| 27 May 2004 | Thursday | 07 Rabi-us-Saani 1425 |
Sorry state of the nation
Indian polls: an orderly exercise
Rewriting Iraqi history
The deepening rift
Amid the flurry of speculation in connection with the federal budget for 2004-05 to be presented to parliament on June 5, what is certain is that there will be no new taxes. Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz is emphatic on that point.
But that is no news. Former finance ministers have said as much but then have gone on to increase the old taxes or spread them to new areas. That is how the tax revenue of Rs. 404 billion in 2001-02 rose to Rs. 510 billion in the current year - within three years.
After all, the government's expenditure keeps rising and the budget deficit had also been increasing, with the result that financial managers have had to find more sources of revenue to meet part of the additional expenditure. Hence, the tax target for next year has been fixed at Rs. 576 billion from the current year's Rs. 510 billion.
In fact, when Shaukat Aziz became finance minister four years ago, he wanted to truly modernize the taxation system and proposed to do away with all federal taxes except income tax, customs duties and sales tax, which he described as the tax of the future.
As a first step, he did away with wealth tax which was more of an irritant than a significant source of revenue. He found that other taxes were not elastic, particularly income and corporate taxes, while import duties were going down following the global trend and IMF demand. Hence he could not opt for the three-tax formula. Now, central excise alone provides him with Rs. 47.7 billion in revenue.
The Rs. 576 billion revenue target for next year, which means an increase of Rs. 66 billion over the current year's tax revenues or 12. 9 per cent more, appears to be the same as proposed by the IMF.
Usually the increase in tax revenues is targeted at nine per cent more than the previous year's; however, the following year's revenue expectations are higher because of the projected economic growth rate of 6.8 per cent and an investment of 19.3 per cent of the GDP which should encourage economic activity and produce larger revenues.
Corporate revenues should increase substantially as the major companies are doing well. The larger taxpayers' unit should be able to report very good results. Add to that the 10 per cent tax on dividend in the hands of the shareholders.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali has been calling for an investor-friendly and business-friendly budget. He has been joined by the minister for investment, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, and industries minister, Liaquat Jatoi. While Dr Shaikh wants strong fiscal investment incentives, Mr Jatoi wants relief for the existing industries so that they can produce more and expand their capacity.
Every sector of the taxation system has been identified for tax relief by press reports. To begin with, it has been stated that the threshold for income tax is to be raised from Rs. 80,000 to Rs. 100,000.
If that is done the number of taxpayers, which has come down to over just a million, may slip down much further, though the loss of revenues may be small because of low base rates.
If the government cannot check the rise in prices of essential goods and services after the Sensitive Price Index has crossed the 10 per cent mark, it has to come up with real tax relief.
Even otherwise the government is attaching far more importance to sales tax which is the largest single source of revenue with Rs. 233 billion this year. But the sales tax itself is to undergo a cut from its high rate of 15 per cent, and more in penal cases. It has been said the GST would be brought down to 12 per cent, if not 10 per cent, which is too much to expect.
There is also a demand for a uniform rate of sales tax instead of different rates for different commodities or taxpayers. A 15 per cent GST is too high and a deterrent to consumption and domestic production, and higher employment.
In this area, the ministry of industries has come up with some radical proposals for framing the budget. The ministry, headed by Liaquat Jatoi, calls for a reduction in sales tax and uniform rates in all cases.
It has called for the abolition of sales tax on fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural machinery to help promote agriculture. It says if the tax cannot be abolished it should be reduced to five per cent. The proposals call for rationalization of sales tax on carpets, food and articles used in hotels, cranes and the ship breaking industry.
These radical proposals are coming up against the background of the fact that there has been no agreement between the provinces on the Sixth National Finance Commission Award despite many meetings in the last few months.
Finally, an attempt was made by Prime Minister Jamali to have a compromise formula and he asked for an agreement on the provinces receiving 47 per cent of the share of the divisible pool of revenues that are federally collected. But the provinces did not agree, with some insisting on a 50 per cent share.
According to the latest report, the provinces may agree to a provisional share of 43 per cent pending a final settlement. That could leave Sindh with a harsh budget, says Sindh's finance minister, who complains bitterly that Sindh is not being rewarded in any manner for being the largest tax collector among the provinces.
The fact remains that the industrialists and importers who pay so much in taxes have to be provided with many facilities by the government - and that costs money. The centre has to compensate the province for that. But the other provinces are not appreciative of Sindh's role.
