Fifth Anniversary of an Inherently Flawed War at Iraq

Dana Perino, the White House Press Secretary, in a press conference last week said that the President of the United States, George W.Bush, spends a considerable time of his day in lamenting the death of US soldiers at Iraq and is grieved on every lost American life in the war. This is perhaps the most extreme childish remark that I’ve heard this year, since it is nothing but a ludicrous political rhetoric aimed at painting a noble picture of the President in front of the people of the United States and the world over. But such pretentious utterances of concern on a war initiated by his willful misjudgment can hardly prevent George W. Bush from gaining the dubious distinction of being the most incompetent of all American Presidents.

The world observed the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war last week. As of now there are 1,40,000 US troops located at Iraq and the death toll of the US soldiers had reached a very ghastly number of 4000, and this is a very serious situation. From the beginning itself this war is a flawed one with officials in the Bush administration showing an insidious and evil swiftness in kick starting the war. Some of the administration members, especially the Vice President, Dick Cheney and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, had sexed up evidences against the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein accusing him of keeping sinister designs of waging a nuclear war against the United States. They came up with concocted evidences that suggested that Saddam Hussein had links with the al-Qaeda and it’s leader, Osama Bin Laden, which has never been proved up to now. The Vice President, Dick Cheney pressurized the CIA to come up with evidences that would prove that Saddam Hussein and his Iraqi administration is having Weapons of Mass Destruction or the WMD. He was skillfully supported by Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress in coming up with false evidences to support the claim and persuaded the US President and it’s allies to announce a war on Iraq. So the President of the United States declared the war on Iraq on 19th March 2003 christened “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.

Saddam Hussein was not a saint as being portrayed by a lot of Leftist political organizations in India. He was an autocratic ruler, a despotic tyrant who had committed some of the most serious and appalling crimes of genocides in the history of mankind. Saddam was the perpetrator of the heinous crime of massacring 1,80,000 Kurds in the 1980s for suppressing a mass upheaval against him and it was during this period that he had used the notorious poison gas to kill 5000 Kurds at Halabja in Iraq. A majority of Iraqis were against Saddam and his acrimonious administration and this was evident from the celebration that was witnessed at Baghdad on the fall of Saddam’s regime. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein had to be brought under justice for his crimes against humanity, but the fact of the matter is what moral authority did the United States had in bringing Saddam under justice and under judicial courts and jurists handpicked by themselves.

One of the most important reasons for the Iraq war getting awry was the power struggle in the Bush administration. There were serious differences in opinion between Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State and the duo of Vice President Dick Cheney and the former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld. While the former was for diplomatic efforts and UN resolutions for bringing Saddam under justice, the latter team wanted war at any cost to bring Saddam Hussein down. Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s exceptional interest in engaging in a war with Iraq has always been a big mystery for the political gurus.

Now that the war is on for five years, humanitarian crisis is increasing day by day. With the fall of Saddam Hussein there has been a huge increase in the number of terror strikes by the insurgents and this is creating a lot of human loss to both sides, military and civilian casualties are on the rise, starvation and hunger is prevalent; killing, looting, rape and arson are on the increase and there is the big trouble of handling and managing the criminals and detainees of the war. The inhuman treatment of the detainees by the United States administration at different prisons including the Guantanamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib are subject of serious and fiery discussions in the international arena with the human rights organizations and the Bush administration at loggerheads. While Colin Powell wanted PoW status for the detainees of the war so that they would get human treatment based on the Geneva conventions, Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t thought so and they wanted abhorrent and brutal methods of torture to be adopted for interrogation of the detainees or what they call the “enemy combatants”.

Now Iraq is a mess, made of destructed buildings and obstructed peaceful life, an agonizing place for invidious ethnic conflicts, a safe haven for treacherous insurgents and a breeding ground for gross human rights violations. The US troops are a confused lot, oblivious of any available strategies to counter insurgents and unaware of any policies on how to get out of the quagmire at Iraq. There are no exit strategies at hand and the sabotage of human lives and properties by the rivaling Shia and Sunni militants are on the rise, with the Mahdi army, loyal to the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and hostile to the US army and its allies, continuing its assault on various cities in Iraq, particularly Basra. There seems to be no end to this unjust war and its implications on the world economy and world polity is quite alarming. And this war provides a very uncomfortable challenge to the US administration and to the US President whose popularity ratings are on an all time low. We could only hope that the new President of the United States – John McCain, Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama – would take some effective steps to stop this incendiary combat.

