Is this the time for war?

AFTER the United Nations’ chief inspector, Hans Blix, delivered his testimony to the Security Council on January 5 followed by a detailed statement by Colin L. Powell, the US Secretary of State, on the same subject a few days later, it would be hard to argue that Iraq is innocent of the charges levelled against it.

Blix spoke at length about less than full cooperation received by his team of inspectors from the officials in Baghdad. Powell used the information gathered from numerous intelligence sources to argue that Iraq had something to hide. These testimonies led to two obvious questions: What was Iraq hiding? And why was it at such pains to keep from the prying view of the intelligence agencies whatever it was hiding?

In spite of twelve years of sanctions and eight years of inspections, it appears that Iraq has continued with the development of weapons prohibited by law — by the 17 resolutions passed by the Security Council since the conclusion of the first Gulf war in 1991. The question is not that any sovereign state has the right to protect itself from foreign aggression by all the means available to it. That right exists but Iraq circumscribed its options by agreeing to the terms laid down by the Security Council in 1991. It is not allowed to develop certain weapons — the weapons of mass destruction.

The point that Iraq should not be singled out as the state that must follow the letter and spirit of international law while others are allowed to defy it with impunity does not help those who oppose war. It is true that India and Israel have refused to obey the resolutions passed by the Security Council at different points in time without incurring the wrath of the international community. There is little international interest in the plight of the Kashmiris and Palestinians living in two different territories occupied through aggression and kept under subjugation against the dictates of international law. But to say that two wrongs make a right is not an argument that can win a case in any court, certainly not in an international court. To do that is a weak argument for opposing action against Iraq.

If the burden of evidence and the weight of international law supports those who want action against Iraq, why is there a strong body of opinion across the globe against any precipitous action? There is a great deal of substance in these arguments and even if they are being drowned out by the drumbeat of the coming war, it is worth making them clearly.

Those who argue against the impending US action against Iraq do so on the basis of three sets of assumptions: That this is not the time to go to war against Iraq; that war is never a good option — or, at best, should be the last option after all other means have been exhausted; and that the cost-benefit equation for making war against Iraq is weighted heavily in favour of not taking this course. Today, we will explore the first two arguments, leaving the third for a more elaborate discussion some time later.

First, the question: Is war the right response to Iraq’s defiance of international will? As an American analyst wrote after the presentation by Powell on February 5, for President George W. Bush and his aides “the answer is obvious. Iraq is in violation of numerous United Nations resolutions demanding that it destroy its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. A tough new UN inspections regimen has failed to bring Iraq into compliance. If Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were to fall into the hands of the terrorists, the results would likely be horrific. Military force is the only way left of destroying the political nexus between rogue states and terrorist groups.

For Washington, the showdown with Iraq has developed into a test of the credibility of both the United States and the United Nations. This is what the American president said in his weekly radio address on February 8: “Having made its demands, the Security Council must not back down when those demands are defied and mocked by a dictator.”

The case for war against Iraq therefore hinges on the likelihood of the country providing potential terrorists access to weapons of mass destruction. A case thus built leads to some obvious questions. Will Saddam Hussein support terrorism if he is threatened with imminent war? Is his motive to aid terrorism or protect himself? In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, a highly respected magazine published by the Council on Foreign Relations, Columbia University Professor Richard K. Betts argues that Hussein is much more likely to authorize use of biological or chemical weapons against American targets if he perceives that his regime is in danger and he has nothing to lose. Even if chances of such an attack are as low as one in six, wrote Betts, the risks inherent in attempting to overthrow Hussein resembles a game of “Russian roulette.”

Betts wrote his article under the title of “Suicide from fear of death,” using the characterization employed by Germany’s Bismark in describing preventive war. “Many Americans still take for granted that a war to topple Saddam Hussein can be fought as it was in 1991: on American terms. Even then they recognize that the blood price may prove greater than the optimists hope, most still assume it will be paid by the US military or by people in the region. Until very late in the game, few Americans focused on the chance that the battlefield could extend back to their own homeland.