Meanwhile, the development outlay for the next year has been moving up and down like a seesaw. It was reported earlier that the public sector development outlay for next year would be raised from Rs. 160 billion in the current year to Rs. 200 billion, which is a substantial increase.
It was then reported that the World Bank and the IMF wanted that target to be raised to Rs. 250 billion to increase the fight against poverty, promote social sector development and raise employment levels.
But when the Annual Plan Coordination Committee met, the development outlay was raised to Rs. 190 billion from a proposed figure of Rs. 180 billion. What will happen when the National Economic Council meets with President Musharraf to talk of Rs. 300 billion being spent on the water sector alone remains to be seen. The president has made it clear he does not want to intervene in the NFC stalemate and force the provinces into a consensus.
Several concessions are proposed for the industrial sector. The import duty on machinery, currently five to 25 per cent, is to be reduced to five to 10 per cent, and in some cases to zero. The duty on raw materials is also to be abolished or reduced to five per cent, and 10 per cent if similar supplies are available in Pakistan.
With special industrial zones coming up, like the textile city in Karachi and the garment city in Lahore, such concessions are essential to promote investment, particularly foreign investment. They have to take the form of tax relief to reduce the cost of investment and production.
Meanwhile, the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan Dr Ishrat Husain is talking of a $3 billion infrastructure development programme for which half the funds will come from donors and the rest will be generated within the country. That means a total of about Rs. 180 billion.
Pakistan is also to prepay $1 billion of the more costly loans to the Asian Development Bank next year. As Pakistan tends to borrow more than what it has been repaying, the net foreign debt tends to increase. But the cost of servicing these loans is low as they are secured at low interest rates.
Anyway, rapid infrastructure development is essential to achieve accelerated economic growth, beginning with 6.8 per cent next year. A developed infrastructure has its own momentum where economic activities are concerned.
Abdullah Yusuf, the pragmatic chairman of the Central Board of Revenue, says that all taxation proposals will be for tax relief or abolition of some taxes. If most of the concessions are agreed on, how does one balance the budget? Hoes the government find more funds for larger development, to fight poverty or finance social sector development? No one has made any proposal to increase the revenues.
The only suggestion constantly made to increase the revenues is to combat corruption in the CBR so that all the money paid to the taxation officers reach the treasury, and 40 to 50 per cent of it does not go into the pockets of the taxation officers.
But despite the tax reforms and change of personnel in the CBR that has not been easy. Increase in salaries has also been tried along with rewards for good performance but without adequate results.
Meanwhile, the full recommendations of the Shahid Hussain committee are yet to take effect. But his most important reform proposal - Universal Self-Assessment - has come into being with welcome results.
Now, in terms of specific relief to the people, electricity rates are to be reduced. But the actual rate of reduction will be known only after the formal announcement. Immediately thereafter, gas rates will go up to bring prices at par with the price of oil.
While the country is disturbed by the soaring prices of POL following the rise in world oil prices, government officials are said to be reassuring the people that POL prices would not be increased any more.
The fact is that POL prices are high not only because of world oil prices but also because of the high petroleum surcharge which, along with the gas surcharge, brings the government a sum of Rs. 61 billion, that it already has by now. Normally, when oil prices increase, the government is expected to reduce the surcharge.
It is supposed to raise the surcharge when global oil prices go down. Instead of doing that, the government is sticking to the surcharge and collects far more when world prices of oil go up. Hence there has been no relief for the people even though the liberal Saudi oil facility was available free to the government since 1988.
Sorry state of the nation
The world has just witnessed a peaceful and orderly change of government and a unique democratic exercise in India. In a stunning political shift, Indian voters have decisively rejected the Bharatiya Janata Party.
In India, the people reign supreme. For 57 years, the principle of sovereignty of the people has prevailed unchallenged in that country. What is it that has kept the armed forces at bay? What is the secret of India's success? The answer lies in a functioning democracy, a constitution based on consensus, a strong and independent judiciary, no doctrine of necessity, civilian supremacy and non-interference by the armed forces in politics.
The contrast with Pakistan is stark. After 57 years of independence, Pakistan has a dysfunctional; hybrid political system composed of incongruous elements - a non-sovereign parliament, a powerful president in uniform and a weak and ineffective prime minister.
