American Dreams

The problem with American involvement in distant lands was very well summarised, coincidentally, in 1960s World War II film - Judgment at Nuremberg. In the movie, Col. Lawson, playing the public prosecutor in the trial of four judges of the Third Reich remarked to Judge Hayward over drinks - 'We Americans are not cut out to be occupiers. We are new at it, and not very good at it. We like to forgive easily. We like to give the other guy a chance. That's the American way. We've got a built-in inferiority complex.' This identity crisis of the United States gets it embroiled in dilemmas time and again in its relentless pursuit of security, justice and change the world over. America is relatively new to the centuries old colonial pursuit of European powers, and has developed a warped understanding of what constitutes homeland security as well as the costs and benefits inherent in economic and political aims in foreign lands.

To fully grasp the extent of this dilemma, one must turn the pages of history and you will find that American foreign policy was an immensely successful one in so far as it remained primarily a trade policy, i.e when it focused on opening 'markets' overseas for corporations, the true American export. Both the First and Second World Wars proved to be hugely beneficial to this trade with American contribution to the rearmaments of countries, and it actually had a fantastic business model going for itself, until Pearl Harbor necessitated military involvement to exact revenge. And there has been no more brutal a revenge extracted over a treacherous enemy as America extracted over Japan. But the ensuing misplaced fears of Bolshevism running over the world, much like Nazism, sowed the seeds of the present condition of the United States, with military spending rising to illogical levels for a country relatively secure geographically from attempts at annihilation!

From a senseless bulwark development costs close to 40% of GDP in he beginning of the Cold War era, America continued to plough billions of tax dollars evey year over the next few decades to fund a security program against the veritable nuclear-armed alien invasion. No leader on Earth possibly ever harboured a belief that it would be plausible and profitable to attack a geographically secured American continent through conventional means, including Adolf Hitler, who was candid even in Mein Kampf, of the foolishness of such a misadventure. An army of madmen would sooner risk another shot at lebensraum in the East, Napoleon and Hitler's Operation Barbarossa being forgotten, than try an occupation of the American continent through military means. But by building imaginary scenarios across the world on 'threats to American interests',the Americans turned from profitable arms exporters to wannabe colonists in a post colonial world whose erstwhile rulers had already learnt their lessons and started embarking on nation rebuilding and non-militaristic domination of their spheres of influence. And quite intelligently, the Western European powers outsourced, so to speak, their military adventurism to the United States which quite foolishly took over the mantle of global papa. Cut through to the present War On Terror, a justifiable war, but undertaken on a scale that is not only unnecessary but also hopelessly counter-productive in that it ends up feeding militancy. America has spent 1.3 trillion taxpayer dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan, spending between 40 to 50 per cent of the nation's tax collections to secure a continent from thugs with AK47s and minds hypnotized to die in vain. The spending is done in so unsystematic and belligerent a manner as to render the Department of Defense's accounts 'unauditable' till 2017, and a nation higher over an already stiff fiscal cliff over which nothing awaits but death for the US and it's veritable pied pipers of Hamlin. America, and possibly, the entire world, are in the midst of a deeper recession and are more insecure today thanks to these militants, but more thanks to Washington that has made monsters of the rats hiding behind desolate mountains in Af-Pak. The American Dream is really now a Global Nightmare.

Political Will through Compulsory Voting

Throughout my life, whenever there have been elections of any kind, be it for national or state legislatures, provincial or for associations, I have never been able to make sense of the ridiculous turnout percentages. Science taught me the concept of efficiency of machines, and if one were to, for an instance, look at a country's democratic institutions as machines, their inefficiency is but obvious considering only 50 to 60 per cent of input energy effectively goes into their functioning! By this I imply that how can a democratic system that apathetically leaves out sometimes close to half of the electorate during polling can ever be an efficient system of governing a people? How can the individual feel ownership in his choice of leader and governing ideology, or even the will to take a different stand by standing up for elections himself, if he has never felt the will or compulsion to go and exercise such a vital choice? How can a people, if they stop to think of their real contribution to the process that elects their national leaders, feel, they genuinely deserved better from the state? Do they not sometimes think of how futile are their discourses and rants in their living rooms or bars and tea stalls on the issues plaguing their society and individual well being, when the one time their thoughts and complaints would have made a difference, they sat in their living rooms watching the outcome passively on televison sets? In a world that has throughout history shown repeatedly the predisposition to commit crimes that beggar the imagination against individuals, people, races and nations, will it really be a 'crime' and 'violation of rights in a democracy' if participation in elections is made compulsory for every citizen, from whom a few hours of standing in queues is the only sacrifice asked for, in return for which, each citizen gets to observe the outclome of his or her decision for the next several years? Freedom of choice comes hand in hand with the active participation in duties, as an individual, family member and as a citizen, and there is so less thought given to this, that in all honesty, the morass we often find ourselves in is because of our own apathy and indifference. This apathy would be but obvious when the choice of the elected representative goes wrong, which one can see, is such an ever present danger since the myriad tasks before the elected are so vast and complex that few really justify the positions they hold in the councils. But it is precisely when the entire citizenry gives thought to and puts into purposeful action the process of putting differently able and qualified people to their various positions, repeatedly year after year, will the system become efficient, and can the democratic potential of a people be realised and likely shown to be a more credible alternative to authoritarian rule.

