Pious Claims and Cosmetic Adjustments
By S.M.A. Ehtisham, MD
Bath, NY
We as Americans, along with the progeny of those who were driven to the country by starvation and religious bigotry over the last 4-5 centuries, are without doubt, justified in celebrating the Obama victory. But from the perspective of the Third World, we have to consider the triumph of reason in the land of hope, in a somewhat less optimistic manner.
Let us throw a brief glance at recent history.
From the time Margaret Thatcher took over in the UK, and Ronald Reagan got into the White House on January 21, 1980, the two countries led the West into an era of neo-conservatism. Very briefly, the thrust was on neo-colonization, in abstract space, not physically.
True, they attacked Falklands and Granada, and sabotaged nationalist regimes, created civil unrest as excuse for staged coups, organized financial crises, sent assassins, financed, armed and trained insurgents, blew up airplanes in mid air, but kept away from occupation.
They offered loans for projects which the recipient countries had no use for, had no skills to construct or run, bribed rulers to accept such projects, and went in with an army of consultants, technicians, engineers, administrators and financiers. The material had to be imported from the “donor” country, its ships had to be used even though the managers and the material could be bought cheaply from other countries, and the shipping cost could be a fraction of what the recipient was being charged. Local contractors were carefully excluded, only local labor was offered menial jobs.
At the end of the day, the bulk of mangers remained on fat salaries, spare parts were obtained from the donor country and continued to arrive on donor country ships
Come the time for payment of the debt, the recipient did not have the money, and was told to tighten its belt, that is stop education, health and welfare subsidies, fire employees, cut budget deficit, sell national assets, privatize utilities, even rain water in Bolivia, get more loan to service the debt-the principal will remain intact and enhanced with further debt.
If the native rulers did not abide by the dicta, all the subversive measures were put into effect.
This is not going to change in an Obama administration.
Under Bill Clinton the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA (North Atlantic Free Trade Area) were organized, the first to put the developing countries (I prefer the more honest term, Less Developed Countries-LDC) into a strait-jacket via Intellectual Property Rights and other such coercive measures, so that they could not offer generic AIDS drugs to victims. At one point Multi-National Corporations (MNC) had even patented “Haldi” turmeric, “Imlee” and “Adrak” ginger, so a farmer growing them on his “bigha”(fifth of an acre) could be jailed. Privatization was pushed like a religion, dams built, making millions homeless. Literally hundreds of thousands of landless and destitute farmers in India have committed suicide since the mid-1990s.
The second was meant to use cheap labor in Mexico to put the “pampered” American worker into place.
Clinton quickly surrendered his wife’s health care plan when the pharmaceutical industry told him the facts of life. Having learned the lesson, Hillary offered only an excuse of a plan in her bid for nomination.
Deregulation of the market was legislated (1998) which has culminated in the recent financial melt down.
Media ownership was consolidated, so that five, instead of 85 corporations, own the mainstream TV, radio stations, and newspapers. Now the public does not even have access to uncooked information.
Clinton was intelligent enough not to commit the US troops directly. He preferred bombing pharmaceutical factories (in Sudan) by air, cutting and running from Somalia, keeping air curfew over Iraq, letting half a million children die of lack of drugs and starvation, letting Serbs and Bosnians kill each other, till the latter with the help of Muslim volunteers, mainly from Iran, were on the verge of defeating the Serbs, and bombing the h… out of both.
This is not going to change in an Obama administration.
The lesser Bush (the term borrowed from Arundhati Roy) was led by the nose by the neo-liberals. This species is further along the line of re-colonization than even the neo-conservatives. They are true fundamentalists, believe in “rapture” when the Messiah will return, save all the good Christians and 150,000 Jews (I have not been able to find how they arrived at the number), take them up, and kill the rest especially the anti-Christ Mohammedans (their preferred term for Muslims). If they can get rid of the last named, that will be that much less work for the Messiah.