Democracy is in limbo; parliament is paralysed. The opposition languishes in torpid impotence. Ostensibly, we have all the trappings of democracy - national and provincial assemblies, political parties, elected government, etc.
But all these play no role in determining major policy decisions and have, for all practical purposes, become irrelevant. The shadow military state, lurking behind a civilian facade, is not what Mr Jinnah envisaged for Pakistan. How meaningful is our democratic order when real decisions are made elsewhere?
In the absence of an agreed constitution, the federation is united only by a "rope of sand". A plethora of amendments carried out by successive military rulers has mutilated the 1973 Constitution, altering it almost beyond recognition.
General Musharraf has appointed himself as the president of Pakistan on the basis of a fraudulent referendum. The people, the ultimate sovereign, have been denied the right to elect their president in accordance with the unchanged 1973 Constitution.
At the end of three years of military rule, the people had looked forward to a fresh beginning and a better future for themselves and their children in a democratic Pakistan.
Instead of holding absolutely free, fair and impartial elections and allowing the people to choose their representatives, the elections were rigged, the ballot papers were tampered with and the results manipulated in many cases.
Not surprisingly, a distorted picture has emerged which does not reflect the ground situation. No wonder, elections have thrown up, not the best, not the most deserving, but the most unprincipled politicians amongst us.
Accountability for corrupt holders of public office has become a farce. It has now been reduced to clandestine deals and plea bargaining with those who have bartered away the nation's trust and plundered the country's wealth.
People known to be corrupt tax evaders have recaptured the parliament and are back in power to complete their unfinished agenda. The people have lost faith in the objectivity and impartiality of two of the most important pillars of state - the presidency and the judiciary, charged under the Constitution with the responsibility of keeping a strict watch on the conduct of holders of public office.
In the name of accountability, successive governments have persecuted their political opponents with the aid of a corrupt administration and a pliant legal system. On the other hand, acts of gross misconduct, abuse of office, betrayal of trust, corruption, and violation of oath of office by ministers of the ruling party go unpunished.
Nobody at the helm of affairs or in politics appears interested in accountability as it is understood in the West. Has the military set a higher standard of public morality during the last four years? Are ministers less corrupt today? Is the police less corrupt? Is civil service less corrupt? And last but not least, are the generals less corrupt?
The military has cast a long shadow over politics in Pakistan even during civilian rule. Repeated army intervention in the politics of Pakistan has been a recipe for disaster.
It has thwarted the growth and development of parliamentary democracy and destroyed whatever little faith people had in their political institutions. What is worse is that it has eroded people's faith in themselves as citizens of a sovereign country.
If Pakistan is to survive, the army must be placed outside the turbulent arena of political conflict. The East Pakistan debacle has made it abundantly clear that the federation cannot survive except as a democratic state based on the principle of sovereignty of the people and the supremacy of civilian rule.
While life at the top gets plusher, millions of jobless educated youth and those at the bottom of the social ladder are increasingly resorting to crime, drugs and vagrancy.
Pakistan can regain its glory if it rediscovers its core value - sovereignty of the people, inviolability of the Constitution; supremacy of civilian rule, a fiercely independent, judiciary, an independent, chief election commissioner, and a non-politicized civil service.
No country can survive when its military rulers are more concerned with protecting their own power than with defending the country. Pakistan has been on the wrong road for too long.
It needs to get back on the right track but we have yet to find a guiding light. Ultimately, the true guardians of democracy are the people of Pakistan. If they have no faith in their political institutions; if they are not prepared to defend their political institutions - and make sacrifices for this - a government with a civilian facade will acquire the mantle of legitimacy and permanence.
The tragedy is that each person knows what is wrong and what is required to be done but none has the will or energy to seek something better. All have lofty ideals which produce no visible and durable results. But in India, the people have spoken.
Indian polls: an orderly exercise
There is much to admire in the recent electoral exercise in India. Everything about it confirmed India's right to call itself "the world's largest democracy".
To start with, there was the conduct of the polls. Staggered in four phases over a period of five weeks, the elections went off almost seamlessly with minimal violence.
Given the infinite religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity of India's population; the almost equally infinite number of parties and candidates involved; and the massive geographic stage on which the elections were conducted, getting through them with as little trouble as they did was incredible.
The use of electronic voting machines was touted as further proof of India entering the high-tech age - all thanks to the progressive economic policies of the BJP-led ruling coalition.
