There is a lot of sham and posturing in our politics - both here and in India. And no doubt because of the dominant influence of poetry in our culture, also a fair amount of rhetoric and a tendency to declaim, the real subcontinental art being to hold forth.

If something can be said in two words or in ten, the politician or leader true to his salt in the subcontinent will think his honour impugned if he (or even she) says it in anything less than a hundred. (Which, really, is an aspersion on poetry which if it inculcates anything is brevity.) Even so, saints of wind and bombast: that's what politicos are in our climes.

But in the pantheon of things outrageous, what is worse, what will sooner gain you entry in purgatory, posturing or outright lies? What's been the record of the West or rather the United States and Britain since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York?

The amount of lies - brazen, bold and shameless - coming out of the White House, the Pentagon, to a lesser extent the State Department and from that great American mouthpiece, Tony Blair, is breathtaking in its sheer scale and audacity.

"Sexing" up a dossier? Is that all that Blair and his cohorts have done? From the moment the Towers crumbled the Anglo-Saxon propaganda machine went into over-drive, beating the drums of hysteria, drowning the entire world in the flood of their self-righteousness, and thereby creating the atmosphere which led inexorably first to the war on Afghanistan and then the destruction of Iraq.

The attacks on the Twin Towers were not more catastrophic than the defeat of the allied armies in France in 1940. But read Churchill's "we'll fight on the beaches..." speech after Dunkirk, and then in the scales put the lies Bush and Blair have been trading in these past two years, and you'll know the difference between brave sentiments nobly expressed and tawdry sentiments set out in a long whine.

In the Churchill speech there's even a passing reference to the bravery of the German nation. But no frothing abuse of the enemy, just a plain statement about the disaster that has befallen the allied armies, followed by that ringing declaration of resolve which still stirs the blood 60 odd years after the event.

But if in order to push their war agenda, Bush and Blair resorted to lies and deceit, and the sexing up of things that in themselves were quite innocuous, what about their people? Surely the proud inheritors of the civilization of Greece and Rome would have sensed that their leaders, in America's case arguably the dumbest president who's ever occupied the White House, were taking them for a ride?

Well, some pretty strong demonstrations against the impending invasion of Iraq took place in many western cities. But for the most part the American and British nations chose to go along with the duplicity and mendacity of their two leaders. When it seemed obvious even to laymen that the case for war was being hyped up, the two great Anglo-Saxon nations preferred faith over scepticism. Which says something about the sophistication of western political culture.

The political classes indeed were frightened into acquiescence. True, the House of Commons showed more spirit than the US Congress but not enough to make a difference. The outstanding exception in Britain's case was the former foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who made out a brilliant case for not going to war and who had the guts to quit the government in line with the stand he took.

The Overseas Development Secretary, Claire Short, waffled and then hung on. When she left the cabinet after the war her departure was more a damp squib than a dramatic affirmation of principle. Even when it comes to choosing martyrdom timing is of vital importance.

The BBC is making much of its independence now. But in the run-up to the Iraq invasion there was little to distinguish it from that other great organ of the truth, CNN. During the invasion itself, both channels were equally sickening, the honour of the media being upheld by outlets such as Al-Jazeera and Abu Dhabi television and by journalists such as Robert Fisk of the Independent. For the rest, everyone found safety in rolling with the tide.

Which makes me think that the next time anyone tells me of the great freedom of thought in the western media I'll reach for my pistol.

And what about those pathetic figures, Kofi Annan and Hans Blix? Annan, virtually an American appointee, is simply incapable of saying anything firm or forthright, his specialty a virtue of seeming to say all things to all men. As for Blix, seemingly a model of uprightness, in truth another coward, a slave to so much caution that he would end up saying virtually nothing. Couldn't he have said more openly that the Iraqis were cooperating and that there was nothing to find? But then how could you expect him to defy the Americans so openly.

Nor have the lies diminished. Bush and Blair with their minions are still at it, still trying to put the best gloss on their failure to find any evidence of the biggest lie of them all, weapons of mass destruction. Even the Democrats in the US who have the most to gain from exposing Bush are only bestirring themselves now. Which shows what a premium modern politics puts on cowardice. No one says anything without first having a sniff at the polls.

We have our faults, and by God these are huge, but let's take heart: in some respects there is less blatant hypocrisy in our politics than in the brand of democracy operative in the US and Britain these days.

Take, for example, the military leadership's decision to side with the US and do its bidding, something for which it has been roundly criticized.

Now no one likes criticism. No one likes being told he's sold his country short or that he's an American lackey. But Musharraf hasn't turned on his accusers as Blair has done. No David Kelly has died. And in the whole of the ISI there is none of the venom against the Pakistani media that Blair's spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, seems to have against the BBC.

Or take the pilgrimage to Camp David which the government has tried its best to portray as a huge triumph. Not everyone has bought the government's story for from different sides have also come derisive cries to the effect that the three billion dollars promised by the Americans are (1) small pittance for Pakistan's services and (2) that in any case this amount is subject to conditions and congressional approval.

Even so, the important point remains that even if greatly miffed, Musharraf and his henchmen haven't resorted to lies or half-truths, or sputtering self-righteousness to stop their critics. They have mobilized none of the evangelical zeal which comes so easily to Blair when the slightest doubt is cast on his saintly integrity.

Or even going further back to something like Kargil, a disaster by any reckoning. Whenever there is a reference to it in the press, the generals responsible for this first-rate disaster prefer to keep a stiff upper lip and gaze into the far distance. Which I suppose, as such things go, is preferable to the lies and goalpost-shifting we have been hearing and seeing from the Anglo-Saxon democracies regarding their venture in Iraq.

Tailpiece: Did anyone hear the Karachi corps commander, Lt Gen Wasim Ghazi, declaiming on Geo TV about the wonders of the Defence Housing Authority's new beach-side development?

I have heard hyperbole in my time but this one really went over the top. For a moment I thought the excited general was talking of some new blitzkrieg technique or a new howitzer invented by the army. But here, instead of anything to do with his duties as corps commander, he was waxing lyrical about a housing estate by the sea.And then senior army officers get red in the face, their military honour touched to the quick, if you tell them that far from anything to do with the profession of arms their true vocation seems to lie in the setting up of newer and more lavish housing estates.