Uncle Sam's Right, Very Right!

Since the rss and CPI(M) speak as one on the US War in Iraq, no further proof is needed for the thesis of Indian public opinion being solidly against it. The reasons vary; the commonest and most persuasive are three: the US is a bully to assert its position as the only superpower; the war is aimed at seizing Iraq's oil wealth; and the Iraqis must be free to run their own affairs. A more personal criticism is George W wishes to complete George H's unfinished task, with the help of the same old warhorses, whose collective testosterone drives the war.

The question is: why now? All these grounds ignore the axiom that states hardly change their spots overnight. The US—the sole superpower for 15 years—could have asserted its might at any time and didn't need to pulverise an Iraq to do so.

Similarly, Americans didn't have to wait so long to annex Iraq's oil wealth. They could have done so in 1991 or during the Clinton dispensation, which was no less immune to business interests. And if the son wanted to bring honour to his father, wouldn't he have set the wheels rolling immediately after taking over in January 2001, rather than wait 26 months?

The present Bush administration is almost a copybook specimen of the "know-nothing" insularists of the 1920s. How is it that half way into its first term, it has embarked on an international adventure of this magnitude, against mounting public opinion at home and abroad?

The answer to this, like much else these days, lies in 9/11. That infamous day made terrorism real and horrendous for the Americans and their enemy number one. Many thorough and excellent analyses of those events led to the same realisation Indians and Israelis have long lived with: there is no defence against individual suicide missions, be they human bombs assassinating leaders, car bombs blowing up missions, or hijacked airplanes taking out symbols of a nation's prosperity.

Besides, the same terrorists could cause infinitely more damage by using chemical or biological weapons or, worse, nuclear arms. To do so, however, they would necessarily have to access a nation-state; better still own it. Afghanistan under the Taliban was one such for Al Qaeda.

To prevent the catastrophe caused by the terrorists' use of such weapons of mass destruction (WMD); it is instructive to note that this phrase came into currency only after 9/11), access to them must be denied at all costs. Thus the Taliban had to be ousted from Afghanistan. And it requires no great leap of imagination to place Iraq at the forefront of rogue states that had WMDs or the capability to build them and would have no qualms in offering them to terrorist groups, particularly if they were to be targeted at the US or its allies. This is the gist of the "axis of evil" theory of last year.

A comprehensive prevention strategy would comprise three elements: dismantling all existing WMDs, destroying the capacity to make them and, finally, removing any inclination to make them in future as well. Without the total fulfilment of all the three conditions, there would always be the danger that terrorist organisations could source WMDs at some future date. When confronted with rising street crime, do we not ensure that the criminals do not have any arms, and also no access to them, current or potential?

The Bush administration has not always been cogent in stating these hard-to-resist arguments. It did try the UN route for over six months. The inspectors not finding weapons met only one condition. On the other hand, the Blix reports and the overall Iraqi attitude made it amply clear that the final condition, of not nursing any inclination in this direction, was never going to be satisfied. Iraq was doing the barest minimum for the day, keeping its future options open.

Saddam, without a doubt, is the worst tyrant of the last 50 years. In a landscape dotted with Balkan ethnic-cleansers and African practitioners of genocide, the Iraqi despot stands out being the only one to nerve-gas his own people and keeping his country in a state of war for over 20 years, for his own martial glory, without ever having been a fighter himself. The average Iraqi has been a "good German", a fact that does not seem to worry most of those whose hearts bleed for the long-suffering Iraqi people. Do those suffering from self-inflicted wounds qualify as innocent victims?

All these arguments apart, even the Americans, like most of us, must have wished that Saddam would simply go away. Going to war is perhaps the hardest decision for any post-Vietnam US administration. American people agonise over bodybags, unlike Indians, who seem to exult in their dead heroes. Saddam was greeted by the managed "we-will-sacrifice-for-you" chanting crowds on the rare occasions he surfaced; but Bush and Blair must face hostile crowds (and media) and their respective electorates in less than two years with possible premature ends to their careers.

The Indian reaction to the Iraq war is similar to the more vocal protests elsewhere in the world. Unfortunately, it is firmly based on either the imperialism/neo-colonialism or the Cold War-Third World paradigms. Both these are now anachronistic. The defining and most worrisome parameter of the global geopolitics in the 21st century is virulent, religion-driven transnational terrorism, with unimaginable capacity to wreak havoc. We would not hesitate risking a nuclear war (with no understanding of its consequences) to combat cross-border terrorism, but bleed for its foremost facilitators and rail against those who would fight to root it out. O tempora, o mores!