“Yet if a US invasion succeeds, Saddam will have no reason to withhold his best parting shot — which could be the use of weapons of mass destruction inside the United States. Such an attack on US civilians could make the death toll from September 11 look small. But Washington has done little to prepare the country for this possibility,” wrote Betts. War against Iraq, therefore, could bring about a conclusion that Washington fears the most — the use of weapons of mass destruction on itself and its allies.

“If war is not the answer, however, what is? Is there an alternative that can both command enthusiastic international support and effectively disarm Saddam Hussein? The answer is yes, and it involves a plan for truly coercive inspections,” wrote Jessica Tuckman Mathews in a newspaper article published a few days ago. Mathews commands respect in Washington. She is the president of the Washington-based think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The case for coercive inspections that Mathews presents is interesting since, if adopted, it will provide not only teeth to the United Nations systems, something that many nations, including Pakistan, has sought for a very long time. More important, it will produce a counterpoint to the enormous power wielded by the United States after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A bipolar world is always better than a world in which there is only one dominant player. It is interesting that the genius of the American political system is based entirely on achieving checks and balances among different centres of power. This principle needs to be extended to the international system.

It may take time — perhaps a long time — before other nation states gather enough strength to challenge the United States. The European Union may do that one day if it is able to agree on a constitution that gives more power to a central authority by reducing somewhat the sovereignty of the component states. But the different reaction to the US plans on Iraq on the part of “old” and “new” Europe may postpone that day.

With its economy growing at a break-neck speed, China may also acquire sufficient economic and military muscle sometimes in the future to inhibit the exercise of unilateralism by Washington. But both options lie in the future, perhaps a very distant future. In the meantime, for the health of the world political order a mechanism is needed to constrain actions by the world’s only remaining superpower. The plan proposed by Mathews could lead in that direction.

She argues in favour of a measured approach that would make it possible for the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) to be given coercive powers, the types of powers all law enforcement authorities must have to enforce laws. UNMOVIC is the successor to the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) WHICH was created to enforce the resolutions passed by the Security Council after the cessation of hostilities in 1991. However, the Iraqis were able to frustrate the efforts of UNSCOM which eventually led to the establishment of UNMOVIC under the leadership of Hans Blix, a Swedish diplomat who had once headed the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Based in Vienna, IAEA also has the authority to enforce international agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1964. The current inspection regime applied to Iraq is the joint responsibility of UNMOVIC and IAEA. The IAEA is headed by Mohammad ElBaradei, an Egyptian.

Under the Mathews plan, the inspection regime could be enforced by putting “the most qualified and experienced experts available” in the field as demanded by the Security Council resolution 1441 passed on November 7, 2002. That language was put into the resolution by the United States to enable the UN to bypass its practice of achieving geographical balance in its hiring. A strengthened group of inspectors — something the French foreign minister proposed in his response to the statement by Colin Powell to the Security Council on February 5 — should be assisted by U-2 planes that can, according to Mathews, “detect activities above ground and underground, and use sweep cameras to photograph large areas and zero in with high resolution.”

The international community, acting through the Security Council, could determine additional “no-fly” zones to those already being enforced in Iraq’s northern and southern areas by the air forces of America and Britain. To these “no-fly” zones, the Security Council can add “no-drive” zones to take care of the American fear that Iraq is using mobile chemical and biological factories on wheels — trucks equipped to produce weapons of mass destruction.

These mobile manufacturing facilities, along with the alleged Iraq practice of sanitizing existing factories in anticipation of UN inspectors and allowing lethal weapons to slip out, constituted the centrepiece of Powell’s case against Iraq.

These facilities could be destroyed by UNMOVIC. To do so, it need not depend on the Iraqis to take action. Instead, the inspectors would have the authority to call a UN air force or UN soldiers stationed inside Iraq to carry out these operations. For such an inspection regime to succeed, the United States and other countries that have intelligence information will be required to help UNMOVIC and IAEA.

