THE storm of car bombs, rockets, and gunfire in central Iraq last week gave me nasty dija vu back to the January, 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam.

Then, many soldiers of our US army unit were about to depart for special forces camps in Vietnam’s highlands. We stood in mute horror as TV reported these very camps being overrun by North Vietnamese troops, and their garrisons killed to the last man.

We immediately understood the bloody Tet offensive was a huge political and psychological victory for North Vietnam. Tet blew away for good Washington’s claims that there was ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ in the Vietnam war.

Reacting to last week’s Ramazan offensive in Iraq, President George Bush actually claimed it proved that things were improving, though attacks on the US forces have surged from 20 to 30 daily. He called for more US-run Iraqi ‘sepoy’ forces to be deployed — shades of the ill-fated ‘Vietnamization’ strategy of three decades ago.

At times, Bush and his senior aides seem more out of touch with reality than Iraq’s former minister of misinformation, ‘Comical’ Ali. Consider:

Bush was reported shocked and amazed at his mid-October meetings in Bali with moderate, pro-American Muslim leaders when they complained Washington considers all Muslims terrorists. They warned the surprised Bush that his total identification with Israel’s rightwing government was ruining chances for Mideast peace.

Bush was apparently unaware his administration is increasingly viewed abroad as an aggressor and a bitter foe of Islam. We know Bush prides himself in not reading, but being so out of touch staggers the imagination.

Is Bush really unaware that a mainstay of his administration, the Muslim-hunting Attorney General John Ashcroft, claims ‘in America, there is no king but Jesus!’ Or Lt. Gen William Boykin, a loudmouthed imbecile he put in charge of Pentagon anti-terrorism operations, recently claimed Muslims were akin to Satan, and that his god was ‘bigger’ than idols he mistakenly said were worshipped by Muslims. Or that Bush’s neo-conservative advisors, who want the US to destroy all Israel’s enemies, keep calling for ‘World War IV’ against the Muslim world? Bush was too busy blasting Malaysia’s retiring leader, who recently claimed Jews ran the world and the United States, to denounce hateful abuse of Islam by his own administration and its favoured supporters in the media and on the religious extreme right.

Bush, of course, has never been in touch with reality. Just recall his preposterous claim about Iraqi uranium, ‘drones of death,’ ‘vans of death,’ links to Al Qaeda, the imminent threat of mass destruction to the US from Iraq, etc.etc.

VP Dick Cheney, who appears to be running Mideast policy, keeps repeating absurd, discredited claims that Iraq deployed nuclear weapons that threatened the US, though absolutely nothing was found after a five-month, $300 million search

Poor Secretary of State Colin Powell, now demoted to TV talk show guest, disgraced himself before the world at the UN by his lurid, nonsensical claims about Iraq.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq war, went to Baghdad last week where he met the real world for the first time. Iraqi resistance forces rocketed the heavily-guarded al-Rashid Hotel, the imperial cantonment where he and other US VIP’s were lodged. One was reminded of the Vietcong attack on the US embassy in Saigon during Tet.

The attack left Prof Wolfowitz visibly shaking and badly frightened. Here was the fire-eating warlord, the ‘ruthless’ neo-con theoretician who had sent American GIs into combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, trembling in his brand-new chukka boots after the tiniest taste of real war.

Neither Bush, Cheney, nor Wolfowitz ever served in their nation’s armed forces, though all were of military age during the Vietnam War — unless you count George Bush’s sporadic appearances at the Texas Air National Guard.

Wolfowitz, and fellow neo-conservative, pro-Israel administration warmongers, like Richard Perle, Elliot Abrams, Doug Feith, Michael Ledeen, and John Bolton (all avoided military service), who now call for attacks on Iran, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Sudan, and Pakistan — vividly recall the words of American political thinker and poet, Peter Viereck.

In his brilliant book. ‘Metapolitics — The Roots of the Nazi Mind,’ Viereck detailed how so many of the founders of the Germany’s National Socialist Party were artists, writers, and academics. They were ‘intellectuals who lusted for brute violence...a Bohemia in arms,’ wrote Viereck, who warned of ‘bloody-minded professors’ run amok in politics.

