Passionate About India

After Saddam Hussein was hanged to death in a barbaric manner, preceded by a mockery of a trial remote controlled by Uncle Sam, arguably the biggest and most brutal bully in the history of the world, news channels like CNN showed sanitised footage of the former Iraqi dictator meeting his maker. If you believed the footage shown by global giants like CNN and Fox News, the hanging, in itself a deeply offensive and repulsive act, was done in as ‘dignified’ a manner as possible. Till a few years back, people like you and me had no choice but to rely on media outlets controlled by the neo-Imperial powers of the West to get information about events across the world. Remember the first Gulf War of 1990-91, when merciless pounding of Iraq by American bombs was shown on CNN almost like a Star Wars kind of movie or a fantasy? Fortunately for the world, media behemoths like CNN, Fox News and even BBC, who behave more like propaganda instruments of the West, can no longer hoodwink people of the wo...

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 ...

The verdict on Saddam is out. The striking aspect of this news coverage were the two contrasting scenarios that evolved in most of the media reports globally. One was that of the celebration (on account of the verdict) within the Shia community of Baghdad, while the other was the contrast of despair and angst amongst the Sunnis. This, perhaps, is not just about Baghdad alone. Throughout the world, reactions have been divided between the Shias or Sunnis. And I have a strong feeling that the ramification of this verdict would be beyond the capacity of Americans to control. Iraq would once again erupt in another round of violence of vengeance, and probably the Sunnis, who have been at the receiving end, would fight back, amply aided this time by the Sunni dominant nations of the Middle East. And if the US stays on, then all that would go back is the number of body bags.I am not trying to justify that Saddam did not get the right verdict, neither am I portraying him as a ‘would be’ martyr....