“How long coercive inspections would take depends on how rigorously the new rules are applied and therefore how quickly Saddam Hussein gets the message that no ending is possible other than disarmament. Roughly a year is a good guess. Success will require unqualified support from a united Security Council. That could be achieved today, I believe, but it will not be easy to sustain,” concluded Mathews. Will such an approach work in place of a war that the US seems determined to use to disarm Iraq? We will attempt to answer this question as events unfold.

Osama revived to support war?

BETWEEN last Monday and Tuesday the western media put across what is purported to be a fresh message from Osama bin Laden. It is being read as an ultimatum of total war on the United States, and so helpfully providing the United States just the grounds it needs to launch its war on Iraq.

The link between Osama and the outside world is the Al Jazeera television network, neatly located in Qatar, a state with the best of relations with the United States. It is inconceivable that any enterprise safely ensconced in Qatar, should not be closely US-friendly if it is to stay in business and prosper.

Al Jazeera is doing famously. This television outfit has been making sensational ‘disclosures’ in the past at critically sensitive moments. Now again is one such moment. Today the world finds itself in a cauldron of the most incandescent tensions since World War II began 55 years ago.

In a dramatic reaction to the Osama scare, British Prime Minister Tony Blaire’s government ordered the most extraordinary and spectacular security measures in his country. The BBC television has shown thousands of police and army personnel deployed in and around London’s Heathrow airport. This has all the elements that add up to an elaborately worked up drama replete with sensation, charade, even war fever.

First, let us look at the Osama saga as developed all over again. It is well known that this character, not unlike Saddam, is the creation of the United States. He was, not unlike Saddam, at one stage an ardent US ally against ‘godless communism.’ Saddam was created, reared and heavily armed to act as an aggressive foil to Iran. An informed guess is that it was in that phase of torrid Saddam-US affair that Saddam may have been given some of those weapons about the awareness of which the Bush administration talks with such strong confidence.

Osama was raised, reared and commissioned to organize, train, arm and marshal the Taliban force in the United States’ war against the Soviet Union, fought on Afghan soil, with US guns fired from Afghan (Taliban) shoulders, to the ruin of the Afghan state, people and land. Soon after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, the US abandoned the war-ravaged Afghans, only to be reminded of old pal Osama after 9/11. And it is Al Jazeera, of all the elaborate TV networks in the world, to maintain close liaison with the real or imaginary old warrior.

Now is not too soon to wonder once again about the Al Jazeera phenomenon. How did it start on its increasingly inscrutable career? Who started it? Why was it started? Who finances it? Is it a public limited enterprise or a personal fad of some playboy Gulf sheikh? Has anybody any idea of its profits or losses? Who pockets the profits, or who takes care of the losses? What exactly is its character and credentials? How and why is it able to be so close to Osama, assuming he is still alive?

These are not idle questions. Yet nobody is asking them.

If you are reposing total trust in what the Al Jazeera sleuths occasionally churn out, it is presumed that for you its word and pictures represent the gospel truth that must be swallowed hook, line and sinker.

According to the BBC news and commentators (Wednesday), there is a section of the public in Britain that is sceptical about this whole Osama scoop by Al Jazeera. Many in Britain saw the suddenly staged security operation as over-reaction. Was it not studiously staged to endorse the US obsession about a military assault on Iraq?

The timing of this fresh series of Osama shenanigans could not be without a message. It comes in the thick of what is admitted to be the most unsettling crisis of faith within the 19-nation European defence alliance, the formidable Nato. This development has caused a deep crack in what was once a sacrosanct cross-Atlantic fraternity of the allies of World War II and later of the cold war.

One cannot help feeling mystified about the whole Osama affair from its very beginning, and now particularly the new twist. Osama has become something very like the proverbial Scarlet Pimpernel. “They seek him here, they seek him there; they seek him everywhere. He is not in heaven, he is not in hell, this damned illusive Pimpernel...” At hand or in hiding, Osama once was very useful. If anything, he is even more useful today and may only be vitally needed in the days to come — to help develop the needed case to launch a war. So the fact of his existence, or the fiction of it, must be kept alive and perpetuated by some sensational disclosures from time to time.