Secretary Wolfowitz fits this mould perfectly. He, Cheney, and his fellow neo-cons duped the deeply uninformed and gravely misinformed president into launching two strategically, politically, and financially idiotic foreign wars that have benefited only Israel. The isolated, unworldly Bush is only now becoming dimly aware he has stirred up an anti-America hornet’s nest overseas.

Equally disturbing, thanks to the crusades in Iraq and Afghanistan, total US military spending next year will likely hit 500 billion dollars. Incredibly, this titanic sum is even more in constant dollars than the US spent in Vietnam in 1968, at the height of that war.

The light that optimistic George Bush sees at the end of the Iraq tunnel is probably an onrushing truck, loaded with explosives.—Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2003

TERRORISM is as old as history itself. No contemporary account of this scourge is available but it may not have been as dreadful and devastating as it has become today.

One only hopes that the terrorists would never be able to lay their hands on nuclear weapons. However, the nuclear states have a moral and legal responsibility to forestall this dreadful possibility.

Regrettably, the hope that in a civilized world, the people would refrain from using violence to achieve their objective, however, legitimate it might be, has been shattered. The universally accepted code of conduct, which explicitly forbids people to take law into their own hands to achieve a political or any other objective, is being flouted by the terrorists, with impunity.

Deeply concerned at the growing incidence of terrorist activities, particularly in the western world, the League of Nations attempted to control terrorism and adopted a convention for this purpose in 1937. However, this effort remained inconclusive for want of the convention’s ratification by majority of its members. Astonishingly, the UN Charter, adopted in 1945, remained silent on the specific issue of terrorism. In course of time, the United Nations, however, adopted resolutions and conventions on some other international criminal acts which, one way or the other, had a bearing on the terrorist-related activities.

The United Nations, however, remained seized of the matter and adopted a number of resolutions which condemned terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, and underlined the need for intensifying the fight against it. In the wake of September 11 carnage in America, the UN realized the enormity of the menace. It adopted wide-ranging measures to combat it in accordance with the international law.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the main focus at the world conference on human rights that was held in Vienna in June 1993. At this conference the United States took a vow “to defend the universality of human rights” and declared that “it will never join those who would undermine the Universal Declaration”. It also declared to oppose those who hold that “human rights should be interpreted differently in regions with non-western culture”. Regrettably, however, the United States reneged on its solemn commitment and attacked two Muslim states, Afghanistan and Iraq, in quick succession, ostensibly to suppress terrorism in these countries.

Evidently, the United States showed a propensity for violence in Afghanistan and Iraq in defiance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the inter-American convention against terrorism, adopted by the general assembly of the Organization of American states, which also enunciated that anti-terrorist initiatives must be undertaken by the member states in compliance with their existing obligations under the international law, including the international human rights law.

As a result of indiscriminate bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq, thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, have been killed and other human rights violations are also taking place there, with total immunity to their perpetrators. The International Court of Justice, in its landmark opinion, given in July 1996, inter alia, stated that one of the cardinal principles, constituting the fabric of the humanitarian law, is to protect the civilian population during the war and to establish a distinction between combatants and non-combatants.

As a corollary of this, an invading army must never use weapons and employ other techniques that cannot distinguish between the civilian and military targets. The US-led coalition forces, by deliberately resorting to the indiscriminate bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq, have grossly violated the humanitarian law.

The writer is a former ambassador.

PRESIDENT George W. Bush undertook his most extensive tour of Asia in mid-October. He embarked on his Asian journey at a time when the policies being pursued by his administration had begun to draw heavy criticism at home. The Europeans had always been bothered by the Bush approach — look after the interests of the United States as interpreted by the president and his close advisers and not worry too much about how America was viewed by the world.

However, as President Bush moved toward the last year of his first administration, there was a growing sense in America that Washington had to rethink its approach to the many problems it faced. President Bush was advised by both friend and foe that he had to change his course if he was not to repeat his father’s journey. George H.W. Bush was sent home by the US voters after completing one term as president. The message he received was clear: the American electorate wished to see a man in the White House who was in greater touch with the people and had a better sense of their problems. Does a similar fate await the second Bush?

It was in this environment of rapidly changing perception about his effectiveness as a leader that President Bush undertook his Asian journey. He followed a hectic schedule. According to his aides “his schedule was so tight because he is a business-like person who likes to do his work and get on to the next stop.” In the seven days he spent in Asia, the president covered 23,500 miles, visited six countries, talked to 21 world leaders, and addressed two national legislative assemblies, in the Philippines and Australia.

