Desicritics Category: Politics: War

Sisyphus And the Israeli-Palestinian Crisis

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 14 May 2008 02:26:57 EDT

Personally, I was happy with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, as it has saved me a few quid. You see, using software developed in Israel for counter terrorist purposes, the local council has saved hundreds of thousands of pounds by implementing a lie detection system over the phone. So when you call up our council to claim benefits, the operator says that you are being evaluated by this lie detection system, you would either not go ahead with the claim or would have the claim rejected because the system thinks you are telling ‘porkies’. The amount of porkies that are told in the aftermath of the Israeli Palestinian Crisis is monumental.

I have a morbid fascination with this crisis. It’s like a horrific car accident. You know you shouldn’t see the accident, but still you slow down as you pass the accident site, crane your neck and peer at the gruesome details. You know it’s a rather uncivilized behaviour and something that your mum would scold you for, but still you cannot avoid it. It’s the same with this crisis. You know that whenever you pick up this topic, you get hammered because you simply cannot be neutral and unemotional at all about it. Even if you are, then for some participant on one side, you will be biased. As simple as that, there is no independent observer on this issue. Ever!

Which is the reason why this book, The Israel – Arab Reader, A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, should be an indispensable part of your reference library. These two well known authors have done a great job in collecting some vital historical documents, which can be used - at least - to establish some facts on the ground when debating or arguing this issue. The documents are a treasure trove in a very convenient volume broken up into five parts. The first part relates to the time from 1882 to the end of the British Mandate. This part explains the roots of the problem. After this, the remaining parts four are from 1947 – 1973, Camp David to the Madrid Conference, the peace process from 1992 onwards till the intifada started and the peace process dried up.

This book is now in the seventh edition, and once you see it, you can understand why this is so. It contains manifestos, speeches, documents, interviews, memorandums, laws, declarations, reports, statements, parliamentary documents and speeches, United Nations speeches and resolutions, White Papers and the like. The editors have collected documents from Arabs, Israelis, British, United Nations, United States, Germans, Russians, etc. Once I started, I made it a point to read one document or section per day, and I finally managed to complete it. By this time, my hair was hurting so badly, that it had curled up like a Velcro mat. You know why? Because when one reads this, one is torn between two feelings, one – this is a car accident, drive away and two – it’s a car accident, bloody hell, what happened.

This is not the place to review who is right or who is wrong. Who is right or wrong is no longer the argument; it has gone way beyond that. The thousands of millions of words and pages which have been written, the millions of people killed, tortured, wounded, exiled, the decades of anger, hatred and war, the deep religious entwining, the ancient history of this blood drenched land, all those frankly preclude any rational and objective discussion of this issue.

Mind you, there have been thousands of solutions, such as the Two State Solution, Jordanian Solution, the One State Solution, the Ugandan Solution, the Madagascar Solution, and so on and so forth. The current state is a variant of the Two State Solution, which was established in 1948. There would be a Palestinian state and an Israeli state. There is no point in going for what-if’s, we are where we are. The One State solution is now slowly gaining credence. A recent and reasonably well argued book from the Palestinian perspective is written by my colleague, Ghada Karmi, called Married to Another Man, Israel’s Dilemma in Palestine. If you keep these two books in front of you, you will see what I mean by the great difficulty of trying to be independent and unemotional about this issue. The latter book is something that clearly Israel can never live with, as it is very emotive. But then, being the son of a refugee myself, I can empathise with Ghada about her feelings for her homeland which clearly show up in her work. Unfortunately, that emotional approach to this problem means that the book is more of an op-ed than a balanced and reasoned argument for a One State Solution.

The Two State Solution, unfortunately will be the only way forward for the foreseeable future, the only outstanding questions relate to the boundaries, the state of Jerusalem, refugees and security. But then, I definitely have no suggestions as to how this can be resolved, other than the fact that Israel should speak to Hamas and come to some sort of agreement. But I am also doubtful that this solution would be that easy. You see, this conflict has now reached civilisational levels, with the entire Muslim nation officially seeing the Palestinian cause as its own, while the majority of liberal democracies, broadly defined, are lined up with Israel. Conflicts at these levels are breathtakingly huge in concept, think about the crusades, the final solution, the English – Boer War and so on and so forth. The historical record is not good; solutions are generally imposed when one party is utterly exhausted or eradicated. But the core issue does not go away. Hundreds of years after the crusades were over, the issue still flares up in strange and weird places (witness the reaction of the Muslim nation when George Bush said that he was launching a crusade against terrorism.) But if it will be solved, it will be solved by the efforts of people like Laqueur and Rubin, who try to be independent and clearly want to resolve the issue without taking extreme positions such as what Karmi does.

But for what it’s worth, Israel and Palestine have been facing an existential problem for its sixty years and every year, like Sisyphus, they have been trying to resolve it. I can but look upon this train crash of a problem with deep despair and worry but still I think, at least my council tax bill will be reduced by two quid because of this problem. Now that’s not a silver lining on a planetary sized cloud. It is perhaps a silver molecule on a solar system sized typhoon, but hey, straws are straws. In the meantime, happy reading and lets hope Sisyphus keeps on banging away at this task.

All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!

Why is Argentina Boosting Air Force Spending?

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 6 May 2008 00:36:37 EDT

Argentina has been in a spot of economic trouble, well, for many years now. This week's Economist had this to say:

Argentina is worse off on all three counts ... provoked a tax revolt by farmers ... lost its most important new face when Martín Lousteau resigned as economy minister over a policy disagreement. ... The price of Argentina's bonds has plunged as investors show little confidence in the government. ... According to unofficial calculations, inflation has reached 25% (officially, it is 9%). ... But overheating and inflation are already bringing Argentines some of these woes. ... The statistics agency has stopped releasing poverty figures. Using an independent estimate of inflation, the poverty rate has risen from 27% in 2006 to 30%, with 1.3m Argentines descending into poverty last year. ...

Pretty much standard for a Latin American country, and I did not worry about it that much. But this raised serious worries for me when I got to read about the fact that more budget and aircraft were promised for the Argentine Air Force (Hat tip: DefenceTalk).