That claim could be contested, but not the fact that electronic machines greatly speeded up the voting and particularly the vote-counting process. The votes of a 600-million strong electorate were tallied in a matter of hours: a remarkable achievement by any standard. (And certainly far better than the farcical chads and dimpled chads that characterized - and skewed - the vote tally in America's 2000 presidential election).
The result when it came was a shock. Far from securing the outright majority that many analysts had predicted, the BJP failed even to secure victory. The success of Congress and other opposition parties, notably the communists, left many a political pundit with egg on their face.
What went wrong? Quite simply, a huge miscalculation by the BJP: that the middle class for whom "India Shining" is a reality, would return the party to power.
In making these predictions, BJP strategists failed to factor in the millions and millions of poor Indians whose lives of toil, illiteracy, malnutrition and suffering are far removed from the happy scenes of the BJP's ad campaign.
Their emphatic rejection of "India Shining" was proof of the political - if not socio-economic - empowerment of the country's underclass. Democracy amplifies their voice: it forces those better off to heed their demands.
The immediate resignation of Prime Minister Vajpayee, even before the vote-count had been completed, speaks volumes for the strength of Indian democracy. Such ready concession of power would never happen on this side of the border - or indeed, in most of the countries of South Asia.
In terms of respect for democratic traditions - for the will of the people - India truly is the leader in South Asia.
If Congress' shock victory weren't drama enough, it was followed by the bigger shock of Sonia Gandhi turning down the Indian premiership. Her statement about heeding her "inner voice" will, no doubt, become the butt of many jokes.
But it revealed an honesty and a sense of values - notably the importance of family - quite alien to the power-hungry world of politics. (Having said that, one cannot help the suspicion that she never expected to win power).
Commentators, however, have lauded her decision more as a sacrifice for the stability of the new government and the greater good of India, than for her family and personal life.
The key factor in this is Sonia's Italian birth. Hindu hardliners like Sushma Swaraj raved: "How could a woman born in Europe become the leader of India? Couldn't India, with its billion-plus population, find an Indian to lead it?"
Sonia Gandhi's commitment to the land she married into is proven by history: she has immersed herself wholeheartedly in India. And she was chosen by the voters - all fully aware of her Italian birth.
Given that, no one had the right to question her right to become India's prime minister. The attack on her foreign origins by Hindu extremists was misplaced, xenophobic and undemocratic. It was the one jarring note in the Indian elections.
Ms Gandhi stepped aside for Manmohan Singh. She thus paved the way for the appointment of India's first Sikh - indeed, first non-Hindu - prime minister. This too is both historic and laudable.
India, with its official ideology of secularism and the tolerance of heterogeneity implicit in this, should have a leadership that reflects that ideology: that acknowledges the role and importance of its non-Hindu minorities. The fact that the current Indian president is a Muslim, is even more to the country's credit.
With a Congress Sikh prime minister in power, the last vestiges of Sikh bitterness and grievance against Congress and India should be buried. Recall that it was Indira Gandhi who ordered the attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar, violating the holiest of holies for Sikhs.
And it was her assassination by Sikh bodyguards - furious at that violation - that triggered the worst anti-Sikh pogrom in modern India. Thousands of Sikhs were killed as then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, to his eternal discredit, did nothing. By appointing Manmohan Singh in her place, Sonia Gandhi has done much to right the wrongs of her mother-in-law and husband.
But the biggest and most laudable achievement of these India elections is the rejection of Hindu nationalism and communalism. Analysts have criticized the BJP and blamed its shock loss on its failure to take India's impoverished rural masses with it on the road to economic prosperity. That was an undeniable - and with hindsight, fatal - mistake by the BJP. But the infinitely bigger crime it committed was in tolerating Hindu fanaticism.
Gujarat 2002 might seem an aeon ago, but for its victims (those who survived it) the horror and pain are as fresh today as they were then. Thousands of Muslims were killed by Hindu mobs in an organized, systematic movement to kill. The BJP state government of Narendra Modi was complicit in the killing. The BJP national government of Atal Behari Vajpayee tolerated his actions.
Gujarat has been presented by analysts as a blip in Vajpayee's record: one item on the minus list, but counter-balanced by many more items on the plus list - peace with Pakistan, economic growth, preserving intact a coalition government, and so on.
Such assessments are erroneous. Vajpayee's failure to check or punish Modi was more than one more minus item: it was a failure that outweighed all his achievements put together.
