WALTER LAQUEUR VERSUS ARUNDHATI ROY

Laqueur launches a broadside against the Alegbra of Infinite Justice, but his own equations leave injustices by the US out of the calculation

In his marvellous book, “No End to War –Terrorism in the Twenty-first Century”, Walter Laqueur takes the reader through the origins and causes of terrorism, discusses jehad and the desire of the Islamic terrorists to destroy Western civilization and the quest for weapons of mass destruction by these terrorists. He also makes the point that there has been a greater incidence of violence in Muslim societies and says “Muslims have a hard time living as minorities in non-Muslim countries…” and also that “Muslims find it equally difficult to give a fair deal to minorities….”. The book is a must read.

Having said that, it is evident that Laqueur is very, very angry with Arundhati Roy for the essay, “The Algebra of Infinite Justice”, she wrote about September 11, 2001. He feels that Roy may have been posturing in the West to reach a wider audience and the suggestion that America was responsible for the attacks and that President Bush merely wanted to suppress freedom and so on were evidence of her bias. Laqueur preferred the equally angry outburst of Oriana Fallaci when she described the terrorists and the radical Islamists backing them were barbarians. He takes strong objection when Roy pointed out that USA was involved in some eighteen or twenty wars

He says “The list is correct even if it includes some wars in which the United States intervened on behalf of the United Nations to protect a Muslim minority (Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo). If Ms Roy had applied the same standard to her own country, she would have found that India fought Pakistan five or six times, and there were military conflicts with China, intervention in Sri Lanka, the conquest of Goa, fighting over many years in Kashmir and the Punjab, in Nagaland and Bodoland, and in Assam, Tripura and with the Naxalites. In brief, the number of armed conflicts in which India was involved was slightly larger than the number of wars waged by the United States.” Now this is a spin, if ever there was one.

All Indians know about the wars that Pakistan thrust upon India from 1947 through to 1999; the money, training, shelter and weapons provided to Sikh and Kashmiri insurgents; and earlier to the Nagas in 1956. There is no point in repeating all the details. Except to say that Pakistan attacked India 5 times, not counting the never-ending proxy-war. Laqueur talks of armed conflict in Bodoland. Where is that? He says the Indian administration fought the Naxalites – left-wing extremists owing allegiance outside the country trying to overthrow a democracy. Charming. Then how would he describe the US Civil War? A picnic? He speaks of India’s conquest of Goa, a Portuguese colony on Indian soil. Then how did the US of A acquire Texas, New Mexico, California and Arizona? Ask the Mexicans.

Lest one is accused of undue bias in favour of one’s own country, (not by itself a sin) - it is useful to see what many Americans have had to say on this subject.

In his book, “The Last Empire”, (essays from 1992 to 2001) Gore Vidal says “Since V-J Day 1945 (‘Victory over Japan and the end of World War II’), we have been engaged in what the great historian Charles A. Beard called ‘perpetual war for perpetual peace.’ I have occasionally referred to our Enemy of the Month Club: each month a new horrendous enemy at whom we must strike before he destroys us. I have been accused of exaggeration, so here is your scoreboard from Kosovo (1999) to Berlin Airlift (1948-49).”

Gore then goes on to list seven and a half pages of US interventions all over the globe with countries like Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti and Guatemala repeated targets….Gore signs off with this final comment “In these several hundred wars against Communism, terrorism, drugs or sometimes nothing much, between Pearl Harbor and Tuesday September 11, 2001, we always struck the first blow.”

Forget the two world wars and the atom bomb against a country ready to surrender, forget Korea, forget even Indo China and its horrors of napalm and Agent Orange, there are, in our part of the world, little known stories about the rightist and USA backed death squads of El Salvador in the 1980s who targeted civilians protesting against concentration of power and wealth with a few. The 1980s were also a period when US forces rediscovered the Middle East after the overthrow of the Shah of Iran. There were the so-called “humanitarian” interventions in Africa in the 1990s and, of course, Iraq and the estimated killing of 200,000 Iraqis mostly as a result of bombing raids with an intensity beyond that of the Second World War and Vietnam.

Clyde Prestowitz, in his hugely interesting and revealing book, “Rogue Nation” says “According to my count, from the signing of the Constitution in 1789, until the present, there has been scarcely a year when the United States was not engaged in some overseas military operation. Admittedly, these include a number of small skirmishes and guarding operations, but the sum comes to 235 separately named events of which perhaps 25 to 30 could be characterised as full-scale wars.” Prestowitz then goes on to describe the kind of interventions that USA has carried out globally since 1945. His book is not just about criticising his country. It is in reality trying to make every one understand the wide gulf that exists between the USA and the rest of the world that leads to differences in perception about each other.

William Blum, a former State Department official, resigned because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. His book “Rogue State” gives a chilling expose of US statecraft globally. Either you are with us or you are very very definitely against us, is the message. “The shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1981; the bombardment of Beirut in 1983 and 1984; the bombing of Libya in 1986; the bombing and sinking of an Iranian ship in 1987; the shooting down of an Iranian passenger plane in 1988; the shooting down of two Libyan planes in 1989; the massive bombing of the Iraqi people in 1991; the continuing sanctions and bombings against Iraq; the bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, ….” And it goes on. There is a whole chapter of 40 pages describing US interventions all over the world since 1945. There are other chapters describing gruesome torture techniques, training and bombings taught in USA or by Americans. Only those with strong stomachs are advised to read these.

Then there is Noam Chomsky and his prodigious writings on what the USA dreams for itself and does for the fulfillment of these dreams. His book “Rogue States” is also about the USA and its clients. The narrative is lucid as much as it is frightening when he talks of the “murderous Suharto” whom the Clinton Administration had described as “our kind of guy”. This is after 200,000 had been killed in East Timor by the Indonesian army equipped with US weapons.

Later in his book, Laqueur again launches a broadside against Roy citing other writers, including some Indian authors. The anger about her criticism of the USA obviously resurfaces in the book. At one stage he says Arundhati Roy is the daughter of an Arab mother and an Indian father. The twist is much too obvious; he is trying to say that Roy is anti-American and pro-Arab because of her origins. Wrong. Arundhati Roy’s mother is Mary Roy, a Malayali Christian from Kerala.


(The writer is a former Secretary to the Government of India)

Source : Hindustan times 13th March 2005