R
At 02:16 PM 8/31/2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Washington Post - August 28, 2002
Double Standards Make Enemies
>By Salman Rushdie
>Salman Rushdie is the author of "Fury" and other novels.
>
>On Sept. 5 and 6 the State Department will host a high-powered conference
>on anti-Americanism, an unusual step indicating the depth of American
>concern about this increasingly globalized phenomenon. Anti-Americanism
>can be mere shallow name-calling.
>
>A recent article in Britain's Guardian newspaper described Americans as
>having "a bug up their collective arse the size of Manhattan" and
>suggested that " 'American' is a type of personality which is intense,
>humourless, partial to psychobabble and utterly convinced of its own
>importance."
>
>More seriously, anti-Americanism can be contradictory: When the United
>States failed to intervene in Bosnia, that was considered wrong, but when
>it did subsequently intervene in Kosovo, that was wrong too.
>Anti-Americanism can be hypocritical: wearing blue jeans or Donna Karan,
>eating fast food or Alice Waters-style cuisine, their heads full of
>American music, movies, poetry and literature, the apparatchiks of the
>international cultural commissariat decry the baleful influence of the
>American culture that nobody is forcing them to consume. It can be
>misguided; the logical implication of the Western-liberal opposition to
>America's Afghan war is that it would be better if the Taliban were still
>in power. And it can be ugly; the post-Sept. 11 crowing of the
>serves-you-right brigade was certainly that.
>
>However, during the past year the Bush administration has made a string of
>foreign policy miscalculations, and the State Department conference must
>acknowledge this.
>
>After the brief flirtation with consensus-building during the Afghan
>operation, the United States' brazen return to unilateralism has angered
>even its natural allies. The Republican grandee James Baker has warned
>President Bush not to go it alone, at least in the little matter of
>effecting a "regime change" in Iraq.
>
>In the year's major crisis zones, the Bushies have been getting things
>badly wrong. According to a Security Council source, the reason for the
>United Nations' lamentable inaction during the recent Kashmir crisis was
>that the United States (with Russian backing) blocked all attempts by
>member states to mandate the United Nations to act. But if the United
>Nations is not to be allowed to intervene in a bitter dispute between two
>member states, both nuclear powers of growing political volatility, in an
>attempt to defuse the danger of nuclear war, then what on Earth is it for?
>Many observers of the problems of the region will also be wondering how
>long Pakistani-backed terrorism in Kashmir will be winked at by America
>because of Pakistan's support for the "war against terror" on its other
>frontier. Many Kashmiris will be angry that their long-standing desire for
>an autonomous state is being ignored for the sake of U.S. realpolitik.
>
>And as the Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf seizes more and more power
>and does more and more damage to his country's constitution, the U.S.
>government's decision to go on hailing him as a champion of democracy does
>more damage to America's already shredded regional credibility.
>
>Nor is Kashmir the only South Asian grievance. The massacres in the Indian
>state of Gujarat, mostly of Indian Muslims by fundamentalist Hindu mobs,
>have been shown to be the result of planned attacks led by Hindu political
>organizations.
>
>But in spite of testimony presented to a congressional commission, the
>U.S. administration has done nothing to investigate U.S.-based
>organizations that are funding these groups, such as the World Hindu
>Council. Just as American Irish fundraisers once bankrolled the terrorists
>of the Provisional IRA, so, now, shadowy bodies across America are helping
>to pay for mass murder in India, while the U.S. government turns a blind eye.
>
>Once again, the supposedly high-principled rhetoric of the "war against
>terror" is being made to look like a smoke screen for a highly selective
>pursuit of American vendettas.
>
>Apparently Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are terrorists who matter;
>Hindu fanatics and Kashmiri killers aren't. This double standard makes enemies.
>
>In the heat of the dispute over Iraq strategy, South Asia has become a
>sideshow. (America's short attention span creates enemies, too.) And it is
>in Iraq that George W. Bush may be about to make his biggest mistake, and
>to unleash a generation-long plague of anti-Americanism that could make
>the present epidemic look like a time of rude good health.
>
>Inevitably, the reasons lie in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like it
>or not, much of the world thinks of Israel as the 51st state, America's
>client and surrogate, and Bush's obvious rapport with Ariel Sharon does
>nothing to change the world's mind. Of course the suicide bombings are
>vile, but until America persuades Israel to make a lasting settlement with
>the Palestinians, anti-American feeling will continue to rise; and if, in
>the present highly charged atmosphere, the United States does embark on
>the huge, risky military operation suggested Monday by Vice President Dick
>Cheney, then the result may very well be the creation of that united
>Islamic force that was bin Laden's dream. Saudi Arabia would almost
>certainly feel obliged to expel U.S. forces from its soil (thus
>capitulating to one of bin Laden's main demands). Iran -- which so
>recently fought a long, brutal war against Iraq -- would surely support
>its erstwhile enemy, and might even come into the conflict on the Iraqi side.
>
>The entire Arab world would be radicalized and destabilized. What a
>disastrous twist of fate it would be if the feared Islamic jihad were
>brought into being not by the al Qaeda gang but by the president of the
>United States and his close advisers.
>
>Do those close advisers include Colin Powell, who clearly prefers
>diplomacy to war? Or is the State Department's foregrounding of the issue
>of anti-Americanism a means of providing hard evidence to support the
>Powell line and undermining the positions of the hawks to whom Bush
>listens most closely? It seems possible. Paradoxically, a sober look at
>the case against America may serve American interests better than the
>patriotic "let's roll" arguments that are being trumpeted on every side.
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