Heil Obama, the War President

The Obama administration is turning up the pressure on Pakistan to fight the Taliban inside its borders, warning that if it does not act more aggressively, the US will use considerably more force on the Pakistani side of the border to shut down Taliban attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.

Superb. The US sends its troops inside Afghanistan to help the regime to fight the Taliban.

There is fighting and US forces are killed too.

Pakistan is fighting its own Taliban.

The US is now saying it will use force to shut down those attacks on its soldiers in Afghanistan.

What are we missing here?

It is a truly duh moment.

If his troops are there to fight the Taliban, then why can they not take on the ones that come from the border?

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As you already know Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel peace prize. He is set to receive it later this week. Guess what?

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “He is accepting the Nobel Peace Prize as a war President.” After the decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan he will also mention it in his speech.

I have no clue what a war president is. One waging war or one waging war against war or one who has been caught in a war or one who has inherited it? Does this not reduce the very idea of the peace prize? True, precedents are there of people at war receiving the prize, but to go there and say, look, I am sending troops, however, it is all good and yet I take responsibility, so I accept this award as the war president on behalf of the American people – is this okay?

Should he be speaking on behalf of the American people at all? I know this is a hypothetical scenario. He may accept it on his own. And the American people will be left with the baby and the bathwater and those plastic duckies.

There is nothing like an Indian Muslim PM

Why should anyone want to know how long it will take for India to have a Muslim prime minister? How does it matter?

Some student from Aligarh Muslim University asked this to Rahul Gandhi; he used the term ‘wazir-e-azam’ to make the Muslimness stand out. Stupid.

I am happy with the way Rahul responded:

“Merit is the only password for the top job in the country, religion is no qualification. What will clinch the issue of one’s suitability (for PM) is one’s competence. Other factors are not just secondary, but insignificant. Let me tell you that even when you do have a Muslim prime minister, he will be a prime minister because he is the most capable person.”

Absolutely. It does not matter that merit is often not the criterion; there is nepotism, there is dynasty, there are mai-baaps waiting with protégées tugging at their dhoti-sherwani-saree. Yet, it is an important statement and it is time people stopped posing such queries. What does one expect from a Muslim PM, anyway?

S/he has to follow the Constitution, has to be answerable to the party General Secretary, has to do Diwali patakhas and Eid iftaar and as a sidelight add some Christmas Santa act and Sikh stuff and whatever it is that Buddhists and Jains do. In effect, be a part-time kafir, if you follow the rule books as interpreted by some rule-book types. After all this fancy dress competition, you make the rounds of various dead people’s graves, place flowers, and look sombre. Then put on an international face and go to summits where you make India sound like a global superpower, and add some concern about the environment and terrorism; usually it is the same thing if you follow Obama and not Al (I mean Gore, not Capone).

You return home and deal with the saffron rightwing, who will say you are going green. The jamaati rightwing will expect you to be jamaat type. Then the PM will hold forth on secularism this and secularism that. The world will say, look, look, India has a Muslim PM. We will be called a real democracy, while Wazir-e-whatever has no clue about little bastis, unless it is election time and one snotty Dalit kid is placed on her/his lap. Back to the jeep, Mossie begum/saab will ask for sanitiser. Some enthusiastic bloke will whisper if it has to be halal. PM will be in a fix so someone will bring out ittar-soaked wet wipes. Everyone will applaud secular India, secular PM, secular people. When what really is happening is that it is the religions, stupid. So, cut it out.

We had a Muslim President who happily signed the Emergency edict. (Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed during Indira Gandhi’s time.) Corrupt people in power, spineless fellows will remain just that. Their faith should be relegated to the private domain. It has no place in the public sphere at all.

Therefore, thumbs up to Rahul. Although he kind of tempered it by promising “there would be 30 young Muslim faces in the political centrestage in five years”. Why? How will they suddenly spring out from the merit quota?

And why must they be referred to as Muslims at all? The day we stop adding such tags in public life, we can say we have truly grown up as a society and a polity.

And the US hawks are warning us...

Do we need an American to deliver a lecture on “terrorism and threat to India”?

Michael Chertoff, US security expert and former secretary of Homeland Security from 2005-2009 when the US was the biggest threat to many nations, is sounding alarm bells about Mumbai-like attacks.

“In Mumbai attacks, we have seen evolving the tactic of using weapons and bombs together in a commando like operation. Such attacks are likely to happen more and the challenge before everybody is to be able to deal with them.”

If they are likely to happen before anybody is able to deal with them, then why is he barfing about it? I honestly don’t get it. You know how it is going to work and yet you cannot deal with it?

“There are safe havens which are being used by terrorists to plan and organise strikes. Afghanistan was one such haven after 9/11. The frontier areas of Pakistan and Somalia too are proving to be such havens for terrorism.”