You know that the United Kingdom is not going to be able to mount another Falklands-style campaign, not with most of our troops tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, Bosnia and other places. (Graphic). Those 1,300 soldiers in the Falklands will not be able to stop the Argentines if they attack. At the most, they are supposed to provide a speed bump till reinforcements arrive. How will they arrive? Our main heavy-lift aircraft, Hercules, is up on the blocks because it has cracks. Our naval aviator Harrier pilots are no longer fully trained or up to date on carrier landings. Our political system is currently undergoing massive upheaval and the economy is whimpering. If the Argentines wanted to pick a time to attack the Falklands, then they couldn't have picked a better one. Am I crying wolf? I might be biased because my supervising professor is the official historian of the previous campaign and wrote about it in two volumes, here and here. But remember what happened the first time around? They went to war because the country had economic difficulties and the military government tried to divert attention by launching into a war. That nebulous link with neighbours, as mentioned in the Uruguayan newspaper, is worrying. Is that a reference to Venezuela? If not that, why or which other neighbour will have Air Force links with Argentina?

Dont know, but not getting a good feeling about this.

Technorati Tags: Argentina, United Kingdom, War

Interview: Michael Levin - The Next Great Clash

Desh — Mon, 5 May 2008 09:38:50 EDT

I very rarely find a book that I cannot keep down, specially when it comes to politics. The Next Great Clash: China and Russia vs. The United States by Michael Levin is a revelation. Not many analysts really do serious research before writing. Levin is different. He is a serious analyst who has had long stints in Soviet Union/Russia and China and he is currently Executive-in-Residence at the Thunderbird School of Global Management.

The introduction to the book starts in the most thoughtful manner. It is so gripping that you start believing in the power of book introductions once again - an art that had long vanished! He discusses his tough childhood and fight with disease as well as his struggle to learn about Russia and his success after some aimless times.

I love Levin's expression as it is profound, although it talks of some mundane things like global politics. Like he says:

"Reading is the collecting of intellectual income, writing is the spreading of it."

He uses a lot of research and the models of other researchers to test his conclusions that are based on his experience and knowledge.

Overall, a great book to read! Here is my interview with Michael Levin, the author.

1. You have talked of "One Radical Imbalance (American Debt) sustains another (Asian Surplus)". Just as the "rich" in the US are betting, foolishly, on a never ending stream of debt; aren't the Chinese, again foolishly, betting on unending stream of export wealth? And while talking of the aging US (and Western) population, we forget the same trend for China as well. So two questions:

(a) Is this a game of "who blinks first?" between the US and China and - in that sense - a repeat of the Star Wars tactic to destroy Soviet Union under its own weight?
(b) Is the Chinese "surplus" a notional surplus since it's invested in an instrument that it can best see ride down as the clash with the US increases?

LEVIN: Two things to keep in mind: if there is an economic break between the US and China, China has an ace in the hole: it can divert its attention to satisfying the demand of its domestic consumers as a replacement for export-led growth. The US seems to be at a disadvantage - it does not have an ace in the hole.

Second: You are right - both countries face demographic imbalances that will pose challenges in the future. It seems that America's advantage is its ability to absorb immigrants - recent protectionist sentiments aside. China also has some advantages: its social structure dictates that children take care of parents; it is a private, family matter - so the state is not, thus far, burdened with pension plans.

Imagine the additional wealth that China will have at its disposal as it implements pension schemes.

2. For the clash to tangibly occur as a military confrontation, a complete decoupling between China and US economies needs to occur. What will be that mechanism? Is it possible for either to voluntarily decouple from each other?

If there is outright war, the decoupling will be a byproduct. The whole global economy will go haywire.

But China is developing asymmetric capabilities that exploit US weaknesses. If China is able to prevent the US from protecting Taiwan during a military confrontation - it has won.

By the way - I would like to emphasize: I hope I am all wrong about the next great clash. As you see though, the evidence is quite compelling.

3. Like you said very well, Europe learnt to use the "Human Rights Imperialism" with telling effect. It is very true that all the major powers use a Utopian ideal to create surrogates and followers. Again, as you have very rightly said - the US has considerably weakened two major alliances (UN and NATO) in recent years (probably the worst foreign affairs folly of the last 8 years despite Iraq). So, the US has lost that romantic "Moral Imperialistic Ideal" that inspired other people in its "mission". China, on the other hand, has embraced capitalism and has also weakened its position in its strongest "base" - the Communists and Marxists! Predictably, China has also lost its "Moral Imperialistic Ideal". How will these two powers gather vassals and followers?

Not really. The Chinese have demonstrated that they are successful communists - unlike their Soviet brethren. The Beijing consensus of economic development seems to have more adherents than the current Washington consensus. And the Chinese have very skillfully honed their image (although the recent disturbances in Tibet have upset China's "charm offensive") in the Muslim world, in Africa, and in Latin America.

4. India's "fascination" for the USSR and Russia is mainly because of a consistent and uninterrupted arms flow as opposed to wavering US positions. In the last one and a half decades, India has sent more professional immigrants to the US than all the other countries put together (every year, Indians get 40-50% of all H1B visas). That creates an intellectual ripple effect over two generations that moves out to influence minds as opposed to lobbyists. At the same time, with the highest percentage of younger population in the major economies, English education, and an education system that is privately owned so it can adjust to the demand rapidly, India is positioned to become the provider of world's management and executive talent over the next few years. How does that change the dynamics of the world's economies in the coming centuries? (PS: Rajat Gupta, the CEO of McKinsey, for example was instrumental in opening a world class business school in India - ISB - and also has expanded McKinsey's presence in India. Same goes for the PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi).

You know way more about India than I ever will.

5. Does India's business elite have a great deal of influence within the corridors of political power, or are they simply one more lobby to contend with? It seems that India's leaders rise through political parties/families - they do not come from business circles. Also, the Indian business community in Russia is highly organized and very wealthy. I would imagine that they are very involved with the Congress party, whereas Indian business elites in the U.S. might identify more with the BJP. What do you think?

Undoubtedly India has a great competitive advantage in its English-language capability - but the Chinese are very determined and hard-working. And they seem to be much better organized politically and so could easily launch a national English-language campaign (Incidentally, there is a fascinating article about this in the most recent New Yorker).