Evidently, the Al Jazeera has no difficulty in managing to locate him, contact him and obtain messages from him that provide the grist for some mills. These messages are to be broadcast to the whole world just when such stuff is needed by certain powers to promote their passionately pursued projects. Is it believable that the sophisticated networks available to the US and the UK intelligence juggernauts are so helpless just where the Al Jazeerah is so efficient and effective?

Tell that to the marines.

The US and its British allies have bombed Afghanistan and Iraq at will. And Afghanistan is where Osama is so strongly believed to be — alive and well and operational, too. So well indeed that he has been able to defy and survive without a scratch the US carpet-bombing in Afghanistan and penetrative military action in its neighbourhood.

So well organized indeed is Osama as to be in a position to coolly communicate to the world scalding anti-US tirades at his own convenience. And, thanks to the Al Jazeera, the world is all eyes and ears. This is more than enough to strain credibility of the innocents in the cradle.

It is not unreasonable to wonder if this latest of Osama scares is not resurrected at this moment to intensify tensions, to sweep the world off its feet and make it fall in line to endorse the joint United States-United Kingdom passion to carry war to the Middle East.

This campaign is already being seen by most people around the world to be basically in aid of Israel that has tied itself into so many knots and has to be rescued.

All this noise and fury now signifies no more than feigned concern for the lofty and noble objectives purported to be pursued so loudly and vehemently in the name of world peace. The truth lies elsewhere, and pretty far away, too.

Look at history. Whoever started war in the name of war? But war has always turned out to be war — and invariably an insane and devastatingly self-defeating enterprise. Try to recall that after signing a pact with Adolf Hitler in September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain triumphantly assured the world of “peace with honour.” Exactly one year later, in September 1939, started the most devastating war in human history. War will always be war, call it by whatever name.

Who should know this better than the United Stated? It has already fought more than 20 wars since the “war to end all wars” ended in 1945? More wars have been waged and fought during 55 years following the last Great War than ever before. And more of these by the United States than any other single power. This fact should be within the knowledge of the sole superpower of our world today.

It should know what war means and also that there is no problem sane human mind cannot solve without rushing for the gun, or the nuclear bombs. The US is the only nuclear power to have used (abuse?) them.

Buying loyalties with cash

Khawar Butt is a dear friend of mine, and as with most friends of mine, it starts with a cricket connection and then the friendship opens up a host of other pursuits.

Like me, Khawar is old fashioned and reads books and to make sure that I keep up my reading habit, he presents me with a book, once in a while. He sent me Bob Woodward’s Bush At War. Bob Woodward leapt into prominence during Watergate.

I read the book, described as “a reporting tour de force.” That it certainly is but it avoids moral judgment. The stakes are too high for writers of his eminence to be sitting on the fence or hiding behind a curtain of objectivity. It is not my purpose to review the book. But to take a few nuggets from it and get to a mindset.

Two countries, India and Israel had seen 9/11 as a great opportunity. They correctly judged the United States to be at its most vulnerable. George Bush had already declared: “This will be a monumental struggle between good and evil. But good will prevail.” Into the cauldron of this great piety and blind anger, Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card informed George Bush: “ We’ve got another threat on the White House. We’re taking it seriously.”

The threat? The CIA had just sent a warning from the Indian intelligence service saying that Pakistani jihadists were planning an imminent attack on the White House. This went beyond fishing in troubled waters. This was malevolent disinformation, its sole purpose was to exploit the passion, to link Pakistan with Al Qaeda sub-consciously, by throwing in the name of Pakistan in the brew of suspects. This was the diabolical mindset of Shivaji, of Godse and the RSS.