If that is so, then what about the local boys who bomb tube stations?

Chertoff admitted that while al Qaida is a much weaker force now than it was in 2001 and that it no longer has its earlier “command and control system’’ it has been able to rebuild itself to an extent in Pakistan. He said that it also coordinates with groups like LeT. He, however, said that India had to exercise extreme caution in dealing with terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

Great. Now Al Qaeda is weaker and it has found a new home. You know why? Because he is complimenting Singapore and Saudi Arabia for checking “elements of radicalisation and alter the conditions on the ground”. I have said it before: America will not touch Saudi Arabia.

And then he has the audacity to warn India about Pakistan – something we do not need to be told – but, please note, there is no mention of Kashmir. None. He harps on the Mumbai-like attacks because he is connecting it to 9/11 and 9/11 is all that the US will remember.

Apparently, they have now developed the capability “to detect radioactive and other dangerous substances”. Had they possessed this earlier “at least 15 of the 19 who executed 9/11 would have been caught in the planning stage”.

I don’t know what the other four would have been doing for Mr Chertoff and his apparatus not to be able to get to them. Like are those blokes one up, have more radioactive thingies? The biggest superpower’s big security man is saying this. And then he is lecturing us? Those terrorists in their Versace tees must be laughing their heads off in those radioactive substances.

What the real deal here is to enlist the private sector. From all accounts it is only the private sector that knows how to use biometrics. Very cunningly he is talking about “layered defences”, which means outsourcing security. What private sector is he talking about? Indigenous?

Like we have a company that is really smart and detects this stuff and when some attack is about to take place, what happens? The Intelligence Bureau gets a whiff of some radioactive substance, calls up Private Sector and says, hey, we got a problem, get all your equipment quick and we will find those guys? Or it just buys off the stuff from the private companies, which means kickbacks, and the luxury to lay the blame on them and the government can say it was all faulty. A case will go on for years and years, by which time the attacks would have taken place, and I am only quoting Mr. Foreign Security Top Guy Who Lectures Us.

Or, does the United States want to play parddnerr and set up some franchise here of its biometric department so we can get those fellows?

Why do we have to listen to all this? It sounds like some latest designer trends that we follow blindly…like purple is the colour of the season when we don’t even have that goddamn season in this country. Get real. And quit India if you are lookin' for a stake here.

We are full up. So, thanks, but no thanks.

Excuse me, Mr. President

Barack Obama’s plans are those of a man in a hurry to divert attention from issues back home. Clinton did it. Bush did it. He is doing it. The American tax payer will be shelling out $30 million in the first year for something s/he has no clue about. Is this revenge for 9/11? Prevention of another 9/11?

No. 30,000 more troops will go into Afghanistan so that Americans forget about their problems and feel good. There is more:

The President vowed to start bringing American forces home from the strife-torn country by mid-2011, saying the US could not afford and should not have to shoulder an ‘‘open-ended commitment’’.

Has anyone asked the United States of America to send troops? Is this a UN initiative? How does America know that by 2011 it will be fine to move out? What are its plans? It is time Mr. Obama stopped talking as though it is a magnanimous gesture and the US will suffer. Cannot afford? Of course, it cannot. It has to take care of its own economy, but since that is a problem area the word ‘afford’ married to ‘strife-torn’ works like magic.

It cannot be a close-ended commitment and has to be open-ended unless there are specific plans. How can he promise to bring “this war to a successful conclusion”? Which war is he talking about? The one that has US drones? Or the one that is a civil war in which the US has no place? Or the one it is fighting in its mind?

Obama set out a strategy seeking to reverse Taliban gains in large parts, increase pressure on Afghanistan to build its own military capacity and an effective government and step up attacks on the Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The Taliban is also in Pakistan, which he does not speak about. The Al Qaeda is all over the place, but Pakistan is good enough. So, what is this talk about helping Afghanistan build its military capacity?

Defence secretary Robert Gates has done the defence job:

“It is neither necessary nor feasible to create a modern, Western-style Afghan nation-state. Nor does it entail counterinsurgency from one end of Afghanistan to the other. We will not repeat the mistakes of 1989, when we abandoned the country only to see it descend into civil war, and then into Taliban hands.”

Just who does Mr Gates think he is? Does he know that Afghanistan has a long history and has survived many marauders? What does modern mean? I have said it before. Iraq was a modern state. Iran was a modern state. Until the interference started and the religious guys decided to take over control. The insurgency is not from Afghanistan but from outside, so the counter-insurgency will come from them.

The US abandoned the country and left it in the hands of the Taliban? Geez. The Afghans were fighting alongside the Russians against the Mujahideen, the holy warriors, who had the help of the United States of America!

