Passionate About India

As the final curtains on George Bush’s presidential stint begins, media space, blog space and myriad forms of literature are increasingly getting full of reflections from journalists, columnists, foreign policy experts, and leaders, on his tenure as a president. The matter of fact is that probably, there would not be any other American president who has received such blatant criticism on all aspects, and from all walks of life. So much so that it has been predicted by some publications and reports that Bush would go down in the pages of American history as the worst president ever. Some articles have gone to the extent of stating that President Bush would fare even worse than President Harding – the president during the Great Depression! But amidst all this, there have been a few articles that were carried out in Foreign Affairs, The Economist and some other globally recognised media houses, which had caught my attention. Not because of anything else, but on account of the perspective ...

Recently I came across a very interesting analysis in the Wall Street Journal, adapted from Mr. Douglas J Feith’s (Under Secretary of Defense for Policy - July 2001 till August 2005) memoir - “War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism”. As per Mr. Feith’s analysis – “between September 2002 and 2003, President Bush delivered nine major talks about Iraq. There were, on an average, approximately 14 paragraphs per speech on Saddam’s record as an enemy, aggressor, tyrant and danger, with only three paragraphs on promoting democracy. In the next year – from September 2003 to September 2004 – Mr. Bush delivered 15 major talks about Iraq. The average number of paragraphs devoted to the record of threats from Saddam was one, and the number devoted to democracy promotion was approximately 11”. Clearly indicating the double standards of President Bush and his Administration on the Iraq issue! However, it is not just with Iraq. President Bush has been maintaining al...

I recently came across an intriguing research, conducted by a Washington based research group. The research analysed the news reports for the month of April and found out that the American Presidential campaign has taken up almost 33% of the editorial space, followed by general economy which took almost 6%. The Pope’s visit and the Texas polygamy case equally shared an editorial space of 4% each. It is intriguing that as bodies of innocent American soldiers and that of equally innocent Iraqi’s kept falling, it could garner only 3% of editorial space!! It is not to draw any conclusion whether the American Presidential campaign is more important than Iraq, but then the media coverage in itself indicates that though Iraq is a burning global issue, the American media doesn’t feel likewise, otherwise it would not have given a mere 3% space. And the bigger issue here is that by reducing media space over a period of time, the American media is systematically trying to take Iraq out of people’...

Hillary Clinton just two days back said that the Iraq war can’t be won. I really hope you didn’t get carried away reading it and started taking her seriously! She is still a first generation dynastic hopeful with her husband having no war experience. George Bush on the other hand is a seasoned second generation warring cowboy!! And trust you me he knows the game better than you can imagine. Let me explain you how the smoke ‘em out cowboy has actually won the war on Iraq... well at least as far as his schemes were concerned!! It has been exactly five years since the time President George Bush went on a rampage on Iraq, hunting for those world threatening WMDs!! In these five years the world is testimony to the fact that the US could neither find any WMDs, nor could their intelligence establish any links between the Late Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaida, but in effect, on account of the ongoing American engagement, Iraq got completely devastated. Over 1.1 million Iraqis have been killed, some...

What is the expected outcome, when you have a haughty cowboy President, an arrogant administration and a seemingly stooge in the form of a Supreme Court? Well, no prizes for guessing, you get some blindly dictatorial American laws for the globe. In fact, this time, President Bush and his ‘Administration’ have surpassed all the limits of deforming any civilised society by claiming that they can ‘kidnap’ any foreigner, if they are wanted for crimes in the United States of America. What more, they have the sanction of their Supreme Court as well. In fact, till now it was assumed that American law permits kidnapping only of terror suspects under ‘extraordinary redemption’, but recently it was made clear that the US can kidnap ‘anyone’ who is a criminal in the eyes of America. For that matter, even ‘extraordinary redemption’ is in itself unlawful. On top of this, kidnapping ‘anyone’ who is a criminal in the eyes of America, is a crime without doubt, at least in a civilised and working democ...

To set a new global order which entails a green and peaceful earth, a Hillary Clinton and an Al Gore combination is no more a matter of choice, but an imperative! The choice of Al Gore as this year’s recipient of Nobel peace prize is a pleasant relief for all those who have otherwise given up all hopes about the cause of a greener and better world. In fact, from the very beginning, Al Gore’s contribution and his continuous efforts on environmental issues have posed a striking contrast to the another man who eventually became the President of United States in 2000. From the year 2000 onwards, while Gore and his Intergovernmental Committee on Climatic Change strived hard to caution the world about the ensuing dangers of global warming, George Bush and his coterie have been doing everything possible to make the Kyoto Protocol a non-starter. One just wonders what would have happened if the United States’ Supreme Court verdict of the year 2000 Presidential elections had essentially gone in ...

On 24 March when news started pouring in that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have taken into custody 15 British marines (from the British frigate HMS Cornwal) off the Persian Gulf, it sent shivers across the world. The pandemonium peaked as neither Iran nor the United Kingdom was ready to budge. While on one hand, the Iranian authorities claimed that the marines in their speedboats had crossed over into Iranian territorial waters, the British authorities, on the other hand, as usual, had been strongly refuting this claim. Finally, Iran’s announcement of releasing the hostages eased the mounting tension, at least for now. Otherwise, it could have led to Gulf War III or, who knows, an eventual World War III. I wonder for how long can Iran avert the impending war. The most significant, yet unanswered, questions in this episode were – Was it mere coincidence that the British marines crossed over into Iranian territorial waters around this time? Or was it that this incident was made to happen?...

The war on terror was never on terror. With every passing day come more revelations, humiliating and embarrassing, on how the entire concept of weapons of mass destruction was manufactured to suit US President George W. Bush’s plans to capture the Iraqi oil fields . . . and now as the US-dictated dummy government runs Iraq, and almost all oil and infrastructure building contracts are pocketed by American companies (Bush and Dick Cheney it seems had started deciding on the companies like Bechtel, Flour Daniel etc. for awarding of the contracts even before they started the war on Iraq) . . . the result is quiet evident . . . oil prices at one time all set to touch the $100 per barrel mark are now hovering around the half way mark. And Americans are happily guzzling oil in their heavy duty SUV’s . . . after the destruction of the twin towers instead of finding out the al-Qaeda terrorists, Bush started focussing on all those who, according to him, were evil including the Saddam Hussein-led...

That’s Bush’s way of celebrating the New Year. He thought his obvious personal vendetta was the gift that the world was waiting for in this New Year. And as has happened often with many ill-educated fools like him in the past, Bush too gave it to the world with a shameless pretence of righteousness, thinking what he personally thought to be right was indeed what was right and worthy of celebration. In previous such hangings, I remember how the pernicious Pakistani dictator Zia-ul-Haq had taken personal revenge in a similar way and blatantly used his country’s judicial machinery to get Zulfi qar Ali Bhutto hanged. But then, that was imaginable – Bhutto, after all, was a key political opponent he wanted to get rid of. Plus, Zia was manipulating his own country’s judicial system for the same. But what has happened with Saddam is unimaginable! It’s the first time perhaps that a country has interfered directly in another nation’s political process, arrested a leader it wanted to get rid of ...