Carry Can & Facing Change

Carry Can & Facing Change


So here we are: 24 hours on from “Yes we can” to carrying that very can. From revelling in the ringing rhetoric of “Change is coming to America”, to facing up to that self-same change. Maureen Dowd, the eminent left-wing commentator recently wrote in her New York Times column that it would make a refreshing change to go from “dogmatic” to someone looking for a dog for his daughters.

But, wry humour apart, it is not going to be a simple switch from the Darkness to the Light. After all, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela who likened President George W Bush to the Devil with his “Whiff of Sulphur” remarks, allows he can still “smell the stench” on the eve of the Obama Presidency. To him America will still be its overbearing self--under a Democrat as much as it was under a Republican.

From the Indian point of view with its economic and technological constraints, that imperialistic face of the United States may make for a favourable outcome as events unfold. It may, in fact, go one better, because President Bush always called Pakistan, under President Musharraf, a reliable ally, even as Obama begins to take it to task.

In the interim, for President Obama, the formative issues, the oratorical flourishes that have shaped his candidature, are, overnight, relegated to the margins. This is as it should be. Now what counts is what James Baldwin, one of President Obama’s cited intellectual influences, once wrote: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

And, crucially, for a brand new president, the establishment of his authority is dependent on his ability to stand down the early challenges to that very authority. The Master of the Hunt must know that it is just a walk in the park till the drawing of first blood.

But too often, ideological moorings, those of the Democratic Party, traditionally liberal as champions of the “people”, begin to assert themselves. This forces a Democrat President to be soft and hard at the same time, perhaps to the detriment of the larger cause. JFK, a Democrat, had a hard time convincing his adversaries abroad, as well as a number of people in his own government, that he had the necessary steel. And Kennedy was a war hero of PT-109 fame.

Democrat President Obama’s first moves are telling; action one was to suspend the detainee trials, for 120 days, at Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre in Cuba. It seems easy enough, for President Obama, even appropriate, to make this gesture at the altar of Human Rights, while redeeming a much-touted campaign pledge. And, expectedly, it is receiving prompt and sympathetic media play.

But, the hardline Islamists, the jihadists, the terrorists, the Taliban, and their friends, must be forgiven for laughing up their sleeves. They will see, in this Christian gesture, a weakness to exploit. They will take it as an opportunity, to try the will and determination of this new and inexperienced American president.

The moderate Islamists, towards whom, presumably, this humanitarian gesture is directed, will be found missing-in-action. Iran is as hard-line as they come even if it does no more than finance and arm the Hamas and the Hizbullah. The Gulf Arabs, the Egyptians, the Jordanians and even the Saudis have long surrendered the initiative to the radicals. And so, the finer point of America the Beautiful setting rights to wrongs at Guantanamo will be lost in the turbulence.

Besides, what’s next? Will Guantanamo Bay Detention Centre be closed to provide the hard-line Islamists with an effective PR boomerang, as promised by candidate Obama?

There are many in NATO deeply worried about their radical Islamic citizens and guest workers. Some of them, such as Britain, are probably not looking forward to receiving Guatanamo Bay detainees who happen to be British citizens.

After all, it is not easy to conduct “fair trials” at home with all the attendant legal niceties when most of the “evidence” is circumstantial. Pakistan is, and has been playing India for monkeys over this hurdle of jurisprudence ever since 26/11.

War Trials need special reference points. Not one Nazi would have been convicted if it were not to be so at Nuremberg. Nor would Saddam Hussein have been hung. But all this will come later.

But on Day One of the Obama Presidency, the Pakistani Establishment, their Ambassador to the US, their Government, their Army, have made bold to react sharply. They don’t like President Obama’s announcement that further, enhanced, Civilian Aid to Pakistan will henceforth be contingent upon Pakistan’s ability to show results in the “Fight against Terror”. Pakistan has dared to assert that they may need to consider “our options” if the United States takes a tough line with them. This posturing is essential for their domestic audience.

But that is not the whole truth. It will become clear to President Obama if he continues to regard Pakistan as the “epicentre of terrorism” that though he may want Pakistan to fight the Taliban and Al Quaeda in the areas bordering Afghanistan, he may find himself hard-pressed. It will be difficult to find Pakistanis in the Establishment, the Civilian Government, the moth-eaten Pakistani Judiciary, the Army, the ISI, the many state supported jihadi operators, the Ulema, even a large section of the Media, who are not Talibanised!

The Army and ISI certainly are, and this makes it very hard for them to fight and kill their own, particularly at rank and file level, and at the behest of a foreign power at that. At senior levels, the Pakistani establishment has successfully duped the Americans for decades and sees no good reason to stop now.

The Taliban proper, in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, as much as in Afghanistan, have also “warned” President Obama on day one. And further, they have advised him to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan or “face the consequences.”

And so the stage is set for the bloodying. Having drawn the battle lines, President Obama will have to follow through. This will definitely involve going to war with the Taliban and the Al Quaeda hiding in the sovereign territory of Pakistan. India, patiently waiting for justice after 26/11 and the countless other outrages of recent years, can expect to be a collateral beneficiary.


(1,050 words)

Thursday, 22nd January, 2009
Gautam Mukherjee