What took President Bush to Asia on such a whirlwind trip? The ostensible reason was attendance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit at Bangkok which brings together the heads of state and government of most major economies from both sides of the Pacific Ocean. But there were other and more pressing reasons for the attention Asia — more accurately, East Asia — is now receiving from the Bush White House. Two of these were particularly important. They were the need to build a solid base of support to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions and not press ahead with the development of a nuclear bomb.

The second was to help the Muslim — or predominantly Muslim countries — in East Asia contain the rapid spread of both radical and political Islam. There was a third, and less obvious reason, for the Bush administration’s courting of East Asia. This is related to the steady shift in the focus of economic power from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans. In an earlier contribution to this space I had suggested that one manifestation of this shift in global economic power is the rapidly growing size of Asia’s three elephant economies — China, Japan and India. When their gross domestic products are measured in terms of purchasing power parity, China is already the world’s second largest economy with its gross domestic output valued at slightly over $5 trillion compared to the U.S.’s $9.8 trillion in 2001.

The world’s total GDP in 2001 was $45.2 trillion. In other words, while the U.S. accounted for nearly 22 per cent of global output, China’s share was 11.3 per cent. Japan with $3.3 trillion was in the third place while India with $2.9 trillion ranked fourth. In 2001, Asia’s three large economies accounted for a combined total output of $11.2 trillion, 15 per cent more than that of the United States. Nearly one quarter of world output was being produced in these countries.

By comparison, Europe had fallen behind. In 2001 the combined output of the four largest economies of that region — Germany, France, Britain and Italy — was only $6.3 trillion, just a little more than that of China but considerably less than that of America and Asia’s “big three.” Given that China and India are seeing a very rapid growth in their economies while Europe is stagnating and the United States is not likely to grow at rates more than one-half to one-third the average of China and India, there will be a further shift in the centre of global economic power from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

There are other manifestations of this move that are of immediate concern for the United States and have important policy implications for Washington. Over the last several decades there has been a perceptible shift in world’s financial power. In the 1960s, the countries of continental Europe held 40 per cent of global foreign exchange reserves while East Asia’s share, at 21 per cent, was slightly more than one-half of Europe’s.

France and Germany were not happy with that situation. They were not prepared to finance the US consumption and investment at their expense. The French threatened Washington by selling dollars for gold and the Germans, although reluctant to adopt a policy position that would have hurt America, also joined in.

The European attacks on the dollar resulted in a switch into gold by companies and individuals and there was a run on the dollar. This was costly for the Americans since the US under the Bretton Woods agreement, signed just after the Second World War, had committed to hold the price of dollar at $35 to an ounce of gold.

As one economic historian puts it, “after three years of financial diplomacy to contain European selling pressure on dollar, the US abandoned the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in 1971 because it did not want to accept external constraints on either its economic policy or military spending. The world entered an era of floating exchange rates that produced highly inflationary monetary policy and a quadrupling of world oil prices in 1973-74.”

The situation is now much different or not different at all, depending upon how it is viewed. It is different since East Asia now holds the bulk of the available dollar reserves outside the United States. The countries of East Asia increased their share of global reserves from 21 per cent in the early 1970s, when Japan had the bulk of the share, to 30 per cent in 1990 and 70 per cent in 2002. Now China, Hong Kong and Taiwan have also become sizable owners of these resources.

Most East Asian central banks keep 80 to 90 per cent of their reserves in US dollar. The central banks of China and Hong Kong have purchased nearly $100 billion of US government securities during the past year and a half. The Bank of Japan has bought more than $50 billion since May of this year.

But there is, at the same time, not much difference in the sense that the US’s high rates of domestic consumption and a good part of its investment are being financed from outside. This was the case in the 1960s and 1970s and is again the situation in the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st Century. How will the East Asian use their tremendous economic leverage over the United States? Would they be prepared at some stage to disturb the apple cart as the Europeans did in the 1960s?

The answer to this question will be shaped by the way the global economy in general and the US economy in particular develops over the next several months. There is a strong belief in the US that jobs are being lost to the countries in East Asia as a result of the investments being made by the companies in China and other countries of East Asia. Much of East Asian exports come from these businesses. If the US continues to build up large trade deficits with the main East Asian exporters — in particular China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan — there will be pressures in the country during the election year to take steps to correct the situation.