The lesser Bush found a credible excuse to attack Afghanistan in 9/11.
Not to dwell for too long on “conspiracy theories” that the intelligence agencies arranged the whole thing themselves, that Mubarak had forewarned them, that the US Air Force was stopped from scrambling its fighters and taking the hijacked planes out, there is virtually no dissent to the idea that it was a colossal failure of intelligence.
The agenda included attacks on Iraq and Iran. An unholy alliance was developed, based mainly in the USA, its lap dog Britain, and a few minions.
Iraq, being weaker after a decade of sanctions, was chosen and endowed with Weapons of Mass Destruction, via Weapons of Mass Deception.
Though a million have been killed, 4 million internally and externally displaced (that makes 20% of the total population), Iraqis put up a surprisingly tough resistance, and finally the recent “surge” succeeded by the good old method of bribing the insurgent groups with a $ 100,000.00 each.
Iran got away as the lesser Bush even though goaded by the evil force Dick Cheney and other neo-libs, no longer had the guts to go after it, nor was he willing to unleash Israel.
The deregulation of Clinton time found its full expression under Bush, and together with the fanatical expansion of wars and military bases, has resulted in the current financial mess.
Obama will not follow Bush in these mis-adventures. He will use the Clinton techniques, perhaps even more intelligently. He will offer a measure of health care, restore a degree of welfare and education subsidies. He will try to reduce unemployment and use the clout of the recent one trillion bailout to get a handle on corporate CEOs, not that he will be able to get far.
He will get out of Iraq, make pious noises about Afghanistan, but end up paying off Taliban whose Islamic Jihadist zeal is tempered by the love of money.
He will use the funds saved from disentanglement from Iraq and Afghanistan to salvage the economy of the USA.
Now we come to subsidiary regimes like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and the radical anti-American movements in the countries.
Pakistan can be dealt with rather easily. Get it to become friends with India, reduce the outlay on the army, and release resources for fighting with the extremists. Most of the establishment “religious” is for sale anyway (as an example, the deals Maulana “Diesel” Fazalur Rahman made with Musharraf) . The so-called civilian sector is amenable to any and all instructions. In the “celebrated” saying of the US ambassador to Pakistan when BB and NS were jockeying for power, “we don’t care if Mickey Mouse is your PM, as long as he/she does what we tell him/her to do”.
The Arab rulers depend upon US good will to survive and cow down the people.
The nuts to crack are Iran and Palestinians.
Iran is the bigger problem. It is a relatively big country with a credible, dedicated and disciplined, though not enlightened, leadership, rich resources, educated base and a homogenous population. Attacking it directly or even through Israel is not a practical proposition. It can block the straits of Hormuz, thus choking off oil and world economy. It has had twenty years to revamp its forces, has tested missiles which can reach Europe and Israel, and may even have a few nuclear bombs.
Iraq was used to debilitate it for 8 years. That is no longer in the equation. But Taliban, bigots that they are, are already straining at the leash. They after all killed hundreds of thousands of Afghan Shias (among million or so of other opponents). All they need is the wherewithal.
Dozens of Pakistan army officers made millions of dollars out of the Afghan Jihad by siphoning off a good bit of US aid and in gun and drug trade. They would not be averse to another Jihad.
As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that is a “no go” territory for any US president. Ike told Britain, France and Israel to get out of Suez in 1956. No president has since survived an untoward gesture towards the country. Nixon fell a victim to “Watergate” because he reportedly delayed coming to the rescue of Israel in 1973 Yom Kippur war (the lesser Bush got away with worse). Carter paid the price of getting the two sides together by losing the reelection, though Iranian helped along. Bush senior lost to an unknown in spite of an approval rating in high eighties after the first Gulf war, because he refused to extend a 10 billion loan guarantee to Israel without a promise to halt new settlement activity. Clinton had started flexing his muscles and got Monica Lewinsky as a reward.
Obama will only make pious noises and offer cosmetic adjustments.