No good a government does can excuse its murder of thousands of its own people - killed simply because of their religious beliefs. No government that has such mass killing on its record deserves to stay in power.
The Vajpayee government's failure to check or punish Modi clearly revealed the BJP tiger's Hindu stripes. For all its talk of inclusiveness and moderation, the party at its core remained the same party that had come to power on the back of the Ayodhya campaign and that orchestrated the destruction of the Babri Mosque. Tigers definitely do not change their stripes.
This, then, is the biggest achievement of the Indian elections. The fact that they ousted a Hindu nationalist government and brought in a Sikh-Italian led government that at least brings with it the hope of a genuinely tolerant India in which minorities can feel secure. Well done, India!
E-mail: iffatidris2000@yahoo.co.uk.
Rewriting Iraqi history
I can't wait to see Abu Ghraib prison reduced to rubble by the Americans - at the request of the new Iraqi government, of course. It will be turned to dust in order to destroy a symbol of Saddam's brutality. That's what President Bush tells us. So the re-writing of history still goes on.
Last August, I was invited to Abu Ghraib - by my favourite US General Janis Karpinski, no less - to see the million-dollar US refurbishment of this vile place. Squeaky clean cells and toothpaste tubes and fresh pairs of pants for the "terrorist" inmates.
But now suddenly, the whole kit and caboodle is no longer an American torture centre. It's still an Iraqi torture centre, and thus worthy of demolition. No doubt we'll be invited back there yet again to see all those refurbished cells - where America's thugs set to their sexual work on their prisoners - ground into sand.
The rewriting of Iraqi history is now going on at supersonic speed. Weapons of mass destruction? Forget it. Links between Saddam and Al Qaeda? Forget it. Liberating the Iraqis from Saddam's Al-Ghraib life of torture? Forget it. Wedding party slaughtered? Forget it.
Clear the decks for both "full (sic) sovereignty" and "chaotic events". This, at any rate, according to Mr Bush. When I heard his hesitant pronunciation of Abu Ghraib as "Abu Grub" on Monday night, I could only profoundly agree.
But we're in danger, yet again, of missing the detail. Just as the unsupervised armed mercenaries being killed in Iraq are being described by the occupation authorities - and, of course, by the compliant BBC - as "contractors" or, more mendaciously, "civilians", so the responsibility for the porno interrogations at Abu Ghraib is being allowed to slide into the summer mists over the Tigress river.
So let's go back, just for a moment, to the long weeks in which the Department of Bad Apples allowed its jerks to put leashes around Iraqi necks, forced prisoners to have sex with each other and raped a few of the Iraqi lasses in the jail.
And let's cast our eyes upon that little, all important matter of responsibility. The actual interrogators accused of encouraging US troops to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail were working for at least one company with extensive military and commercial contacts with Israel.
The head of an American company whose personnel are implicated in the Iraqi tortures, it now turns out, attended an "anti-terror" training camp in Israel and, earlier this year, was presented with an award by Shaul Mofaz, the right-wing Israeli defence minister.
According to Dr. J. P. London's company, CACI International, the visit of Dr London - sponsored by an Israeli lobby group and including US congressmen and other defence contractors - was "to promote opportunities for strategic partnerships and joint ventures between US and Israeli defence and homeland security agencies."
The Pentagon and the occupation powers in Iraq insist that only US citizens have been allowed to question prisoners in Abu Ghraib - but this takes no account of Americans who may also hold double citizenship.
The once secret torture report by US General Antonio Taguba refers to "third country nationals" involved in the mistreatment of prisoners in Iraq. Stephen Cambone, who is deeply implicated in these abuses of human rights, disputes Taguba's statement. Well he would, wouldn't he?
General Taguba mentions Steven Stephanovic and John Israel as involved in the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Stephanovic, who worked for CACI, known to the US military as "Khaki", was said by Taguba to have "allowed and/or instructed MPs (military police), who were not trained in interrogation techniques, to facilitate interrogations by 'setting conditions'...he clearly knew his instructions equated to physical abuse."
One of Stephanovic's co-workers, Joe Ryan, who was not named in the Taguba report, now says that he underwent an "Israeli interrogation course" before going to Iraq.
We know that the Pentagon asked Israel for its "rules of engagement" in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. Israeli officers have briefed their US opposite numbers and, according to the Associated Press, in January and February of 2003, Israeli and American troops trained together in southern Israel's Negev desert. Israel has also hosted senior law enforcement officials from the United States for a seminar on counter-terrorism."
