INSIGHTFUL BUT OVERSTATED
Sanjoy Banerjee’s article (“India Rising?” India Currents, December 2006) is informed and insightful. However, occasionally the author deviates from reason to blatant assumption.
The hyphenation of Russia to the India-China list is a surreal twist. One wonders if the hopeless dream of an India-China-Russia axis is still lurking somewhere in the author’s mind. It must be remarked that China is not yet politically evolved (read democratic), and Russia has migrated towards the European Union and will possibly gravitate towards the neo-left liberal axis headed by France.
Some lines are clear overstatements: “A guerilla force never exceeding 30,000 has tied down nearly the entire ground forces of the United States, …” being a case in point. Suffice it to mention that the United States maintains 38,000 troops in Korea to this day!
Further, the article fails to take into account that the bulk of America’s Middle East policy is actually shaped by Israel, cashing in on the groundswell of sympathy towards Jews in the United States. It must also be mentioned that the war against Saddam Hussein has already been won and currently the United States finds itself in the midst of civil war in Iraq; and hence the current war is different in nature from the original one.
Abhishek Banerjee, via the Internet
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HATRED FOR NEEDLESS WAR
I have disagreed with Sarita Sarvate’s commentaries before. I had read her Last Word in India Currents December 2006 issue (“Return to Sanity?”), and decided to remain quiet. But now that I read a letter in response from Nitai Prasad (India Currents, February 2007), I have something to say.
First of all, Prasad writes that Sarita is “filled with hate.” Sure. Hatred for needless war justified by lies of WMDs, hatred for destruction of thousands of innocents, hatred not for a person but of a leadership whose war has triggered a civil war and hell-ridden sectarian violence. The lies for which we went to war are worthy of impeachment—they cost us L-I-V-E-S, not stains on clothing for which the Republican Party impeached another president.
Secondly, it is amusing that the reader claims to be a Democrat, all the while praising Bush for his “strong leadership.” The two are simply incongruous. Was Prasad around at the time of the 2004 presidential election? Did he listen to the debates and to mainstream people from both parties? Either he is a loyal Republican, or one who thinks that the Iraq war is the best thing that happened in the Middle East since the discovery of black gold. Please, I will take the former.
Sarvate writes with passion. That’s because she has a conscience. That may ruffle a few feathers. But no one ever said that truth is easy to bear.
Sandhya Patel, San Leandro, Calif.
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ILLOGICAL DIATRIBE
Once again, Dinesh D’Souza descended on the Bay Area to deliver his illogical diatribe aimed at “lefties” who have been largely responsible for exposing the insane, bankrupt polices of this administration.
In a rambling speech delivered at the Commonwealth Club and Stanford University, D’Souza embraced the Republican catch phrase, “war on terror,” as a convenient way to deflect public opinion away from the dark deeds of this and prior U.S. administrations. D’Souza tried to dismiss U.S. culpability in creating much of the chaos in the world by blaming left wing’s efforts to “undermine the traditional patriarchal family.” What intellectual balderdash! What’s next? Perhaps, D’Souza will blame lefties for the Katrina disaster and global warming!
D’Souza made the absurd statement that the highly popular, democratically elected former Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh’s rule was tyrannical and despotic. Nothing could be further from the truth. D’Souza conveniently omitted the inconvenient truth that the CIA orchestrated the coup to overthrow Mossadegh and replace him with the hated Shah whose tyrannical rule resulted in the disappearances of thousands of innocent victims. The United States benefited greatly by selling billions of weapons to the Shah and receiving oil at bargain prices.
I would urge readers not to squander their money on D’Souza’s, modern day Aesop’s fables (The Enemy at Home) and instead purchase Barry Lando’s Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, From Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.
Lando, a former 60 Minutes producer, sheds new light on the complicity of Western nations, principally the United Kingdom and the United States, in arming Saddam Hussein when he was committing atrocities on his own people. His book traces the historical record of this shameful period in U.S. history.
Lando reveals that in the late 1980s, Hussein was launching his genocidal attacks on his own people with chemical and other weapons supplied by U.S. arms merchants with the full knowledge and approval of the Reagan and Bush (senior) administrations. Efforts by the U.S. Congress to condemn Saddam Hussein were blocked by the White House. Senators from the farm states (including Senator Dole) rushed to meet Hussein to assure him that the United States was largely unconcerned about the genocidal attacks so long as Iraq continued to import U.S. agricultural products. Attempts by Iran to initiate U.N. intervention and investigations on the use of chemical weapons by Iraq were consistently blocked by the United States and U.K. The United States and other Western arms merchants raked in billions of dollars in weapons sales to both Iran and Iraq during their eight-year war.
The rush to hang Saddam Hussein may well have been prompted by a desire to silence him before the unsavory facts connecting him to Western leaders were made public.
The enemy is not at home, as D’Souza contends, but the chaos and mayhem in much of the world is directly attributable to U.S. imperialism aided and abetted by Bush’s poodle—Tony Blair.
Jagjit Singh, Palo Alto, Calif.