6. Despite its earlier start and higher percentage rise in GDP over last 3 decades, China has less than half the number of billionaires (official wealth counted) than India. Does that tell a tale? Is China's economy a government-sponsored musical chairs of using money where it sees the best returns and forcing its decisions into enterprise-led initiatives? With rising paper surpluses and a challenge from the US and a private-government combine of Indian economy* apart from a slowly awaking Japanese military power, does the Chinese economy appear to you as a "House of Cards"?

(PS: the Kazakhastan deal for oil was greatly influenced by the Lakshmi Mittal - who owns large steel plants in that country and has a JV with ONGC - in India's favor against the Chinese bids.)

China's economy does have many weak points - chief amongst them, its high percentage of non-performing bank loans (which you point out elsewhere). But China also has many strengths that are not captured by statistics and economic data - such as its ability to mobilize the population and a fervent belief that their time has come. The Chinese are also used to deprivation and sacrifice - something that most westerners are not familiar with.

Regarding the number of billionaires - some thoughts: Do these statistics take into account the number of overseas Chinese who are billionaires?

Also, in China, political connections are more important than wealth (although that may start to change). It would seem that the massive levels of corruption also distort the wealth statistics.

In a sense, all of the members of the central committee (approximately 300) are billionaires of power. And they are not wanting for material comforts.

7. In World War II, the US was an Aaly of Western Europe for the most part. It did not START any war until the end, which many believe it ended in an immoral way. Since then, there have been very few, if any, wars which the US has started and won. Does the US have the ability to attract allies that can forge its position? China has created its vassal states like Pakistan and North Korea to fight its wars that it does not want to fight itself. It has chosen to use the poverty of these vassal states while arming them and providing them with a sense of self-esteem in the absence of actual wealth (a policy very fruitfully used by the British with Indian kings during colonial rule) to create a vast strong set of "allies". How do these two strategies (or otherwise) of the US and China in the recent decades affect the future dynamics?

No one likes a bully - all the kids gang up on the bully as soon as he is down. George Bush/the US is perceived as the bully, and China is skillfully exploiting this, but recent events in Tibet are a great threat to China's strategy of seeking a more "multipolar" world.

8. Finally, a rather small detail: You said that you would sell expensive editions of the Koran in Russia - where your contacts were "refuseniks" (Jews refused immigration to Israel) to earn money. Why were these Jews buying the Koran, and not the Torah?

Please note: i did not sell the Korans - i gave them to the refuseniks, who in turn sold them on the black market to muslims. Access to the Torah was not a problem.

Why Neither India nor Pakistan Should Rely on America: Part I - Who Really Runs America?

Ruvy — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:02:57 EDT

This series of articles is written as an object lesson for you as to why you cannot trust the United States government as any kind of partner. This is as true for Pakistanis as it is for Indians, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, Bangladeshis or any other residents of the Indian sub-continent.

The series has three parts.

This article examines how the United States got to the apex it did. The second uses Israel as an example of American duplicity regarding its supposed "friends" or "allies". The third views what might have happened and how the world would be different if indeed the United States supported the State of Israel as one-sidedly as so many charge.

These articles is not written in an attempt to "inform" you of events in Israel, the Levantine or the Arab world. Unless you have relatives or business interests here, you probably have no reason to care.

The point of this series is to allow you to apply the sad lesson we provide of how a great power double-crosses a small one. There are many such examples of this, but I can speak as a resident of the victim. Indeed, not only Jews in Israel have been victims of this double-cross, but Arabs as well.

Before continuing further, I want to make clear several things. First; I live in Israel, in Samaria to be precise. While I reside in Israel. I am not a Zionist. The word "Zionism" was originally invented by English Christian theologians in the 17th Century; as a Jewish idea, it was originally expounded upon by rabbis from Serbia and Russia in the early 19th Century (though not called by this name), and was made palpable and real by secular Jews who wanted little to do with ritual, religion, or even with G-d. The creation of Zionism, the State of Israel, has been a success until recent years. The essential goal of Zionism, bringing the majority of Jews in the world back to the homeland, has nearly been completed. It is evident to anyone who lives here that the closer we come to that basic goal, the weaker the movement to achieve it becomes, and the weaker the apotheosis of Zionist ideology, the State, becomes as well.

Second; even though I live in Israel, I was born and raised in the United States and lived there for several decades before coming home to Israel. My field of study was political science and public administration, and I added to these subjects comparative government and linguistics. In addition, I was active in politics in the United States in both major political parties. This gave me a good grasp of the American political system and how it evolved.

Finally; I'm not slamming the people who inhabit the United States, the average folks known as Joe Sixpack. Americans, by and large, are a decent, generous and kind people, even if they are too Amero-centered for their own good. Perhaps they are too naïve at times. But the decency of the average American should never ever be in question.

The government of the United States, now in the hands of an oil and banking establishment for some eight decades, is a very different story. In this article, when talking about "America", I'm not talking about her decent inhabitants; I'm talking about her evil régime.

One last point. Credit for much of what you see in this article goes to Joel Bainerman, an Israeli investigative journalist, economist and publisher. My errors in relaying the data he has taught me and others is my responsibility alone.

And now to business.

The first three words of the American Federal Constitution of 1787 are "We the People" and if you ask most Americans, "who runs America?" that is the most likely answer you will get. The people.

If it were only true.

It isn't. It probably never was.

First of all, the United States were not designed to be a democracy at all, but a federation of states with a republican form of government. While the word "republic" comes from the Latin rex publica (one sees the root in the Russian word respublik) meaning "the people rule", and in spite of the fact that modern Greece is called Ελληνική Δημοκρατία ('Ellinikí Dhimokratía) which is translated as "the Hellenic Republic", the two words "democracy" and "republic" do not have the precise same meaning in English.

A republic connotes a form of government which is not monarchical in nature. Thus, the Republic of Florence, where Niccolo Machiavelli was a mid-level bureaucrat, was not a state where the average Florentine had a real voice in government. Only a small class of Florentines had any voice at all, and they ruled the country.

But the Principality of Florence, which succeeded the Republic upon its fall, was a monarchy, with the son supposedly succeeding the father. Machiavelli's book, De Principatus, "The Prince", was in essence, his curriculum vitae submitted to the man who had exiled him to his estate after overthrowing the republic. While the book has long outlasted the la famiglia Medici that Machiavelli was trying to impress, Machiavelli did not get his job back.