I Mourn the Sad Demise of the Great Actor Raghuvaran

Raghuvaran, one of the greatest actors in South Indian films, has melted into the annals of history. A passionate actor, a prodigy from the school of subtle style of acting, had carved a niche for himself in the South Indian film industry with his inimitable style of dialogue delivery and screen performance. His remarkable ability to unravel the intricacies of complex characters and perform them on screen with utmost ease has given critics and serious onlookers of cinema, some serious models of creative possibilities that films provide for inspired artists. We have lost one of the most prolific actors and this is nothing but an irreparable loss for the entire film industry and for all those who relish enjoying the serious and refreshing facets of films. I salute this phenomenal actor and may his soul rest in peace.

SSLC Exams - Why This Much of Fuss About It

In our state of Kerala, the SSLC exam has begun and with that has begun the ten day ordeal for the students who are writing this exams and related anguish for their parents. These are difficult days not only for the students and their parents, but also for the Government, with the home department and the policemen at their toes, getting ready for any urgent “actions”. On seeing the big security arrangements for the examination, one can’t help but wonder why this much fuss should be made about the SSLC exams.

In Kerala, no other annual routine practice gets the sort of hype that the SSLC exams get, and in this regard even the annual state financial budget takes a back stage. The SSLC exam is one such thing that when we experience it, make us feel that we are engaging ourselves into something colossal, though when we look back at it, after some years of matured wisdom, understand that it was just another ordinary passage of days, which we were made to think otherwise by our environment. Yet, generations after generations of young fifteen year olds are systematically fed with the stupid idea that SSLC is the chief decider of their future and the marks that they get in it would decide whether their life is destined to be a triumph or a fiasco. But this idea has nothing veracious about it and to the contrary, is a big absurdity, with no empirical evidence to support or any pragmatic proof to sustain. The marks you get in SSLC neither has a bearing on the success of your life nor can influence the different attributes of your future life – career growth, money, life expectancy, permanent personal disposition or the most important one, your family life.

One can’t blame the students if they get overawed by the mythical-like legend of SSLC as they are constantly pestered with grotesque advices and repulsive facts on the exam by teachers and parents alike. But inarguably, the ultimate fact about this exam is that it is another classic example of making a mountain out of a mole hill, where this exam is nothing but a needless propaganda that would only bring sleepless nights to the examinees, payless leave from work for the mothers of the examinees (if lucky, you’ll be able to take paid leaves) and restless two weeks for the fathers of the examinees. (sometimes more than two weeks, depending on the emotional makeup of each father)

It would be quite sensible for me to use this occasion to thank my parents for not being so demanding when I wrote my SSLC exams, unlike lot of other parents. But I must admit that I was also not completely shielded from the mental agonies of the exam, where for a short period of time I was also a bit dejected about not getting the marks that I expected to receive. However, luckily that was for a very short period of time and I was able to emerge out of it quite easily with the due support of my family and now thinks about it and feels rather embarrassed for squandering some quality time lamenting, which could have been effectively used for some gleeful recreation.

When we hear about the robust security arrangements put in place for the exams and the creation of a group of people, what they call as “squads”, to check if there are some malpractices happening during the exams, the only emotion that comes in mind is scorn. It is quite ridiculous that we are giving such unwanted and disgraceful importance to an exam, written by small children who are relatively oblivious of the wretchedness of this world. The reference of squads make me reminisce how eagerly I waited to see them, during my SSLC exam days, just to understand what is so special and newsworthy about them, only to find that they are a group of people who meanders here and there inside the examination hall with an assumption that there are some veiled felons in the hall and it is incumbent upon them and is their ultimate responsibility to catch them red- handed, so that they can be ‘proud’ of themselves to have imparted some ‘much needed sacredness’ into the education system of the state.

It is high time for all responsible parents and teachers to understand themselves and then make students recognize that the SSLC exam is not a perilous monster and it is not something that has got any decisive criticality on the future life of a person as he/she is going to get a wide array of opportunities later in the life to make a mark of his/her own. But even a die hard optimist can hardly foresee such a thing happening in the near future, as we are living in a society obsessed with the narrow and objective result-oriented definitions of success. Hopefully such a remarkable common sense would prevail sometime in the future. For the time being we can wish all those children who are writing the exams this year, an all the very best.