Please, Mr. Obama, history is inconvenient truth. We just have to live with it.

That little sigh

That intangible something. Kaheen yeh woh tau nahin…I must admit it is not great lyrics; quite pedestrian, in fact. No passion, no sublimity. Yet…I think I like the thought of the thought springing from a mere sigh.

Zara Si Aahat Hoti Hai To Dil Sochta Hai



* Movie: Haqeeqat
* Singer: Lata Mangeshkar
* Music Director: Madan Mohan
* Lyricist: Kaifi Azmi
* Actors/Actresses: Dharmendra, Priya Rajvansh
* Year: 1964

HIV installed

Before - unknown volunteers

After - socialite Parmeshwar Godrej with her American designer of the AIDS awareness installation

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Article to follow later.

Lindt it or lump it?

Minarets don’t really float my boat, but to ban them? That too in Switzerland by a referendum from the people. 57.5 percent voted in favour. It has been opposed by the Swiss government, parliament, business groups and churches but given the thumbs up by the Right wing Swiss People’s Party.

Here are a few issues raised and it reveals the hollowness that has come to apply to political discourses:

There are only four minarets among the tens of thousands of church spires in Switzerland but the SVP campaigned against them as a symbol of Islamic political influence, which it claimed could eventually undermine the nation's Christian values and democracy.

Since when has Switzerland become a Christian nation? Values cannot be politicised. Minarets do not stand for political influence. Muslims constitute about five percent of the population, and they are mostly from East Europe which can hardly claim to be symbols of Islam.

The spires are traditionally used to make the call for prayers at mosques but Swiss noise control regulations have already stopped them from being used for that purpose; instead, they became an architectural symbol of the Islamic faith. The ban on minarets does not stop the building of mosques, and Muslims were still free to practise their faith.

This is weird. A muezzin could shout from atop a dome as well. And what about church bells? Personally, I am against the call to the faithful at unearthly hours and would rather they invest in alarm clocks, but to use this as a stick to beat a community with is ridiculous.

Embarrassed government spokesmen agreed that the ban would "serve the interests of extremist circles" only, and Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey claimed that a yes vote "could make Switzerland a target for Islamic terrorism".

Wow. Even when they are decrying the ban, they are slyly suggesting that this could result in a backlash. Did they want it? Switzerland was not attacked in the two world wars. During the First war, Lenin lived there; it managed to remain unscathed during the WW 11 by playing along with the Germans, although it did not fall into the Nazi trap.

If it has managed to work its way around such major upheavals in history what is the fear now? Mosques have been attacked these past two weeks.

Ulrich Schluer, an SVP politician has been holding forth:

"We compare our situation to Germany, France or England and the problems they have in their suburbs. That is what we do not want here. Mosques are not part of freedom of religion. This is not against Islam. The minaret is a symbol . . . of conquest and power, which marks the will to introduce Shariah law as in other European cities. We will not accept that".

Obviously, someone needs a few lessons in history. How is it not against Islam if it assumes that Shariah law will be introduced? Civil society building mosques is going to now connote conquest?

The problem is that many of these nations will market their goods, send their expertise to Arab countries and bask in the special privileges they get there, but at home they treat immigrants with suspicion.

I have already talked about the breach in the White House security. This was no terrorist attack.

I understand the need for societies to retain their own identity, but what can five per cent of the population do? Are we trying to use examples of a few terrorists? There is no way to justify those acts, but how many people are gunned down in campuses, how many people are murdered, how many fanatics of different stripes – and not just religion – walk around selling their ideologies? What about those versions of ‘shariah’? No one can impose a religious law in a democracy. This bogey is deliberately created to marginalise some groups.

Businesses such as watch-maker Swatch and Switzerland's famous banking industry said they feared the ban could provoke expensive boycotts by Muslims around the world, while the Swiss government warned it could inflame tensions between religions.

Oh, sure. This is what the business lot would be concerned about. Here is news. Muslims, the real rich ones, are the Arabs. They will not boycott anything so long as it is kosher. Trade will continue. If they just kept quiet and went about with their Alps and stopped getting all jittery about something rising up towards the sky, there would be no problems. The rowdies may come out in the streets and make a noise. This seems deliberate.

In the form of direct referendum to get views, they could have asked people about more pressing issues. Why did they choose this? To please the rest of Europe? France, Germany? Perhaps the country should take a good look at itself and watch how the different sections of its own French and German sides are disparate and have an ongoing quiet battle on between them.

I only hope Muslims forget about it as a bad joke and go on with their jobs. They do work too, you know? And the Swiss can be certain that at least one Muslim here has worshipped at the altar of Sprungli. And will continue to do so.