When first established in 1776, the various states restricted voting to white males only, usually only Christians who owned property. So voting was restricted somewhat for several decades. For all of this, the states that comprised the United States did move closer towards popular rule, and the American republic did edge towards democracy in the 1800's.

But a business oligarchy took the country over after its civil war in 1865, and controlled its industrialization. As the 19th Century progressed to a close, the rich men who built huge industries out of the steel plants of the Midwest, the railways, the ships, the meat packing plants and the like realized that competition was not "rational", so they bought each other out, building huge monopolies known in America as "trusts" and "rationalizing" the industries they controlled. This is the kind of stuff most American kids skip over in school, because it is so damnably boring, but it is precisely these events in America that provided the model for the concentration of wealth in the succeeding decades.

What American teachers tend to focus on is not the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, but the efforts of the American government to combat that concentration of wealth, known as "trust busting". To make a long story short, American businessmen felt stymied in building monopolies in the States and looked out at the wide world instead, and started investing money in it in the early 1900's.

They invested all over the world; Germany, Turkey, Russia, France, as well as China, Cuba and Latin America. And when a world war broke out in 1914, the profits of many firms went right down the tubes.

This had consequences. One consequence was that rich American businessmen determined that they would not be burned again in another world war. They examined the Treaty of Versailles that crippled post-war Germany, the Russian Revolution, and the way people were buying Henry Ford's affordable "Model T" and made their moves.

Their first presumption was that there would be a rematch between Germany and Britain or the United States. They set up a triumvirate of banks - one was the Thyssen Bank in Germany, the second was the Union Bank in New York, and the third was a bank in the Netherlands. The idea was that the Netherlands would probably be neutral in this coming war, and that Germany and America would be on opposite sides. That is what had happened in the first war, and so they expected the pattern would hold.

If the Germans won this second world war, then the rich businessmen would be compensated for their losses in America through the Thyssen bank "looting" the assets of the Union Bank (and presumably others). If the Americans won the second world war, the rich businessmen would be compensated through the Union Bank "looting" the assets of the Thyssen Bank. In either case, the Dutch bank was supposed to e the intermediary.

It didn't exactly work that way, but these rich businessmen had foresight.

They also had the brains to make sure that they would have some level of control over who ran the governments. In America, they set up a "Council on Foreign Relations" to infiltrate the State, War, Navy and Commerce departments of the American government with their employees. The idea was to provide a pool of "respectable" professors and administrative types who would watch over their interests. They did the same thing in the United Kingdom. These councils still exist today, and in either the United Kingdom or the United States, if you do not have ties to the respective councils, you get nowhere fast. Note how Ron Paul was locked out of the national debate before McCain sewed up the nomination.

Investing in overseas political control was a bit trickier.

One act of these businessmen was to invest in the Soviet Union in an attempt to bring it to stability. This might have been their first act, persuading Lenin to introduce the New Economic Plan (NEP) in the early twenties; but Lenin had the temerity to die, and his successor, Joe Stalin, was a xenophobe.

The next move was to try and find someone who could be controlled in the Weimar Republic that had succeeded the German Empire. These businessmen found an ambitious young man originally from Austria, and they invested in him, building him a fancy house. This turned out to be a better investment - Adolf Hitler eventually became Reichskanzler in 1933, and continued his business ties with his American investors, attempting to use them to get some foothold in the American economy. And as these businessmen had foreseen, there was another world war, and they made sure that they were compensated for their German investments through the Dulles brothers, one of whom was an attorney on the Allied War Compensation Board set up after the war.

The final big move was to invest in a source of fuel for the "Model T" and its successors, and to lay the groundwork for a continuing fortune. This came by investing some money in the wastes of Arabia, arming the ibn Saud clan to the teeth, and supporting them as they stole Makka and Medina from the Hashemi family, its traditional guardians for centuries. The Hashemi family had to be satisfied with emirates in Mesopotamia and "Transjordan"- the eastern two thirds of the territory the British had allotted for a Jewish national home. The money wasn't a gift to the ibn Sauds. It was a deal. American and British oil companies got to control the oil under the ground. The ibn Sauds - now "Saudis" - got the sand. At least that's how it looked in the 1920's.

Thus is was that bit by bit, the oil and banking companies came to dominate America. One of the key parts of winning their dominion over America came from getting rid of trolley cars and replacing them with buses; getting rid of trains, and replacing them with trucks. These two moves guaranteed the dominion of oil over all other fuels. Gradually, the American State Department became the pliable tool of American corporations. Much of the Japanese drive for empire was a drive to control oil, and the same was true for the Germans. Americans never thought of using alcohol to fuel tanks, as did the Germans. They never had to.

With the Germans and Japanese broken and defeated by August 1945, the American oil and banking establishment bestrode the world like a colossus. And Americans, living the best lives that could be imagined at the time, never even dreamt that their country and that their democracy had been stolen from them.

The Angry American Generation

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 05:00:58 EDT

Have you heard about the greatest generation? This is the generation which was born around the early part of the 20th century and fought in the Second World War. These are the people who fought because it was the right thing to do and went on after the war to build one the most prosperous societies known to mankind. The next big war, Vietnam War, produced what I would call as the bewildered generation. Between drugs, peace, liberalism, a whole generation was lost to society but just when life was settling down, 9/11 happened. It is too early to say but between 9/11, Afghanistan, the Bush Administration and Iraq, a new generation is forming which will define America for the next thirty years at the least. I call it the angry generation.

Surprised? Well, yes, so was I when I read the book We were One by Patrick K O’Donnell. This is a fascinating book about the Marines of the 1st Platoon, Lima Company, Third Battalion, First Marine Regiment and its operations in Falluja primarily over a period of few weeks in November / December 2004. The book ends with the following sentences which I am taking the liberty to quote. “The individuals I met in Iraq, especially in the Marines of 1st Platoon, showed me clearly that they truly do constitute the next Greatest Generation. Make no mistake about it; America’s best is in Iraq. After surviving the battle, I made an oath, a blood oath, that I would tell their story”. Quite an emphatic statement, no? But I am moving too far ahead as usual.