A protectionist response by the Bush administration to the continuing increase in market penetration by China and other East Asian countries cannot be ruled out. The probability of such a policy move would be greater if the Bush camp comes to the conclusion that their man faces a tough competition in the presidential election of November 2004.

But White House will have to contend with some competing pressures. These will come from the American corporations who have invested heavily in China and other parts of East Asia to take advantage of the easy availability of highly skilled workforce at a fraction of the cost that would have to be paid in America. These corporations also went to East Asia to take advantage of a weak Chinese Yuan which makes it highly profitable to export the goods manufactured to the United States.

It was for this reason that the message taken by John Snow, the U.S. treasury secretary, to Beijing in a visit shortly before President Bush’s own journey did not have the support of large American companies with large production bases in China. Increasing the value of Yuan with respect to dollar would make Chinese imports into the US more expensive and save some jobs in America. However, such a shift in the value of the two currencies will negatively affect the bottom line of some of the major U.S. corporations.

The labour traditionally votes for Democrats in the U.S. while the bosses of corporate America provide handsome contributions to the election war chests of the Republicans. It is not surprising, therefore, that Secretary Snow gave his message to the new leaders in Beijing but did not put much force behind it.

If the US reacted negatively towards China in the field of trade by imposing some constraints on the goods imported from that country, Beijing could retaliate by announcing a shift of its reserves to the euro or gold. Such a move would put a severe strain on dollar. Or the Chinese could slow down the rate at which they are purchasing US government securities. These purchases — as those done by other countries with large foreign reserves — are financing US’s growing fiscal deficits.

With large foreign buyers showing less enthusiasm for purchasing and holding American government financial assets, the US Treasury would be forced to tap the domestic financing markets to a considerably greater extent. This would cause long-term interest rates to go up in the US, slow down private investment and affect the tepid economic recovery that is in place today.

It is for this reason that President Bush was eager to cover so many miles in East Asia, visit so many countries, and meet so many national leaders. He was urging the Muslim countries to choose moderation against Islamic radicalism. He was also strengthening the resolve of North Korea’s neighbours to contain Pyongyang. These subjects and their implications will be the subject of the article next week. Today I want to underscore that one reason for President Bush’s Asian journey was to strengthen his country’s economic links with that part of the world. As one commentator wrote recently: “The White House will never acknowledge the potential vulnerability resulting from this relationship... It is ironic that fiscal and foreign policies designed to protect US power had created a new form of financial interdependence with China and Japan.”

SINCE the times West’s material and technological development outstripped that of the East, the reasons for this happening have been pondered over by scholars and observers all over the world. Within the East, the Muslim world has felt the impact of this widening gap, in particular, since Islam has a distinct ideological framework that is seen to be at variance with the western ways of thought and approach.

The aftermath of 9/11 tragedy has increased the misunderstandings about Islam in the West, and has, at the same time, made the Muslim world ever more conscious of its having been left much behind from the West in material as well as conceptual terms. Thus, there is need for a reconciliation with the West on the one hand and for more organized efforts to develop the Muslim world in consonance with the vast resources that it possesses.

Events in recent times have made it clear how urgent it is to understand Islam. There are 57 Muslim states over one billion followers of Islam whose spread is global. The urgency demands a two-way process: for the Muslims and non-Muslims to make an effort to understand each other.

Those who believe in the concept of the so-called “Clash of Civilizations” convey the false impression that Muslims are the main opponents of the West. Of course, this is not a new idea. This is in fact a continuation of an older idea that Islam is a predatory civilization threatening the West.

Prof Richard Falk, speaking about Justice in a globalized world, states; “To a large extent, this human rights discourse is unavoidably perceived, with varying degrees of justification and opportunism, as tainted by false universalism and is an expression of western hegemony, one feature of which has been and continues to be, the suppression of civilizational identity and difference — particularly Islam, which has historically been perceived as a threat by the West.” Muslims must reject the idea of the so-called clash of civilizations.

