http://www.juancole.com/2008/11/india-please-dont-go-down-bush-cheney.html
Informed Comment Sunday, November 30, 2008
India: Please Don't Go Down the Bush- Cheney Road
Many Indians have called the attacks in Mumbai "India's 9/11." As an
American who lived in India, I can feel that country's anguish over
these horrific and indiscriminate acts of terror.
Most Indian observers, however, were critical in 2001 and after of how
exactly the Bush administration (by which we apparently mainly mean
Dick Cheney) responded to September 11. They were right, and they would
do well to remember their own critique at this fateful moment.
What where the major mistakes of the United States government, and how
might India avoid repeating them?
1) Remember asymmetry
The Bush administration was convinced that 9/11 could not have been the
work of a small, independent terrorist organization. They insisted that
Iraq must somehow have been behind it. States are used to dealing with
other states, and military and intelligence agencies are fixated on
state rivals. But Bush and Cheney were wrong. We have entered an era of
asymmetrical terrorism threats, in which relatively small groups can
inflict substantial damage.
The Bush administration clung to its conviction of an Iraq-al-Qaeda
operational cooperation despite the excellent evidence, which the FBI
and CIA quickly uncovered, that the money had all come via the UAE from
Paksitan and Afghanistan. There was never any money trail back to the
Iraqi government.
Many Indian officials and much of the Indian public is falling into the
Cheney fallacy. It is being argued that the terrorists fought as
trained guerrillas, and implied that only a state (i.e. Pakistan) could
have given them that sort of training.
But to the extent that the terrorists were professional fighters, they
could have come by their training in many ways. Some might have been
ex-military in Britain or Pakistan. Or they might have interned in some
training camp somewhere. Some could have fought as vigilantes in
Afghanistan or Iraq. They needn't be state-backed.
2) Keep your eye on the ball.
The Bush administration took its eye off al-Qaeda and the Taliban, and
instead put most of its resources into confronting Iraq. But Iraq had
nothing to do with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Eventually this American
fickleness allowed both al-Qaeda and the Taliban to regroup.
Likewise, India should not allow itself to be distracted by implausible
conspiracy theories about high Pakistani officials wanting to destroy
the oberoi Hotel in Mumbai. (Does that even make any sense?) Focusing
on a conventional state threat alone will leave the country unprepared
to meet further asymmetrical, guerrilla-style attacks.
3) Avoid Easy Bigotry about National Character
Many Americans decided after 9/11 that since 13 of the hijackers were
Saudi Wahhabis, there is something evil about Wahhabism and Saudi
Arabia. But Saudi Arabia itself was attacked repeatedly by al-Qaeda in
2003-2006 and waged a major national struggle against it. You can't tar
a whole people with the brush of a few nationals that turn to
terrorism.
Worse, a whole industry of Islamphobia grew up, with dedicated
television programs (0'Reilly, Glen Beck), specialized sermonizers, and
political hatchetmen (Giuliani). Persons born in the Middle East or
Pakistan were systematically harassed at airports. And the
stigmatization of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans was used as a
wedge to attack liberals and leftists, as well, however illogical the
juxtaposition may seem.
There is a danger in India as we speak of mob action against Muslims,
which will ineluctably drag the country into communal violence. The
terrorists that attacked Mumbai were not Muslims in any meaningful
sense of the word. They were cultists. Some of them brought stocks of
alcohol for the siege they knew they would provoke. They were not
pious.
They killed and wounded Muslims along with other kinds of Indians.
Muslims in general must not be punished for the actions of a handful of
unbalanced fanatics. Down that road lies the end of civilization. It
should be remembered that Hindu extremists have killed 100 Christians
in eastern India in recent weeks. But that would be no excuse for a
Christian crusade against Hindus or Hinduism.
Likewise, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as a Sikh, will remember the
dark days when PM Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards
after she had sent the Indian security forces into the Golden Temple,
and the mob attacks on Sikhs in Delhi that took place in the aftermath.
Blaming all Sikhs for the actions of a few was wrong then. It would be
wrong now if applied to Muslims.
4) Address Security Flaws, but Keep Civil Liberties Strong
The 9/11 hijackings exploited three simple flaws in airline security of
a procedural sort. Cockpit doors were not though to need strengthening.
It was assumed that hijackers could not fly planes. And no one expected
hijackers to kill themselves. Once those assumptions are no longer
made, security is already much better. Likewise, the Mumbai terrorists
exploited flaws in coastal, urban and hotel security, which need to be
addressed.
But Bush and Cheney hardly contented themselves with counter-terrorism
measures. They dropped a thousand-page "p.a.t.r.i.o.t. act" on Congress
one night and insisted they vote on it the next day. They created
outlaw spaces like Guantanamo and engaged in torture (or encouraged
allies to torture for them). They railroaded innocent people. They
deeply damaged American democracy.
India's own democracy has all along been fragile. I actually travelled
in India in summer of 1976 when Indira Gandhi had declared "Emergency,"
i.e., had suspended civil liberties and democracy (the only such period
in Indian history since 1947). India's leadership must not allow a
handful of terrorists to push the country into another Emergency. It is
not always possible for lapsed democracies to recover their liberties
once they are undermined.
5) Avoid War
The Bush administration fought two major wars in the aftermath of 9/11
but never able to kill or capture the top al-Qaeda leadership.
Conventional warfare did not actually destroy the Taliban, who later
experienced a resurgence. The attack on Iraq destabilized the eastern
stretches of the Middle East, which will be fragile and will face the
threat of further wars for some time to come.
War with Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks would be a huge error.
President Asaf Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani
certainly did not have anything to do with those attacks. Indeed, the
bombing of the Islamabad Marriott, which was intended to kill them, was
done by exactly the same sort of people as attacked Mumbai. Nor was
Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kiyani involved. Is it possible that a military
cell under Gen. Pervez Musharraf trained Lashkar-e Tayiba terrorists
for attacks in Kashmir, and then some of the LET went rogue and decided
to hit Mumbai instead? Yes. But to interpret such a thing as a Pakistan
government operation would be incorrect.
With a new civilian government, headed by politicians who have
themselves suffered from Muslim extremism and terrorism, Pakistan could
be an increasingly important security partner for India. Allowing past
enmities to derail these potentialities for detente would be most
unwise.
6) Don't Swing to the Right
The American public, traumatized by 9/11 and misled by propaganda from
corporate media, swung right. Instead of rebuking Bush and Cheney for
their sins against the Republic, for their illegal war on Iraq, for
their gutting of the Bill of Rights, for their Orwellian techniques of
governance, the public gave them another 4 years in 2004. This
Himalayan error of judgment allowed Bush and Cheney to go on, like
giant termites, undermining the economic and legal foundations of
American values and prosperity.
The fundamentalist, rightwing Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party, which has
extensive links with Hindu extremist groups, is already attacking the
secular, left-of-center Congress Party for allegedly being soft on
Muslim terrorism. The BJP almost dragged India into a nuclear war with
Pakistan in 2002, and it seeded RSS extremists in the civil
bureaucracy, and for the Indian public to return it to power now would
risk further geopolitical and domestic tensions.
India may well become a global superpower during the coming century.
The choices it makes now on how it will deal with this threat of
terrorism will help determine what kind of country it will be, and what
kind of globalimpact it will have. While it may be hypocritical of an
American to hope that New Delhi deals with its crisis better than we
did, it bespeaks my confidence in the country that I believe it can.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/30/2008 12:56:00 AM