Young Indians Tame the Aussie Kangaroos, Yet Again

Dhoni’s daredevils had done it before, and they have done it again – they tamed the Aussie kangaroos and showed them that stupid rhetoric of arrogance and idiotic idioms of egotism and overconfidence, in the name of mental disintegration (a pleasant euphemism for the nasty sledging) of opponents, can backfire. The young bunch of Indian cricketers have ruined the Australian team’s hope of grabbing the CB series championships by a clinical display on Tuesday at the Gabba, Brisbane.

The energetic and youthful team has achieved something that India had never been able to achieve since winning the World Championship in 1985 – winning a one day series down under and they did it with a great exhibition of team spirit skillfully led by the skipper MS Dhoni and riding on the great innings of the legendary, Sachin Tendulkar. A lot of people in India, including the so-called ‘experts’ and the laymen, were skeptical about the chances of this young team to succeed in as a hostile condition as Australia, as they were young and inexperienced and were playing at unfamiliar tracks absolutely different from what they are used to in India. By taking forward the tradition of this column, of being plainly candid and honest, I must confess that I was also not having my skepticism under check either and was also thinking in the same line as them. But the young guns have proved all wrong with their immaculate display of skill and mental toughness.

The series win is certainly a sweet revenge for the Indian team as they were ridiculed in the worst possible manner by some members of the Australian cricket team and by the Australian media. The media even went to the extend of saying that India is the worst behaved team in this world, feigning blind to their own team’s black history of being the most ludicrous sledgers and ruffians the game of cricket has ever seen. And the Aussie spectators at different grounds gave Harbhajan Singh a torrid time and tried to bully him and harass him, greeted him with big boos whenever he came to bat or ball and even called him a “wanker” to arouse some sort of a livid response from him. Then of course there was that abhorrent, “obnoxious little weed” remark made by Mathew Hayden on Harbhajan Singh which is as grisly as it can get. That comment made by Mr. Hayden proved that he is just an annoying little kid with the body of a big bull (this should not be considered as a slur as the Queensland cricketers calls themselves as “Bulls”), who should not be made to play international sport, but be allowed to sleep at his home, hearing his mom’s lullabies.

Hayden also had a go at the lanky Indian pacer Ishant Sharma and even quipped he would like to meet Ishant in a boxing ring to sort out things and he also suggested Ishant to take things easy and to worry only about his bowling and nothing else. Now I think it is time for Hayden and his teammates to stop thinking and talking about the behavior of their opponents and to worry about their own batting and their waning popularity in the cricketing fraternity. The Indians outplayed and out-behaved the Aussies, showed great resilience and didn’t try to engage themselves in the war of words, instead they demonstrated their indignation at the cricket field and made the Aussies rue their own mistake of waking up the lions from slumber.

Now the onus is on this young team to take this momentum forward and become a force to reckon with in the international arena, as we have often seen sides sliding downwards after giving a lot of promise. Of course, for now they can bask in the glory of their victory, but sooner rather than later, they should understand the greater responsibility and expectations that have come on them because of this thumping triumph. At the same time the BCCI should also show some basic common sense and should take some effort to reschedule the itinerary of the matches that the team plays, in such a way that it puts less pressure on the players, both physically and mentally. The current schedule is quite tiresome and demanding and is in such a way that either the players take a break or they breakdown, which is quite stupid.

Now the Indians have given the Aussies some food for thought and this food is not only quite difficult to swallow but is quite difficult to digest as well. But the Aussies should not complain, because this is something that they required very badly. There is only a very fine line between confidence and arrogance and once you cross from the former to the latter, there is always a prospect of a fiasco looming large, looking for an opening to strike. It is time for the Aussie players to look back and identify the places where they have gone wrong and keep their arrogance under check, hope for a change in their damned fate and expect a resurrection, which seems difficult but not impossible. And for the Indians, it is time to celebrate the way in which Dhoni’s bravehearts responded to the Aussie’s despicable on field and off field acrimonious aggression and roar to the world – “Dare we not, lest you’ll be tamed in the style we tamed the wild Kangaroos down under.”

I Congratulate Team India for Emerging Victorious Down Under

I congratulate the Indian cricket team for it’s victory over the nasty Aussies down under. It was a great display of team spirit and the Indians deserve all the accolades that they are getting. Time to reinforce the superiority of Sachin Tendulkar as the greatest batsman of our times. He gave a befitting reply to his critics and reports say that his critics are running ‘helter-skelter’ to all parts to find a safe place to hide. You are a real champion Sachin. You are a Superstar.