A nation of courage

They all said it again and again that Bush was fighting this war not for anybody else but for America.

In so much as these were election time rhetoric and political hot air, the speakers at the Republican Convention had the uncanny resonance of something that happened more than 70 years ago. On 01 February 1933, Adolf Hitler said in his Proclamation to the German Nation in Berlin: " Now, people of Germany, give us four years and then pass judgment upon us… May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany".

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Wait a minute before you jump to any conclusion. Nobody is trying to compare the Republicans to the Nazis and George Bush to Adolf Hitler. We are talking about different people in different countries at different times. But the children of Hungary might beg to differ. A survey of 34000 high school students showed that 25 per cent of them disliked Adolf Hitler closely followed by George Bush with 23 per cent. By golly be jolly! Bush is even more unpopular than former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, the survey says!

But one man's courage can be another man's fear and that is what the hawkish speakers in the Republican Convention failed to realize. Every time they bellowed their war cry against terrorism, they sent fear into the hearts of people across the world. When George Bush said in the Republican Convention that the war on terrorism was in fact winnable, Richard Cohen, a columnist of The Washington Post, was counting. On that very day suicide bombers killed 16 people in Israel; 12 Nepalese were massacred in Iraq; five Afghans were accidentally killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan; nine people were killed by a suicide bomber at a Moscow subway station, and five more American servicemen were reported dead in Iraq.

The hostage horror in Beslan, Russia came much later and by then Richard Cohen was no longer counting. This tragedy claimed the lives of several hundred hostages, half of them children. Nobody is blaming these deaths on George Bush. These are insane brutalities committed by madmen who deserve our strongest condemnations. But these are also the signal failure of the Bush Doctrine that terrorism can be terrorized, that violence can be met with violence.

Because, terrorism is evil in case George Bush has not realized. It is as evil as crime and drugs. What happened to the war on drugs, declared by the United States more than 30 years ago? What has happened to the war on crime? Unfortunately, certain things in the world cannot be eradicated like smallpox, and evil is one such thing, which has to be managed. That is why God has created opposites. That is why we need to affirm our virtues in order to deny our vices. That is why we pour water to put out the fire, and look for a shade in the sun instead of vowing to destroy its heat. That is why love is the most effective antidote to hatred.

No, George Bush does not have to love the terrorists. But how much can he hate them? Not much I guess, because hatred cannot root out hatred just like a wet tissue cannot wipe much water. Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial editor of The Washington Post wrote last week that the report submitted by a panel led by James R. Schlesinger gave clear and meticulous account of how decisions made by President Bush, his top political aides and senior military commanders led directly to the prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib prison and other detention facilities.

In December 2002, Schlesinger report says, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld authorized a number of harsh methods to interrogate the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. When challenged by the military lawyers, the policy was revised in April 2003. But only the policy was revised, not its practice which was already circulating from prison to prison. Thus what started in Guantanamo Bay immediately traveled to Afghanistan, but did not reach Iraq until August 2003 when Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the commander at Guantanamo Bay, arrived in Iraq. He gave the policy on use of harsh methods to Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq as migration of best practice.

Terrorism is commonly the covert operation of confused minds, people who swing between truth and falsehood, hope and despondency, promise and prevarication until they explode one day to take things in their hands. But terrorism is never a political process like a revolution, which is smoldering fire that flares up. Terrorism is too many sparks, which fail to start the fire. To go one notch up, terrorism is a kind of sickness, a delusion that holds people hostage on the brink of their minds.

But then those who believe terrorism can be fought back, are on the brink of their own minds as well. It turns them into pathological liars, subjecting them to perverse delusion of the reverse kind when they want others to believe in their own illusions. What came out loud and clear from the Republican Convention is an echo of that delusion when speaker after speaker roiled in their political exuberance and upheld the proverbial windmill and their American Don Quixote. There was no mention of their mistakes in the invasion of Iraq, false WMDs and brutalities in Abu Ghraib and other prisons. There was no soul-searching, no apology. The real courage of conviction was drowned in the commotion of the claque.

It pained me to watch the dog-and-pony show of the Republican Convention, which reminded me of the same demagogy that characterizes our politics. It reminds us of a joke about Laloo Prasad Yadav, the central Minister for Railway in India and former maverick Chief Minister of Bihar. Once he visited Japan and was asked what he thought of it. A wisecracking Laloo said in his usual drawl that, if given to them, the Japanese had promised to turn Bihar into Japan in ten years. What was his reaction to that? Laloo said he had made a counter offer instead. He promised to turn Japan into Bihar if given only five years' time.

Starting from the disputed election of George Bush to his disturbing selection for another term, it seems a lot of bad influence has rubbed off on the US politics from the Third World. The alleged election fraud, the chicanery, the cover-ups, firebrand speeches, and use of violence for political gains (not on the home ground unlike the Third World countries) are now the grist for mill in the politics of the most advanced democracy in the world.

The Republican Convention ended on that sad note last week irrespective of what happens to George Bush in November. It seemed odd that a nation of courage should have raised such cowardly politicians who tell lies to stay in power and push their evil designs. Bad news for our politicians. Others are catching up with them.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.