My first introduction to the Greatest Generation was predictably via a book. It was a fiction book, by Leon Uris, called Battle Cry. This was the story of a bunch of volunteer Marines, who had enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and fought across a variety of islands in the Pacific. The book is also about their loves and hates, their lives and deaths. It is a brilliant book and I have read and re-read that book a zillion times. Then I read about the economics, history, sociology, science, education etc. of post war America and then I slowly understood what the term “Greatest Generation” meant. It is difficult to explain, perhaps more of a term to be felt. These marines were in the Marine Corps for years on end and therefore formed a bond between themselves, inside the Corps and most importantly, with society that was crucial to them being great.

If somebody has to explain it, then it will never work, but perhaps one has to empathise to feel what this term means. Walk around one of the great American cities and observe the tall confident buildings, travel the highways and witness those ribbons of concrete wrapping the country, observe the factories and witness the bodies at work, walk into a campus and see the minds at play. All these were due to the Greatest Generation. This is a broad generalisation, but I do hope you understand what I mean. War, in this case, brought the country together and gave rise to the Greatest Generation.

But the Vietnam War tore a hole in the fabric of American society. Between the late 1960’s to 1970’s, cold war, hippie culture, drugs, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and the 1973 oil shock, the country seemed to emerge a bit confused and a bit bewildered. The American Army was in literal shock, society was a bit disorientated as well, and that is why I call the generation which lived through and participated in the Vietnam War as the bewildered generation. Individuality was celebrated, societal thinking was out, under-classes started to develop, corruption flourished, the legal system started to jam slightly, the political class started to stink a bit more, and the economy was creaking under the oil shock. The generation did not know what to do because the old certainties had gone away, the economic levers did not work, unemployment had risen, insecurity was high, politics was dirty, society as a construct was weakening, divorce rates were rising and so on and so forth. People were bewildered, they did not know what to do or how to react. That’s why I (again, a very broad generalisation here) call them as the bewildered generation.

It took the late 80’s and 90’s to get going again. The fall of the Berlin Wall and end of the cold war, the peace dividend, the rise of the internet and the computer, globalisation, Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton all meant that there was a buzz around the country, things were starting to happen again. There was hope for the future and people walked around with a spring in the step, a song on the lips and a smile on the face.

It took 9/11 to shock America. I think almost everybody across the world who was an adult on that day remembers the shock and horror as the twin towers collapsed. As somebody said, America lost its innocence that day and I add, anger was born. I am sure you would have read about how USA waged war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And till then, the world was with USA, but the Iraq war drove a coach and horses through the international support for USA. But what happened to the common American? Not the Americans who are in big city New York or Washington, but in the small town America which Senator Obama calls as “bitter”. These people, to paraphrase his words, “cling to guns and religion" as a result of economic uncertainty. The people that Alexis de Tocqueville believed were the bedrock of democracy in America.

This is where O’Donnell’s book comes in. It talks about a platoon of Marines who go through house by house, clearing out the whole stinking nest of Jihadis / insurgents in Fallujah. The author actually accompanied the platoon through the operation, had bullets whizzing past his ears and stepped into blood shed by dead Marines. He is one of the very rare breeds of historians, called as combat historians. This is as opposed to the embedded journalists who live in relative comfort and safety. He sat by while RPG’s blew up doors and rockets exploded houses. He witnessed drug addled Jihadis who would simply not die despite being literally peppered with bullets. He witnessed men who relied on each other and fought for each other, the platoon, the Corps and for their country. You might be thinking, but Iraq was an illegal war and Bush is not liked etc. etc. But that has nothing to do with these Marines whose job was to go from house to house, clearing them out.

For those who might know, house to house fighting is the most expensive and most grinding of all types of fighting. All the advantages are with the defender and almost none with the attacker. Presence of civilians means that the attackers are fighting from the beginning with one arm tied behind their backs. In other words, the probability of death or injury is very high and this is the important bit, they know it. But despite this, they keep on waking up each day and fighting. O’Donnell talks about how they feel, what they talk about, what makes them cringe and what makes them laugh. Why they started to smoke and how they dealt with the calls back home. And underlying this entire book was the constant reminder of 9/11 and how that drove each and every Marine. It was the shattering of the hope and innocence which gave rise to the Angry Generation. So what happened to this platoon? It took very heavy casualties, was shattered totally after the battle, went back to a hero’s welcome, but every grunt came back for his next tour of duty.

And this is where I step out in the future and make a guess-estimate of what this angry generation will do to USA and the world. Well, for one, I think USA will become more insular and isolationist, but at the same time it will be more unilateralist than it has been historically (George Bush’s presidency was a blip). That anger will make it take steps which it will not let the world influence. That anger will make USA become more protectionist in its treatment of the outside world. It will become more and not less religious and it will definitely become more conservative.

And believe you me, there is no point in telling this angry generation that it is wrong or USA is wrong in its foreign policy or what have you. It does NOT matter to the common American, those Americans for example who are in the Marines. This is not a polemic but my firmly held belief that the people we are going to be faced with in America are mostly going to be people like these Marines. If one has to frame public policy or try to understand America, it should know these people. The fact that they are backed by an immense country with huge assets, people, technology, universities, economies, companies, is almost incidental but not unimportant. But at end of the day, it is the man. I firmly believe that the American in the making is in the Angry Generation.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: USA,World War II,Greatest Generation,Iraq

Of Lilliputians and the Brain Dead

in search of sanity — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:10:30 EDT

I still remember the story as told by Jonathan Swift….Gulliver’s travels…part of my school curriculum in class 4, or was it 5? I remember it not because I found it inspirational, hugely entertaining, or a tremendous work of satirical writing……the brain of a nine year old is not mature enough to comprehend any of these. But I remember it because my nine year old brain had perceived it to be utterly atrocious…..how can someone be so shockingly ignorant as to kill for as inane an issue as which side would you break your egg from and indeed give rise to civil strife and social unrest on this issue? Little did I realise that not only is this atrocious behaviour perfectly feasible but I actually live in a society that may have been picked out of Gulliver’s travels - that people actually kill for a lot less, that the divides actually are founded on a far more flimsy ground than how to shell an egg…..

