Read between the lines

In a few days Americans will vote to elect their next President after one of the most divisive and bitter election campaigns. The last time this happened was in 1876, but that was said to be the aftermath of the Civil War. The 2004 elections come in the background of an acrimonious election four years ago and many Americans are still not sure whether Al Gore lost or the US Supreme Court handed the prize to George W. Bush with a 5 to 4 decision and a lead of 537 votes in Florida. It was that close.
This time around, there are no holds barred. There is an air of desperation, as the world will wait with baited breath for the outcome. And the combatants have got their legal aides primed for action in all the states to take the battle to different grounds at the first sign of electoral irregularity. The Church too has been invoked. Allegations of booth-capturing or stuffing ballot boxes or fudging results could abound.
There is a possibility then that the election results may take weeks to be announced and the irony of it is that this appears more similar to the presidential election results in Afghanistan. It could be warlords battling it out in Afghanistan and different kinds of barons fighting against each other in the US. Only the battlegrounds are different, the aims are similar: the power to rule.
A mega-event like US elections evokes large audience and reader interest. Recent writings from America have been heady stuff. This gives one hope that the symbol of America will still be the Statue of Liberty and not the hooded and wired Iraqi standing on that soap box in Abu Ghraib.
Take, for instance, Craig Unger’s House of Bush, House of Saud, breathtaking in its revelations and one of those ‘unputdownables’. Unger takes the reader through the conspiracies and intrigue at high places and how members of the bin Laden family and other Saudi worthies including some Saudi princes cavorting in the US escaped to Saudi Arabia within days of 9/11 without being questioned. Truth is stranger than fiction. Unger’s book is freely available in the US and Europe, but strangely, not in Britain, for fear perhaps that Saudi sentiments would be hurt. The title of James Bamford’s book A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies says it all and says it well.
Bamford takes the reader through the paces of the neo-con policy formulation which began much before Bush became President and sort of led to the famous ‘Rumsfeld decision’ on September 11, 2001, within hours of the destruction of the Twin Towers: that he wanted the best information, he wanted it fast to see if Saddam Hussein could be hit at the same time along with ‘UBL’ (Usama bin Laden); “go massive,” he is believed to have said according to one of his aides taking notes; “sweep it all up. Things related or not”.
There is one thing that jars though — when Bamford refers to Srinagar as being part of Pakistan. Paul Krugman wrote (The Great Unravelling) about the economic deeds and misdeeds of the administration and the elasticity with truth. Ron Suskind describes the high conspiracies in Washington to get rid of the Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, in his book, The Price of Loyalty.
Bush’s critics have referred to the reversed Robin Hood tactics of robbing the poor to pay the rich by giving tax cuts to the wealthy and reneging on promises on social security. They have referred to crony capitalism of the Establishment and Unger refers to the access capitalism of the kind practised by the Saudis — access to the House of Bush. And how 9/11 was the perfect Pearl Harbour for the neo-cons of the 21st century who had been working on plans to oust Saddam Hussein and provided the target of opportunity in Iraq.
Then there is the irrepressible Noam Chomsky with his Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, who’s dismissed by the neo-cons as ‘that linguist’ (just as they dismiss Susan Sontag, the other critic of the Bush doctrine and practice as ‘that radical chic’). In an establishment which views even liberalism as blasphemy, this is indeed harsh criticism. There are several other similar books on the shelves of bookstores in the US if only one had the time to read them.
The New York Times in its full page editorial on October 17, ‘John Kerry for President’, says rather royally, “We like what we have seen.” The edit says, “We look back on the past four years with hearts nearly breaking, both for the lives unnecessarily lost and for the opportunities so casually wasted. Time and again, history invited George Bush to play a heroic role and time and again he chose the wrong course. We believe that with John Kerry as President, the nation can do better.” It is almost as if God has pronounced for John Kerry. It has been a long time since an incumbent President had such a bad press. The last time this happened was during Richard Nixon’s second term. Even Bill Clinton got away better.
It could appear that Kerry has it all sown up. It isn’t so. Most Americans form their opinions from what they see on TV — or what they perceive they have seen — and less from the newspapers, and even fewer read books that ought to be read. It is this medium, the television, which sways minds most effectively. And the Bush campaign has its masterly spin-doctors. Assisted by some mega-corporations in the media world, it has also bought off all the time on many of the local TV stations in the key undecided states and then laid down the rules of the game in favour of the Republican candidate.
The campaign on these TV channels is vicious, personalised and scary. It will leave its lingering after- effects after the vote has been counted. The result is expected — feared — to be close. Many Democrats still feel they were robbed of a victory in 2000 and that Bush became President despite having got fewer electoral votes. This has been one of the causes of the bitterness in the campaign this time and there is fear that there could be trouble at many of the 200,000 polling stations. If that happens again, there could even be serious calls for a change in the manner Americans elect their Presidents. Many scholars in the US fear that another disputed election will divide the country perhaps irreparably.
Admittedly, it is for Americans to decide how and by whom they wish to be ruled. But if Americans are to be so closely involved in the affairs of other countries, if they choose to right all the world’s wrongs even if some have to be bludgeoned into submission, then the Americans are obliged to vote with both their hearts and minds. This self-arrogated authority to decide the fate of the world must be accompanied by an imposed responsibility. For they owe it to the rest of the world.
It mustn’t be, as Maureen Dowd has said in her recent, scintillating and, at times, irreverent book, Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk, “It’s their reality. We just live and die in it.”
(The writer is a former secretary to the Government of India)

Source : Hindustan Times 31st oct 2004