The Left Right Horseshoe

It is important to understand that the left to right spectrum is not a straight line but bent like a horseshoe, such that Fascism (far right) and Communism (far left) are ideologically closer than the right and left. This is a well researched but less commonly understood theory of French writer Jean Pierre Faye. And just like a horseshoe magnet exerts its magnetic pull strongly owing to this particular shape, so do far right and far left politics on people hold much greater influence than their more moderate colleagues. The fear of both these extremes have been evident in history, particularly the West's fear and appeasement of Nazism, which, following the latter's defeat in Germany, was immediately replaced by a fear of Communism. This has held true no matter which side the polity was bent during different Governments on the American content - Right or Left. As a corollary, the Far Left and Far Right are much more ideologically predisposed to form working alliances, than the members preceding them on the spectrum, who, in whichever democracy you consider, never seem to come together on anything and paralyse effective collaborative work. History has shown, that Hitler was far more effective in forming these working relationships with Stalin's Soviet Union in the East, than what he could ever hope for in the culturally and geographically closer England and France. His miscalculated invasion of the Soviets, never really helped cement any alliances of the West with Communism, but only opened Germany's west-facing bulwark against invasion. The important lesson  for people here is this. The Left and Right have to understand the importance of coming together as the people who represent them are not extremists but effective, functioning moderates who live in collaborative societies, despite fundamental differences in how they view social and economic inequality! Clearly, the Right will continue to see inequality as a necessary and even desirable condition, which the Left will always see as evil, but amongs it's adherents, everyone collaborates in real life in spite of the ideological differences! The failure of this collaboration by their representative in Parliament, is what makes extremism, whether in left or right form, an ever present danger in every democracy in the world. Sadly, foolish people are condemned to repeat the fallacies of history. And that is what still leaves humans searching for answers when they thought they knew it all. 

The Myopia and Hypocrisy in dealing with Terrorism

The approach of most of the world's civilized nations, and some in the midst of becoming civilized (like India) is most baffling in their strategy to tackle terrorism. There has been no disease known to man that has so confounded civilisation, from the Black Death to Nazism to HIV, that has flourished for as long as terrorism has, unscathed, right in our midsts. Humans have well understood that attack is the best form of defence in any battle for survival, but as far as terrorism is concerned, the impotence of the response is simply beyond reason. India, recently, hanged the sole surviving murderer of 26/11, and spent years in arriving at a decision, that, if it had to be effective, should have taken the form of a public execution at India Gate. But by giving him a voice in a trial and taking almost 4 years to eliminate a surrendered enemy living under our nose is laughable for a country that has even the faintest desire of securing its homeland. There seems to be a collective surrender from every country in the midst of or in the neighbourhood of Islamists, except for Israel and the United States, the only countries pursuing these madmen to their desired extermination - no trial, no jury, straight execution. Can there be a bigger professor of this solution, than Israel, a country surrounded by maniacal enemies for the past 60 years? A country that lives under rocket fire on its capital cities and continues to struggle for survival through a necessary policy of attack as the first form of defense? India, and any other nation, for example, needs to contribute in men, materials and money to the Allies Against Terrorism. Instead of escorting mass murderers on flights to Afghanistan and making a laughing stock of the whole nation in the eyes of the world, we need thousands of men on ground fighting the wars in Af-Pak and the Middle East as a training ground for its armed forces in understanding this menace and tackling it successfully should it strike our homeland again. We need to admit to the dangers present in our country's religious extremists and terrorist cells in Universities, and eliminate the threats, without losing time and hours of sleep over when the next bomb targeting innocent civilians will go off. Wake up!