As a teenager I learned to be suspicious of one religious group, to distance myself from a particular community, not because we ever had such a discussion at home but because as soon as I stepped out of home I looked into the eyes of diffidence, distrust and difference. The media would be rife with talk of religious riots breaking out in one place or members of one caste stoning to death someone from another caste. And it didn’t matter that I still did not understand how any issue, or difference of opinion, or a difference in lifestyle could ever overtake the sanctity of life. My impressionable brain had to learn to quickly adjust to the information being fed in. This was almost always viewpoints of someone on television talking too loudly or in the newspapers, pouring vitriolic about how one particular section of society had been victimised. I still meant to ask – what about the other side?….are they as bitter and angry about their loss as you are about yours’? Are they grieving for the dead too? Are they homeless and abandoned too?

But obviously the world is governed by men who do not think these questions are Important. Whats important at that time is to flame the fires of religious hatred, and work people’s emotions to your advantage…..has happened for centuries..still continues to happen and will keep happening until we can stand up and say we’ve had enough. Naïve, simple minded men have always been a pawn in the game for power hungry, greedy politicians who cant be bothered about the consequences of their dangerous actions.

Once any two groups of people start to fight, to kill and maime men, women and children from the opposite side there is often no going back. We’ve seen generations of people trapped in the quagmire of hatred and bitterness. Often, the initial reason for the strife completely forgotten. Because hatred begets hatred. It’s a vicious cycle.

I've always believed there are only two kinds of people in this world- good and bad. There are good people amongst the Muslims, good people amongst the Jews, the Christians, the Hindus, the whites, the blacks, the ‘browns’, the rich and the poor. The rest are all artificial divides - nothing that cannot be surmounted with effort and will. My best friend will be someone I can share thoughts and experiences with, have a rapport with, share common ground with. He/she doesn’t have to go to the same place of worship as me, eat the same kind of food or even speak the same language that I do.

Based on the premise that all men (and women!) have the same origin - be it Adam and Eve or be it Manu. Is it not beyond ridiculous that we’ve taken to killing each other over petty differences. And I’m not being blasé in calling these differences petty. If you look at the history of mankind, all war has been perpetrated to gain dominance over that other man that does not look like you, does not dress like you and prays to a different god.

A bit like, you don’t shell your egg like me - so I must kill you, isn’t it?

So there are 6 inch men that fight over trivia and then there are the ones amongst us with wood between our ears who've resisted the voice of reason for so long, its now second nature.

Book Review: Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Shantanu Dutta — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:09:02 EDT

I have never seen snow falling on cedar trees but have seen snow fall over spells in the Himalayas covering every thing in sight gradually with a curtain and a cover of snow. It has a bit of a mystical experience for me – ethereal beauty of certain intensity on one end and a deep sadness and amplification of past losses and regrets that one knows can never be redeemed on the other. But with all this mixture, my reminiscences of snow and snow fall are

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson is one such luminous book where nostalgia, beauty and realism blend. It is another multi layered book, a love story at one level, a court room drama at another and a living history of what it meant to be a Japanese American in the US in the Second World War time and its immediate aftermath. At this last level , it documents the treatment meted out to Americans of Japanese origin at that time and the perennial odyssey of minorities having to prove their loyalty time and again around the world – in different times , contexts and ways- some how, some things sadly never change and perhaps never will. Very deservedly, it had won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1994.

The brooding, lonely some what defeated character of Ishmael Chambers towers over the pages of the novel – a war veteran with one arm amputated and some one who never quite made it in life – but in spite of all the pain that filled his life, a man who never lost his decency and big heartedness. Ishmael is the son of a small time journalist on the tiny island of San Piedro where many Japanese Americans live and where following Pearl Harbor, ethnic stereotyping begins to happen.

As he sees his father valiantly trying to portray other facts in the local newspaper - the story of the many Japanese Americans and there numerous contribution to local society at a time when the flavor of the season is to be xeno phobic, Ishmael and his father discuss some timeless questions about journalism: “Not every fact is just a fact”-he (Ishmael’s father) added.” It’s all a kind of balancing act. A juggling of pins, all sorts of pins that are what journalism is about”. ‘This isn’t journalism.’ Ishmael answered. “Journalism is just the facts.” “But which facts?” Ishmael’s father asked him.” Which facts do we print, Ishmael?”

The unspoken answer is that a true journalist prints all facts and if he has a bias or a tilt, it is to report to highlight, to under line, those facts that others are not reporting, others are pushing under the carpet, that others are perhaps even hiding, a journalist is not just a man with a camera and a pen- he is a man who is called to be an advocate on behalf of those who are unable for one reason or another can not speak for themselves.

The most poignant section of the book is the one dealing with the aborted love story of Ishmael Chambers and the Japanese girl Hatsue Miyamoto, who eventually ends up marrying a man from her Japanese community, partly because of the interruption caused by the war and partly because when push comes to shove, human differences driven by ethnicity, language, race and religion will always remain to haunt us….. seemingly for over. This book of loss, lamentation and grief casts a long shadow indeed.

Just War - Theory and Practice

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:20:35 EDT

The Islamist terror and subsequent Iraq War have let loose a huge debate around what is “Just War”? The Islamists claim that Just War is Jihad and it is perfectly legitimate to fight against oppression by unbelievers. The Iraq Just War claims are based (and debated) upon legal arguments arising from UN and parliamentary resolutions. As it so happens, both the UN and western parliamentary resolutions are broadly based upon Judeo-Christian religious heritage and in particular, the Just War theories going back to the 12th century teachings of St. Aquinas, who – it has been said – was influenced greatly by books written by religious scholars expounding on the legal reasons and justifications of Jihad. There is another strand of human thought around the Just War theory, which goes back centuries and millennia before Just War was a twinkle in the eyes of the Abrahamic faith theologians. Let us explore that a bit.

I was in a discussion last year with some people who were debating about Crusades, Jihad and Just War came up. I was hearing about how the Just War is defined as war against the other, but having a just cause such as fighting against oppression, which authority can launch a just war, so on and so forth. And I was reminded of two things when I heard that these concepts were relatively new. The first was the fact that Just War is not a new concept for me, in fact this is pretty old and secondly, this is not just Hinduism which I refer to, but also Buddhism (yes, that religion of peace…) which has a full blown concept of Just War. So I promised to write about it and this essay relates to the first aspect. The Buddhist concept of Just War will need a full essay of its own.