Luckily, Bush wasn’t buying. But Israel has been luckier. It has been provided with an open, general licence to do what it pleased and it went after the Palestinians with vengeance. There were, also, some in the United States who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to pursue a broader agenda. Bob Woodward mentions that “Rumsfeld was raising the possibility that they could take advantage of the opportunity offered by the terrorist attack to go after Saddam immediately.” The tears had not dried in the eyes of the grieving Americans. But Rumsfeld was opposed by Powell who felt that they should be focused on Al Qaeda. Round one had gone to Colin Powell. The priority was Afghanistan. For the time being.

But Woodward’s book provides a fascinating insight into how the CIA went about winning the minds and hearts of the National Alliance and the warlords in Afghanistan. The decision had been taken to not only go after Osama bin Laden but the Taliban, to effect a regime-change. Enter Gary. He had been an officer in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA for 32 years and had also served in Islamabad.

Writes Bob Woodward: “Gary was leading the first critical wave of President George W. Bush’s war against terrorism. With him was a team of CIA covert paramilitary officers with communications gear that would allow them to set up direct classified links with headquarters. Between his legs was a large strapped metal suitcase that contained $3 million in United States currency, nonsequential $100 notes. He always laughed when he saw a television show or movie where someone passed $1 million in a small attache case. It just wouldn’t fit.”

The strategy was clear. The loyalties of the Northern Alliance and other warlords had to be literally won by cash. Not even the promise of money but money on the table. Thus in Gary’s first meeting with Engineer Muhammad Arif Sarwari who headed the Northern Alliance’s intelligence and security service, this is how Bob Woodward describes the meeting: “Gary placed a bundle of cash on the table: $500,000 in 10 one-foot stacks of $100 bills. He believed it would be more impressive than the usual $200,000, the best way to say, we’re here, we’re serious, here’s money, we know you need it.” In all a total of some $75 million was dispersed, in similar generosity.

I don’t think anyone saw it as blood-money. The deaths and destruction in Afghanistan was for a higher purpose. George Bush had defined it: “There is a human condition that we most worry in times of war. There is a value system that cannot be compromised-God-given values. These aren’t United States-created values. There are values of freedom and the human conditions and mothers loving their children.” Afghan mothers could not have agreed more.

One is struck with the informal ways the discussions took place. At one point Colin Powell refers to Pakistanis as “Pakis.” Perhaps he did not realize that the word ‘Paki’ has a racist origin and is used disparagingly. Almost like calling an Afro-American a “nigger.” One has to mind one’s language.

A milestone and miles to go

LAST month’s news that Latinos have become the largest minority in this nation of immigrants has been coming for decades and is being ruminated upon by experts of every stripe.

Still, that official census click should spur Americans to ponder once again how best to adapt to and accommodate this latest in a long line of remarkably vibrant, in some ways problematic, populations to leap into the melting pot, salad bowl or whatever metaphor for e pluribus unum is currently in vogue.

Waves of Irish, Italian, Chinese, Filipino and Russian immigrants have tested the United States’ resources and tolerance. The new majority is more geographically and culturally heterogeneous than these other groups — a dark-skinned physicist whose grandparents hailed from the sophisticated metropolis of Mexico City and a pale herdsman just arrived from the Andean hinterlands could both fit the “Latino” bill. Yet, by and large, the Latino population struggles in the same socioeconomic quicksand as other immigrants.

The escape route is education. Latino communities can help themselves and do the nation a great service by using their growing political clout to take an even greater role in the fight for better public schooling for everyone from toddlers to adults.

Almost half the Latinos in the United States are under 26 years old. In the last two decades, the number of Latino children attending public school has doubled. Sadly, almost a third of Latinos in the United States, including the foreign-born, drop out before completing high school, and Latino students as a group do poorer academically than whites and most other minorities.

The problem begins when they are barely out of diapers. Presently, Latino parents are less likely than others to enrol their 3- and 4-year-olds in pre-primary education programmes such as Head Start. One reason is that there just aren’t enough such schools in predominantly Latino neighbourhoods.

