The two have done more to help each other’s cause than anyone can possibly imagine.
In his last press conference as President, George W Bush denying that America’s moral standing in the world has gone down under his stewardship, said “Go to India and ask about … their view of America”. Here is my view, not of America, but of Bush who leaves office tomorrow. In an article in the Economic and Political Weekly I wrote in 2003: “Lies, damned lies and Mr Bush”, I had strongly criticised his Iraq adventure. Notwithstanding the nuclear pact, I haven’t changed my views: If anything, they have become even more critical.
He was/is as much a fundamentalist as Osama bin Laden himself, both of whom claim to take their orders directly from God! In the press conference, he was as self-righteous as ever. After all, when he does only God’s bidding, why should he be apologetic? As he said a year after the invasion of Iraq, “I trust God speaks through me …. without that I could not do my job.” Osama and Bush have given enormous strength to each other. Osama, through his attack on 9/11, converted an until then somewhat laid-back President, interested only in giving tax cuts to the rich, into a crusader (in his own words) in the war on terror; the shock lulled the normally questioning and investigative American media (remember the role it played in Watergate, forcing Nixon’s resignation?), and Congress authorised the invasion of Iraq on the basis of lies and deceptions without much scrutiny of the claims. (With breathtaking arrogance and fanfare, the juvenile President announced, far too prematurely as it turned out, “Mission Accomplished”!) Bush has of course more than returned Osama’s favours: His war on terror has cost too many innocent lives and misery for millions of Muslims; his blatant support of Israel; his talk of democracy and his close friendship with Saudi Arabia; his talk of human rights and “America stands for freedom”, and the tortures in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, the “extraordinary renditions” (you and I will describe them as kidnappings) of suspected terrorists — Osama could never have dreamt of a better recruiter for his cause! Perhaps, the most eloquent expression of what too many people think of Bush was the extraordinary spectacle of a journalist hurling shoes at him in a press conference in Baghdad last month. No wonder, in a 2006 study (Hindustan Times, December 16), 34 per cent of those surveyed thought Bush was the worst president in post-war history: Nixon was a distant second at 17 per cent!
His breathtaking incompetency is probably best illustrated by the way the post-war situation in Iraq was handled. Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post has documented it so well in his “Imperial life in the Emerald City”: The topsy turvy priorities; rampant cronyism; adherence to the neocon ideology being far more important than competence or knowledge in appointment of administrators; the “no bid”, “cost + 25 per cent” contracts awarded to American companies which privatised war itself. (One of the biggest beneficiaries was Halliburton, a company once headed by Bush’s sinister Vice-President Dick Cheney.) No wonder tens of billions of dollars spent are unaccounted! As an Iraqi academic quoted in the book says: “We never saw ourselves as Sunnis or Shiites. We were Iraqis first. But the Americans changed all that.” Divide and rule? No, it was more a case of divide and misrule, of breeding intra-Iraqi Shia and Sunni terrorism which dogs the country even today.
What of his economic policies? He very quickly converted record fiscal surpluses into record fiscal deficits; continued his “Robin Hood in reverse role” by slashing taxes on the rich even as the war was costing hundreds of billions; and, when the Chief Executive himself believes in the ideology that “government cannot solve any problem, that it is the problem,” what can one expect except lax regulation, the sub-prime crisis, the Madoff scandal, etc etc?
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As an Indian, I thank Bush for the nuclear pact. But, in too many ways, his ideology and incompetence have damaged both democracy and capitalism, America’s claim to be “the only idealistic nation” (Woodrow Wilson). And he leaves office with the world on the brink of perhaps the worst economic crisis since 1929, thanks at least partly to his ideology!
Tailpiece: In the last few weeks, a couple of Asian countries have shown that we are not far behind the west. Israeli spokesmen have been expressing their concern about Palestinian civilians killed or maimed as a result of their invasion of Gaza, with as much smoothness as UK and US diplomats paid to “lie for their countries”. Second, Raju of Satyam has shown that Kenneth Lay of Enron has little to teach us. Would the first Satyam scandal, viz purchase of the family companies, at last disabuse Indian promoters of their faith in the wisdom and sagacity of US academics as board members? Obviously, the LTCM bankruptcy a decade back was not sufficient!