One might be surprised as to why a country like India, with such a long and sometimes violent history, can house two violently competing thoughts about war at the same time. The first is a very well developed doctrine and corpus of war and military science (perhaps even the first in the world), while the second is more known as the doctrine of non-violence. The latter was obviously popularised by Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the Indian Nation. It says a lot about Hinduism’s concept of “duality” and of “Maya” (illusion) that these two ostensibly mutually incompatible concepts can co-exist merrily, but this essay is not on that aspect, it is on the first.

The genesis of Just War within the overall rubric of Hinduism as a philosophy can be traced back to the oldest religious and philosophical books of mankind, the Vedas. Take for example, the Rig-Veda, the oldest written book. It is but a collection of hymns, to a variety of old Hindu Gods, and therein you will find a very large collection of hymns which pray to various God(s) to intercede in times of war and help in winning battles. So whether one is praying to Indra, the Lord of Heavens or Agni, the Lord of Fire, it is your basic prayer before war. Or consider the fourth Veda, the Athar-veda which is more aimed at particular purposes such as hymns and charms to protect against arrow wounds, confusing the enemy, protection of equipment such as the battle drum, etc.

It goes without saying that at that time of human development (expressed both in oral and written tradition); one would not have expected people to have deep philosophical thoughts about the nature of war and that too Just War. Life was short, the world was scary and the only people who could make sense of this scary dark world were the Gods. Hence hymns and prayers to them would be the primary philosophical output of human kind (you see the same behaviour in the books of the dead in Egypt or the hymns of the ancient Mesoamerican cultures). But philosophy relating to the world and events as we know it emerged in the annals of the Upanishads (btw, Hinduism provides philosophical guidance to all aspects of human behaviour and endeavour, none of this separation of church and state malarkey but it is again a nature of its duality (see note about Arthshastra below) that secularism has found such a firm root in a largely Hindu country such as India…).

But to go back to philosophy, the second aspect of war is explored in the Upanishads which is a body of Hindu scripture discussing philosophy, meditation, hymns, nature of the world and emotions. For example, one might be familiar with the concept of Greater Jihad in Islam, where one fights against the inner evils and sins, tries to attain self actualisation against inner weaknesses and limitations. It is the Lesser Jihad which is the physical manifestation of this battle against evil, oppression and injustice. But hundreds of years ago, fighting against the inner evil was enjoined in a variety of Upanishads, (such as in the Chandogya Upanishad – Eighth Prapathaka; twelveth Khanda, first paragraph, to the Mundaka Upanishad – third mundaka, first khanda, third paragraph to the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad- third Brahmana). The avoidance of evil and the fight against inner desires is clearly a route to Brahman or the ultimate Godhead. In other words, if one removes all desires, one is undistinguishable from the Godhead.

Then come the Puranas, which is a corpus of texts, mainly in the form of stories; talking about the history of the world, the stories of the Gods, their genealogies and their deeds, the people and events. Based upon the concept of avatars or incarnations of Gods on earth, these incarnations emerge on earth to fight against evil, to carry out Just War against the disturbers of the divine order. Thus, by analogy and examples, the shape, size and type of evil is explained. The fight against evil is also described by means of divine intervention.

But the knowledge of the Vedas and Upanishads was distilled into the Mahabharata, the gigantic and profound Hindu epic and one can legitimately claim that the Mahabharata was itself distilled into the Srimad Bhagwat Gita. This is the story of the time when Sri Krishna (himself an incarnation of Vishnu as explained in the Vishnu Purana and other documents) explains the concept of divine destiny; the use (or rather prohibition) of weapons such as Brahmasashtra and Pasupatastra; how the divine godhead will come to the assistance of the just; how fighting has to be done for the sake of fighting and not for the sake of emotional reasons such as happiness or jealousy etc.

See the crucial difference? This just war concept is to fight evil and not to spread Hinduism. This aspect to be remembered is that the Hindu concept of Just War is clearly distinguishable from the Christian/Islamic concept of Just War, which includes war against the outsider/foreigner/other religion or persons from different faiths. The basis of Hinduism is Dharma, or cosmic order. Whatever or whoever disturbs this cosmic order or acts against the Dharma is considered to be a target, irrespective of their demographics. But the concept was much wider than that, you cannot just go about waging Just War haphazardly. There are strong rules about how and where war can be fought, who is to be protected and who can fight. War had to be fought in an equitable and fair manner and using open means. (See an excellent treatment of this issue by Arthur Eyffinger in his book The International Court of Justice 1946–1996, where he delves deep into the background of our international laws relating to war and other references to the religious books are from Kane’s seminal work Dharmashastra).

Another book, the Arthshastra, has to be mentioned. The Arthshastra written by Kautilya is a body of knowledge relating to political science, government and its administration, international relations, including spying etc. One can call it the first political science text book of the realist school. One has bear that in mind that Arthshastra is totally independent from any moral philosophy as expounded in the epics and Dharmashastras mentioned above. While nobody will claim that Arthshastra is part of Hindu religion, it indeed is part of Hindu politics and culture and one can clearly see the roots of secularism inherent in this body of knowledge. This also explains the difference between law and religion. Hinduism is universalistic and humanistic in nature. One can almost call it the perfect religion for the secular humanists. Unlike other religions, there is a clear cut difference between law and religion. While religion and by correspondence faith is immutable, laws have to change given changed circumstances, which make Hinduism inherently flexible and dynamic in nature as man matures and changes.

War as a means of public policy is also the last strategy to be adopted when reconciliation, gift giving, threats and diplomacy do not work. (One can see these guidelines in the Smiritis such as the Manusmriti, as well as in the Shastras, such as the Arthshastra). Rules have to be followed in terms of declaration of war, how to determine if one is the King of Kings, etc. Rules can be determined in terms of ban on poison arrows; ban on killing the elderly, women, sleepy people, peaceful citizens, the insane, musicians, retreating soldiers; ban on destroying gardens, temples and places of worship; and so on and so forth. Not only that, but war can only be carried out by a particular class of people, the Kshatriyas. All other classes of people are not to be involved in warfare, which is again just and fair. Only those people who are trained fight, not just anybody.