Latinos should badger Congress to expand and strengthen this excellent programme and push for more preschool programmes at the state and local levels. Next, Latinos need to redouble their efforts as allies in the fight to improve elementary and secondary education; the dreadful Los Angeles Unified School District is a prime target for revolutionary reform.

Finally, even as schools get better, pushing young Latinos up the socioeconomic ladder, the nation will need to address the two-thirds of Latino adults who are foreign-born and, on average, arrive in the United States with only a fifth-grade education.— Los Angeles Times

The emperor’s new world

A SUPERPOWER goes to war to establish that it is super. That is the principal difference between wars begun by the dominant power of the age, and those initiated by lesser mortals. War is always an exercise in self-interest, although every generation has attempted to disguise bloodshed with a variation of morality. Self-interest is the only logic behind war; to expect any other is illogical.

The compass is set not by the liberation struggle of a Moses but by the doctrines of a Joshua. The only difference between right and wrong is the difference between success and failure. If you succeed you are right; if you fail, you could go horribly wrong. A superpower wastes your time, and its own, when it narrates its doctrines across reams of bureaucratic paper. Its true doctrine is built around two words: either/or. Either you fall into line, or we will come and get you. This is true whether the world is controlled by the Pax Romana or Pax Americana. This is not an ultimatum designed for permanent war, for there is no such thing.

But there is something called a permanent interest; or at least an interest that exists as long as you have the will and the ability to enforce it. And there is always a Pope’s Line established to maintain the balance as defined by the presiding genius of the moment. (The Pope’s Line was drawn by Rome in the last decade of the fifteenth century; it divided the world between Spain and Portugal to ensure that the two powers did not waste their energy in internecine conflict as they set out to conquer the world in the name of Christendom. Spain got the Americas, and Portugal got Africa and India.)

The last time America went to war was in 2001. It did not go to war because the Taliban were evil. The Taliban consisted of the same people with the same ideology before and after 9/11. Far from confronting the Taliban when they destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas and terrorized sections of the own people, America was gradually coming to an accommodation with this government. American missiles uprooted the Taliban after 9/11 because they were hunting for an enemy that had shaken the empire with its sheer audacity. This audacity could not be left unpunished, or the credibility of America would crumble. Mulla Omar, the leader of the Taliban, was a bit surprised by the American reaction precisely because he had done business with the Americans before 9/11. Americans thought that the world had changed after 9/11 but that was a misperception. The world remained the same, but America changed. The world must now deal with the meaning of this change; and this means that friends as well as foes (not to mention the large floating population in between) will have to find new equations.

A superpower’s real problem with war is not the military element. That is largely preordained. No one in his senses thought that the Taliban could withstand American might in a conventional war (the results of the unconventional one are awaited). No one in his senses believes that Iraq can do anything beyond postponing the inevitable if George Bush begins operations against Saddam Hussein. The problem lies in the definition of victory. That is far more complicated.

What was the purpose of the Afghanistan war? To bring Hamid Karzai to power under (literal) American protection? Surely not. The purpose was to eliminate, or at least arrest, the standard bearers of anti-American terrorism. Specifically, the objective was to get Osama bin Laden and Mulla Omar, and then, through due process, identify and eliminate the whole Al Qaeda network.

By this yardstick the war in Afghanistan has not been won yet by America. Osama bin Laden drove home this fact through his favourite method, a videotape, distributed to the media for international dissemination. No one had any doubts that the tape was authentic. Washington confirmed its authenticity when Colin Powell used the tape as his evidence of collusion between Osama and Saddam (a person, incidentally, that Osama dislikes only slightly less intensely than he dislikes George Bush).

Osama’s descriptions of the battle at Tora Bora could only have come from him. His network is clearly still in place, even if reduced in capability. Its loyalty to him is the key to his personal survival. The hunters cannot find him, although he can find his hunters when he chooses to do so. He has not altered his looks, as the tape confirms. He is realistic about his chances of survival, and has suggested that he will soon die in some encounter with the Americans, who are now in physical charge of his operating base in the Afghan-Pakistan crossover belt.

