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CROSS TALK

US democracy is going backward!

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan
***The American people have been taken for a ride, which makes them comparable to the Iraqis when they were under a dictator. And now there has been a role reversal between Tikrit and Texas. From his hideout Saddam is asking his people to fight for freedom. He sounds like a champion. Bush is busy concocting means to suppress the truth from his people. He sounds like a chameleon.***
PARDON me if it sounds wacky, but the occupation of Iraq has laid a siege on the United States. Driving on I-495 between Maryland to Virginia, you would be greeted by flashing digital boards urging you to report all suspicious activities to the Homeland Security. The security in the airports is tight, federal buildings and memorials are restricted, and the
White House is barricaded like a besieged fort. While they claim to have liberated the Iraqis, the Americans have lost their freedom.
And that loss has been more strident in the American minds. They are paranoid and xenophobic, nervous of unidentified luggage, middle-eastern males, Islamic rituals and Muslim association. They are often wary-eyed to share a flight with Muslim passengers. Bad service in a Muslim restaurant or an argument with a Pakistani cabby can become the trigger point for racial meltdown.
When a Muslim businessman in Virginia wanted to show his goods to a client, an unidentified caller tipped off the police that two suspicious-looking Muslim men had entered a warehouse. The police came and held the men, releasing them only after interrogation. Still they thought fortunate of themselves. According to the newly
constituted Homeland Security legislation, the police could detain a suspect for 72 hours without a chance to see a lawyer, friend or relative. The Miranda doesn't work for the Muslims suspected of terrorist activities.
These are but few examples that the land of freedom, which America was, has got the streaks of a police state. The New York Post, in its Page Six column on March 19, called in the name of Americanism that the entertainment figures who opposed the war in Iraq should be boycotted. Under the headline
"DON'T AID THESE SADDAM LOVERS," it listed the "appeasement-loving celebs", including Tim Robbins, Sean Penn, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel L. Jackson, Susan Sarandon and Danny Glover. The Post column went as far as asking for a boycott of their movies.
Roughly two weeks before that there was an incident at the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, New York. A 61-year-old lawyer and his son put on T-shirts that read PEACE ON EARTH and GIVE PEACE A CHANCE. When the security guards of the mall ordered them either to remove the shirts or leave, the lawyer refused and was charged with trespassing. At high schools across the U.S., some students were threatened with
suspension if they cut classes in order to participate in antiwar demonstrations.
Is the American democracy working backward? The polity, which once boasted the First Amendment, the Freedom of Speech and the Freedom of Expression, is now characterised with illegal detentions, denials of the due process, invasions of privacy, intolerance, suspicion, and hatred. Aren't these the stuff of totalitarianism? Aren't these the roadblocks to freedom to remove which the Americans have gone to Iraq?
There is the irony of a contagious disease about the whole thing. The doctor who came to cure the patient himself became afflicted. Perhaps there is an aspect of recoil to it, the spring back of the weapon in the impact of discharging the ammunition. Perhaps precious something has been jolted in that recoil, which has dislodged the fine balance of the American democracy. The people have been inveigled to the ruinous course of war by the "NeoConservative" oligarchy.
May be that was how Saddam Hussein had convinced his people that an attack of Kuwait was the right thing to do. May be that was how he rose to power at the end of a bloody chapter in the Iraqi history. The Iraqi people believed in
Saddam, who used this as an opportunity to consolidate his power. All dictators start that way; they come as keepers and then turn into usurpers. Dictatorship is when rulers refuse to renew their power with popular mandate. Dynasty is when that refusal runs in the family as power passes from member to member within the same family.
If Saddam was allowed to retire from power and pass his mantle to his son Qusay, how would that compare to the election of George Walker Bush as the 43rd President of USA? Qusay was groomed in his
father's shadow, the apple, which hadn't fallen far from the tree. He was preferred over his elder brother Uday, who lacked the composure and character to rule the country. It shows that some thinking had gone into it before Qusay would be selected his father's protege.
What about George Bush? Until 1994, he was the 48-year old son of a President, whose life was devoid of accomplishments. His SAT score was ordinary: 566 verbal and 649 math. Later bloodlines and connections had put him into Andover, Yale and Harvard Business School, and even finally provided him with a fortune after years of business disappointments.
George Bush's election as the second President of USA within the
same family is like reviving a disrupted dynasty. It's like Qusay becoming the President of Iraq after eight years, when the coalition forces have left Iraq and the country has reverted to the Saddam frenzy. George Bush's political career started as the Governor of Texas, largely facilitated by his father's popularity and influence. His presidency marks something even more interesting. He is the ventriloquist's dummy for his father's friends.
Hence, the leader of the free world is someone, who never
stepped out of his country before the election, except going to China where his father was an ambassador. Hence, the President of the highest democracy in the world is someone who didn't win majority of the popular votes. Hence, the Commander-in-Chief of the most sophisticated army has behaved like Caligula who declared war against another country and deployed his army in the swamp. Hence, the ruler of the most modern nation has acted like an unscrupulous salesman in the bait and switch of giving false excuses to push his own agenda.
British economist William Henry Beveridge wrote, "Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy
can afford amongst its citizens." Never mind if it sounds grouchy, the war in Iraq has brought that worry to the American soil where the evil weed of ignorance has been cultivated amongst its citizens.
The well-meaning Americans are yet to realise that their intelligence has been harassed. First they were told that a war was necessary because of terrorism, then because Iraq had a nuclear programme. Then they were told that the war was necessary because Iraq has poison gas and that a regime change would save the world. Now it is the importance of bringing democracy to the Middle East, which stands out as the lone justification for the war in Iraq.
Thus the American people have been taken for a ride, which makes them comparable to the Iraqis when they were under a dictator. And now there has been a role reversal between Tikrit and Texas. From his hideout Saddam is asking his people to fight for freedom. He sounds like a champion. Bush is busy concocting means to suppress the truth from his people. He sounds like a chameleon.
Yet a recent poll showed that an overwhelming majority of Americans were convinced that the removal of Saddam was a sufficient reason for the war in Iraq. According to them if weapons of mass destruction were found at all, it would help explain the American position to other countries. Democracy has surely taken a giant leap backward in the United States. If they want to bring it to Iraq, it is coming at a cost to their own. Pardon me, if again I have shared with you yet another of my silly thoughts.
Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.