On his January visit to Israel, Dr London received the Albert Einstein Technology Award from ex-General Mofaz, and spent hours on the Golan Heights with Israeli Housing Minister Effie Eitam, another ex-general who favours the "transfer" of Palestinians from the West Bank.
The itinerary of the "Defence Aerospace Homeland Security Mission" included a visit to Beit Horon, which it calls the central "training camp" for "anti-terrorist forces of the Israeli police and border police".
Stephanovic of CACI, who may also be an Australian, was accused by Taguba's army report of making "a false statement to the investigation team regarding...his knowledge of abuses" and, according to the report, clearly knew his instructions to US military police "amounted to physical abuse".
Another outside interrogator, Adel Nakhla - who may be of Egyptian origin - was a witness to the "stacking" of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib while John Israel "misled" investigators by denying he had witnessed misconduct and did not have "security clearance".
Israel, according to Titan, works for one of the company's "subcontractors." Titan refused to name the "subcontractor". Why? Among the company's former directors is ex-CIA director James Woolsey, one of the architects of the US invasion of Iraq, a friend of convicted fraudster Ahmed Chalabi - still on the American-run "Governing Council" in Iraq - and a prominent pro-Israeli lobbyist in Washington.
Dr London says that his company, CACI, "does not condone or tolerate or endorse in any fashion (sic) any illegal, inappropriate behaviour on the part of its employees in any circumstances at any time anywhere."
But it is clear that the torture trail at Abu Ghraib has to run much further than a group of brutal US military cops, all of whom claim that "intelligence officers" told them to "soften up" their prisoners for questioning. Were they Israeli? Or South African? Or British? Are we going to let the story go? - (c) The Independent
The deepening rift
Europeans can expect very little from their leaders during the upcoming transatlantic summit season. The G-8 in Georgia, the EU-US summit in Ireland and Nato's get-together in Istanbul at the end of next month are annual fixtures designed to showcase the ties that bind the old and new continents.
With mayhem in Iraq casting a giant shadow, the usual ringing declarations will fool no one. So it will be especially poignant to watch the first gathering, for the D-Day anniversary celebrations in Normandy on June 6, when George Bush, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac and Vladimir Putin will be joined by Gerhard Schroder - the first German chancellor invited to take part.
This will be a hugely symbolic moment, a remarkable one even after four decades of Franco-German rapprochement. Helmut Kohl badly wanted to attend the 50th anniversary in 1994, but that was too soon for Francois Mitterrand and John Major.
Schroder's pilgrimage to Normandy should rank alongside Willy Brandt on his knees begging forgiveness in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, and Kohl and Mitterrand, hand in hand, at Verdun in 1984.
Moments like these matter, as did the beautifully choreographed May Day ceremony in Dublin when the EU marked its expansion to the east, erasing the boundaries of the cold war.
The magic combination of bright sunshine, green lawns, Irish harp and Beethoven's Ode to Joy - and 25 national flags raised in solemn sequence - tugged at the heartstrings of anyone with any sense of history.
Poles, Czechs and Balts have come "home" - to argue with all the others about voting weights and directives from Brussels. Such grand spectacles help remind Europeans that their unloved and rudderless union brought them peace and prosperity after a uniquely terrible conflict.
D-Day fascinates still because it was the epic culmination of an indisputably just war in which America came to Europe's rescue in its darkest hour.
Yet as Bush salutes the fallen of Omaha Beach, Iraq will look like the moment when the great wartime alliance, and the institutions it spawned, split beyond repair.
Six months ago it seemed just possible that divisions could be healed. Now those hopes have been killed off by outrage over the Abu Ghraib abuses. Nato is barely able to manage its Afghan mission, let alone deploy to Baghdad. Schroder thinks Pakistanis and Bangladeshis will be more effective in Iraq than Germans and French. No reciprocal rescue mission there.
Beyond praying for a John Kerry victory in November, Europeans are powerless. The EU's quest for common foreign and defence policies - and economic growth to match US rates - has never looked so hollow. Impotence and resentment are a grim combination.
Jean-Marie Colombani, editor of Le Monde, recently retracted the solemn pledge of solidarity made after the 9/11 attacks, that "We are all Americans". Nowadays, he thundered, "we are all non-Americans". Commemorating the Longest Day isn't going to change that. - Dawn/The Guardian News Service