What is the American objective in Iraq? Regime change is the simplistic answer. It is not a matter of merely finding an Iraqi Hamid Karzai. To begin with, the process through which regime change will come will disturb the geopolitics of the region substantially and substantively. Turkey has not agreed to participate in the war against Saddam without securing its own strategic interests. This in effect means that Turkish troops will control the north of Iraq, and occupy it.

Iran, which fought a war with Iraq for eight bloody years, will use the disintegration of authority in Baghdad to define the quasi-independence of the majority Shia population in southern Iraq. How much of all this America is able to shape, or control, is uncertain.

Every emperor has a dream designed for history. It is unimportant that George Bush picked his dream from someone else’s slag heap. He couldn’t remember the name of any country apart from Mexico when he was elected but today wants to reorder the world. America, like George Bush, was in isolationist mood before 9/11; it switched to a siege mode after 9/11. The road to George Bush’s dream lies through Baghdad.

So here is the future according to Bush the Second. Saddam Hussein is disposed of with maximum power and minimum fuss. Ideally he should be discovered dead in a bunker after a firefight. Crowds throng the streets as Bush waves to Baghdad via satellite from the safety of the White House (Al Qaeda threats have prevented his triumphal cavalcade through liberated Baghdad). A coalition government flies in from London, consisting largely of exiled Iraqis who have been on someone’s payroll for years. Within six months of the war there is a free and fair election in Iraq that legitimizes this forward-looking, dynamic administration that has already obtained billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and billions of dollars of promises from Japan.

At which point the American triumvirate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld takes its forefingers out of the pocket and begins to wave it furiously at every Arab regime that has been on its side so far. Reform is now the approved script. The Saudi royal family must cut down on the collective loot, stop funding quasi-terrorist outfits and empower its parliament. Every royal family in the region must check with Queen Elizabeth about how to slink into a corner, as far from executive authority as possible. Army dictatorships will, of necessity, be less obedient but pressure will be applied there as well. This rule number one in the New World, now officially labelled the New Middle East (NME for short).

NME will hinge around economic reform and a new economic order on the lines of the European Union. Who shall be the driving force? Why, Turkey of course — particularly since Turkey is not going to be let into the European Union (who wants more Muslims out there?). Turkey’s destiny must be the old Ottoman empire, a thought not totally dismissed by the modern Islamists in power there. And the second bulwark? Israel, naturally. Turkey and Israel have always been partners and should work well together, with Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Egypt in harness.

What about that little place called Palestine? Oh yes. Talks between Ariel Sharon’s Israel and a new Palestine leadership have begun; out of them will emerge an independent, democratic Palestine that is co-opted at once into the New Economic Order (NEO for short). In one sweep of the magic wand, history is rendered impotent, the jihad is over, Bush the First is avenged, Bush the Second gets the Nobel Prize for Peace, oil flows at ten dollars a barrel making the world safe for consumer goods, after which everyone can get together to tell the Mullas of Iran where they get off. Since George Bush has been re-elected in 2004 there is sufficient time for this agenda to become reality.

By 2008 Saddam Hussein will be a forgotten nightmare, and France and Germany sunk to the level of third powers.

The writer is editor-in-chief of ‘Asian Age’, New Delhi.

Duct tape and anthrax

ANYONE complying with the US government’s call to lead a “normal life” while wriggling through plastic-covered doorways has a right to wonder why authorities haven’t duct-taped together a better policy to prevent bioterrorism.

Important as last week’s chilling home improvement advice may be, Washington should be addressing higher priorities, such as finding the money to train and equip local fire departments and other agencies that would be first on the scene of a terror attack. Yet in Los Angeles and many other cities, health officials still lack bioterror detectors, emergency room physicians still wait for protective suits and firefighters use radios that are on incompatible frequencies.

The government also should improve its system for tracking how Ebola, the plague, anthrax and other deadly pathogens move through U.S. laboratories. Centers for Disease Control should keep track of at least 350 national labs known to possess stockpiles of “select agents”.— Los Angeles Times