Negative press and propaganda by the electronic media of the West has conditioned the public to expect the worst from a people widely viewed as “terrorist”, “fundamentalist” and “fanatic.” Unfortunately Muslims are not trying to help their case, particularly after September 11. A few determined and misguided people cannot be allowed to hijack a global religion by their action involving millions of people. These people should not be allowed to besmirch an entire civilization whether it agrees or does not agree with their thinking or action. Islam’s vision of the world is by definition global. There is neither East nor West in the eyes of God.

The understanding of the divine dispensation, often distorted through the prism of violence, is wrong. In fact Muslims face an internal challenge. When we reduce a great religion to mere rituals, it loses its spirit and encourages use of violence and terror. Muslims must face the challenge with poise and confidence to rediscover the mainsprings of Islamic civilization. They need to reinterpret Islam in terms of justice, integrity, tolerance and a quest for knowledge.

In order to improve relations and dispel misgivings between the West and the Ummah, a two-pronged approach of shunning confrontation and pursuing an enlightened moderation be adopted by the latter. This is necessary to pave way for the emancipation of the Muslim world. To project the thinking further, the scope of emancipation has to be determined: from what? In which framework? To what extent?

The concept of emancipation is inevitably linked to enlightenment or what is referred to as “liberal Islam.” Unfortunately, the West considers religion a personal affair, more or less isolated from the social, cultural and political stream of life. Orthodox or fundamental Islam is an expression commonly used in the West to deprecate practising the essence of what is a way of life rather than a set of supposedly archaic beliefs and rituals, impervious to progress and incapable of keeping in step with a changing world.

The latest OIC summit in Malaysia has focused on the major problems facing the Muslim world problems and issues that need to be examined in depth. For this reason it is essential to review in some detail the challenges and opportunities in the modern world that are there. As a member of the Pakistan delegation to the first meeting of the Islamic heads of state and government held at Rabat in 1969, I was a witness to the lofty ideals that were set for the organization called the OIC. So far the OIC has failed to develop a clear perception of its role in the modern world and consequently the Muslim world has remained in a state of paralysis.

The OIC needs to be turned into a dynamic and forward-looking body that could effectively represent the global Muslim voice. It is heartening to note that a commission of eminent persons drawn from OIC member states is being set up to develop a strategy and a plan of action to help the Muslim Ummah meet challenges of the 21st century. Could the OIC be converted into a body capable of taking concerted actions as the European Union or Nato do?

As President Musharraf rightly said at the recent summit, “We are at a defining moment in history; we can either seize the moment and define history, or we can let the moment define the destiny.” Muslims must focus attention on poverty reduction, expansion of production, science and technology, higher education, health and human resource development to achieve prosperity and stability within the Islamic world.

While steps are being taken to convert the OIC into a dynamic organization, let us consider the role Pakistan can play in the emancipation of Muslim Ummah. President Musharraf stated recently that Pakistan could play a role in the emancipation of the Ummah by dispelling the misgivings between the West and the Ummah. His remarks are of far-reaching implications. In substance, these conclusions echo the thoughts of relatively recent enlightened Muslim thinkers such as Allama Iqbal and Syed Abul Hasan Nadvi. Also, the remarks seem to be intimately linked, in a large measure, to the thought processes of a great reformer and educationist, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan.

The president is right in saying that “Pakistan has the strength and resources to deliver.” But both “the strength” and “the resources” need to be explored and developed. This requires tremendous will and determined efforts. The basic strength is there, but are there not weaknesses too to be removed to achieve the strength to move forward? The resources are fundamentally human, but would not those resources need to be systematically developed towards well-defined goals? If so, how and with what means of education, training, propagation and reformation?

In removing the conflicts between the West and the Ummah, the responsibility of the West through its acts of commission and omission has also to be taken into account and flaws and shortcomings have to be addressed. This will require vigorous efforts at creating a better climate of mutual confidence and understanding.

The international community can help secure just solutions for the political disputes where Muslims are being unjustly oppressed and assist the Islamic world in its internal strategy of socio-economic development. Quoting President Musharraf again, “It is quite evident that the world order and global peace cannot be restored without addressing the conflicts which beset the Islamic world today.”

Just and peaceful resolution of disputes involving Muslims will automatically marginalize those extremist groups in the Islamic world which preach violence and terrorism as a mode of political action and revenge against the West.

The writer is a retired major-general of the Pakistan army.

Email: genumar@yahoo.com