the Government said was going to happen a year ago has in fact happened, and if not, why not.

(B) The Constitution of India defines many States yet no one seems to be quite certain how many States really constitute the Union of India at any given time. We began with a dozen. Some 565 petty monarchs were successfully integrated into a unitary Republic of India, and for some years we had sixteen States. But today, do we really have 26 States? Is Delhi a State? UP with 150 million people would be the fifth or sixth largest country in the world on its own; is it really merely one State of India? Are 11 Small States de facto Union Territories in view of their heavy dependence on the Union? Suppose we agreed there are fifteen Major States of India based on sheer population size: namely, Andhra, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, MP, Maharashtra, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, UP and West Bengal. These States account for 93% of the population of India. The average population of these 15 Major States is 58 million people each. That is the size of a major country like France or Britain. In other words, the 870 million people in India’s Major States are numerically 15 Frances or 15 Britains put together.

Yet no reliable, uniformly collected GDP figures exist for