So as one can see, a full corpus of Just War theory and practise, with a history dating back to almost 4,500 years ago which has then been further developed and enriched since then. One of the modern guru’s of Just War theory, Michael Waltzer, said that the Indo-Pakistani war of 1971 is perhaps one of the very few wars of modern times that can be called as a Just War. I am not surprised at that, and the military philosophy of the Indian Army is heavily based around this concept. Are you also surprised that the Indian Army is one of the largest troop contributors to United Nations Peace Keeping Missions? One can quibble about quite a lot of Indian Army actions, but India has a proud history and philosophy of Just War. The world can do worse than to take those concepts on board.

All this to be taken with a grain of salt!

Technorati Tags: Just War, Hinduism, India

African Union Troops Help Take Back Anjouan, Comoros

Dr Bhaskar Dasgupta — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:58:36 EDT

I am not sure how many of you know but there is a wee bit of a war going on in a tiny corner of the world in the Indian Ocean (See here for a bit of a background to this war). So some of the regional African heavies got together, threw their weight around, created an army and went to kick out the chaps who declared independence. Now this step was very interesting for so many reasons. But as usual, I had some stupid questions:

So this step was carried out without UN blessings. How many of the howlers at the Iraq war out there are howling equally at this imperialistic step? Speak up, guys, I cannot hear you loud and clear. ...
So this was a dump on a secessionist self-determination exercise. How many of the secessionist self-determinist howlers are howling equally at this step? Hello? Can't hear you.
So Anjouan declared independence. I must have missed the announcements of recognition by the USA, Germany, UK etc. just like they did for Kosovo. Where are the police forces and aid convoys from the EU?
When is the African Union going to deal in a similar way with Congo, Zimbabwe, Darfur, Sudan, Somalia, Morocco, Western Sahara?
Typically, Anjouan is the island which is most economically active and rich. So this is basically a fight over resources - it was the people who do not have money who went to kick out the people who have money because the people who have money were refusing to pay the people without money.
The country was sent to the dogs by some exceedingly stupid economic policies of the state-directed kind. Who will repair this and provide aid to fix these issues? The invasion has immediately mucked up the economics of that island for the next many years anyway. The only basis remaining is, whoops, we mucked up again, because of our political, economic and military policies, our people are AGAIN starving, please help with money, food, equipment. (Tens of coups since independence, welcome to paradise on earth.)

Thinking about all these questions, the quote "is hammam me hum saab nange" (In this bathhouse we are all naked) comes to mind. All this to be taken with a grain of piquant salt!!!

Book Review:The Varieties of Scientific Experience

PH — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:34:37 EDT

As soon as I finished reading The Varieties of Scientific Experience – A Personal View of the Search for God, an anthology of Carl Sagan’s 1985 Gifford lectures in Natural Theology, I wanted to grab every person on this ‘pale blue dot’ planet by the shoulders, and ask him/her to read it. Sagan was a man who, per Ann Duryan, the book’s editor, “spoke extemporaneously in nearly perfect paragraphs”. Here’s a typical passage.

‘By far the best way I know to engage the religious sensibility, the sense of awe, is to look up on a clear night…every culture has felt a sense of awe and wonder looking at the sky. This is reflected throughout the world in both science and religion. Thomas Carlyle said that wonder is the basis of worship. And Einstein said, “I maintain that the cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.” So if Carlyle and Einstein agree on something, it has a modest possibility of even being right.’

This is about as poetic as Kabir, Meera and Bulle Shah will ever get.

Sagan’s tone in these lectures is benign and almost avuncular; only the patently prissy would accuse him of disrespect. His gifts as a science writer are many. He has a keen eye for the beauty in every facet of human inquiry-literature, art, science of course, and even religion. He has the sort of wit that pokes to tickle, not to hurt. For instance, when pointing out the obviously anthropocentric view of the afterlife, he recites Rupert Brooke’s Heaven. And here’s a snippet from a post-lecture Q&A session.

Q: What is your opinion on the nature of the origins of intelligent life in the universe?
A: I’m for it!

The book is rich in poetry (that of rhyme as well as reason), artists’ depictions of astronomical phenomena, and of course those breathtakingly wondrous NASA photographs. Sagan dazzles us even when citing numbers - a couple of hundred thousand million suns in the Milky Way, ten to hundred times as many galaxies in the universe, and an equation attempting to estimate the number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy.

Above all, his clear yet sophisticated ethics give these talks a halo of nobility. For instance, he rejects miracles not because they’re absurd but because, following Democritus and Hume, the likelihood of nature changing its course is much smaller than that of a person lying. Or consider his nuanced take on the preserve-destroy conflict innate in civilizations.

‘ [It is] a conflict within the human heart…between the bureaucratic, hierarchical, aggressive parts of our nature, which in a neurophysiological sense we share with our reptilian ancestors, and the other parts of our nature, the generalized capacity for love, for compassion, for identification with others, who may superficially not look or talk or dress exactly like us, the ability to figure the world out that is focused and concentrated in our cerebral cortex.’

Note the “superficial” and “exactly”, implying that the similarities among different peoples far outweigh the differences; and the references to “reptilian ancestors” and “cerebral cortex”, as evidence of his commitment to a purely natural theology.

Speaking in 1985, the heyday of Reagan and the Star Wars, Sagan constantly returns to the nuclear threat and warns us that we have (still true, I gather) nuclear weapons capable of destroying our species many times over. And this is a scientist’s warning, so he duly backs it up with some morbid math on how many warheads it’d take to get to doomsday. Here he is championing the ethical legacy of such heavyweights as Spinoza, Einstein and Russell - not just in their espousal of laws of nature as the only plausible god, but also in their compassion and pacifism.

By itself, atheism is a negative and that very fact weakens its sales pitch. It’s no co-incidence that the word consists of a negating prefix followed by two harsh syllables; it is supposed to signify a rejection of something. What we want is something we can embrace, something positive. Sagan offers a recipe for that. Take what is best in religion: the deep questions it seeks to answer, the compassion it seeks to advocate, and the poetry it touches upon. Add what is best in science: the persistent chipping away at the wall of ignorance; the humility and awe of knowing that we live on a planet of a sun in the ‘boondocks’ of a galaxy (to use Sagan’s imaginative expression) that is itself a miniscule part of the universe. Cook this mixture in Sagan’s funny, lucid and lyrical prose, and what you get is a literary feast of a book.