The Obama era

[Imran Khan]

The Obama era



Saturday, October 18, 2008
It now seems increasingly likely that in the years ahead, Pakistan will be doing business with a US administration led by the Democrats under Barack Obama. The latest polls put him a confident 14 points ahead of his Republican rival. Snap surveys after the final presidential debate on Thursday suggest John McCain, who angrily lashed out repeatedly at Obama, may have slipped still further after the televised encounter, coming across as desperate compared to the more measured Obama. His vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, who obviously knows nothing about foreign policy and like McCain holds dangerously anti-liberal views on most issues, has also been faring poorly in the polls.

So far, we have repeatedly been told Obama will be bad for Pakistan. Analysis in this regard looks chiefly at Obama's take on policy against militancy, an issue that has cropped up again and again in a presidential campaign dominated by the state of the US economy. The Democratic hopeful has spoken of being willing to conduct attacks within Pakistan territory, and on focusing on Afghanistan rather than Iraq. In contrast, McCain's approach has been more conciliatory, focusing on the need to engage with Pakistan. This has been interpreted to mean that Obama will be bad for Pakistan, McCain potentially better. But there is much more to the issue than this. While Obama has taken a tougher line on Pakistan, it is quite possible this approach may stand us in good stead. It must be noted Obama has consistently said strikes against terrorist targets would be carried out if Pakistan failed to take action against militants itself. The message then to Islamabad is to make sure it pulls up its socks, takes off its gloves and ensure its forces make a full-fledged effort to defeat militants. Rather ominously, witnesses in Swat continue to maintain the military is still not going all out against the terrorists. The game-playing with the Taliban that we have seen now for too many years needs to end. The impending taking over of control in Washington by Obama and his team should act as a reminder of this.

The effects of the 'conciliatory' approach taken since 2001 by the Bush administration, which stood staunchly by its ally, former president Musharraf, even as militant armies seized larger and larger chunks of our north, are visible everywhere. In Islamabad, the damaged façade of the building that housed the Marriot Hotel stares out at us, in parts of Peshawar people who have fled Waziristan crowd into congested rooms attempting to build new lives, in Swat vast tracts of forest stand destroyed. The cost of terrorism paid by Pakistan has been huge too in economic terms. Investors have been driven away, panicked citizens have withdrawn money from banks and confidence in the stability has slumped. In this situation, by taking a firmer line and striving for a definite goal, Obama may serve us well. Certainly we need tougher action against militants rather than more years of timid tactics that allow them to re-group and to expand. Of course Pakistan needs to defend its sovereignty, but it can do so effectively only if the internal security threat we face is dealt with. In this regard, the fact that Barack Obama's running mate, Joe Biden, has one of the more solid understandings of Pakistan available in Washington circles is a good omen. Biden's proposal of developmental aid rather than military assistance, as a means to tackle terror is also sound – even if the economic package he has proposed seems difficult to implement given Washington's own financial turmoil. The Democrat government will bring challenges for Pakistan. Steps to be taken in the future may well need to be decisive and definite. But perhaps taking them may bring about benefits. We must face the fact that neither of the two candidates contesting for the most powerful political office in the world, offer Pakistan much. For both, the country is a hot-bed of militancy. The interests of Pakistan's people are of little concern to them. But perhaps Obama's straight-talking message can act as a reminder to our leaders to get their own act together before we are thrown into still greater crisis.

 

[muse]

Polls Apart in India, America
Barkha Dutt (THIRD EYE)

17 October 2008
For all of us used to the bombastic rhetoric and carnival-like chaos of Indian elections, the American presidential race has been an otherworldly treat to watch.

It isn’t just because their big guns are willing to face off on TV while our studio debates often smack of the worst sort of déjà vu. The most compelling thing about US elections is how much the campaign has been fuelled by the power of ideas.

As Barack Obama and John McCain slug it out in televised confrontations, they are being judged how they articulate their positions on everything from Iraq, Iran and Pakistan to the economy, health-care and climate change. The media has made acerbic computations of how many times either candidate has voted on an issue in Congress; websites are dedicated to measuring the truth quotient of every utterance and bloggers write not just on intonation and inflection, but on the intellectual integrity of either side.

Perhaps that is what has caught our imagination: this is an election where there is space for nuance and a campaign in which policy will determine performance.

An inordinate time was spent in one of the debates, for example, on what Obama really meant when he said diplomatic contact with Iran should resume. Both men ended up in a smarmy confrontation on what Henry Kissinger, a policy adviser for the Republicans, had advocated on doing business with Iran. An equivalent Indian concern - let’s say the issue of strategic depth in Afghanistan — could have found happy space on our TV channels, but would have been privately dismissed by our politicians as a non-issue. In fact, every ideological or policy debate here suffers from the tag of being little more than a liberal lament.

Of course, you could argue that a contentious and self-destructive war in Iraq and the shadow of 9/11 has ensured that US elections can never be contested in the same way again. For the US, the distinctions between foreign policy and domestic discourse have blurred. And yes, unlike America, India isn’t sitting on the debris of a Bush presidential tenure, where much has to be built from scratch. So, while America and India may be apples and oranges, the contrast is still dramatic.

Think about it. Can you imagine our national elections being determined by the Congress’ Kashmir policy or the BJP’s refusal to endorse the nuclear deal? The Indian economy is beginning to seriously crack under the weight of the global financial crisis. But do you think the 2009 polls will ever be defined by how the NDA and the UPA enunciate their ideologies on capitalism and the role of government in market regulation? Will the present finance minister agree to a take on the BJP nominee to hammer out which way the battleship should be steered? And if they did agree to such a face-off, would we vote on the basis of what they said, and how they said it?

In any case, much too often, populism has pushed our ruling and Opposition on to the same side - whether on issues of fuel subsidies or affirmative action. Caste-based quota policies could have been a definitive ideological argument except that, in the end, no party dared to be that different. And so, now, calculations of caste arithmetic have created an artificial sameness of articulation on quotas, no matter, which politician you talk to.

Perhaps, the only issue that could be genuinely ideologically contested in 2009 is the challenge of terrorism, and the off-shoot debates of secularism and minority politics. But here too, it’s my hunch - that once the TV-savvy spokespersons of both sides have spewed enough venom - Indians may not actually vote on the basis of whether The Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002, should be brought back or not. Not because we don’t care about terrorism - we do. It’s because we tend to vote with our hearts, instead of our minds, in some approximate, instinctive response to issues, rather than a well-calibrated, academic framework of ideas.

And then, of course, there’s the fact that India is anything but a monolith. The multitude of identities within one nation makes it tough for any single ideology to have a pan-Indian following. Our early years of independence may have been powered by the educated and often-esoteric ideas of a political elite. But recent years have propelled a churning of caste and class to throw up a new political hegemony.

The liberals may long for an era gone by, but then how often do they even get out and vote? And in any case, there is a certain democratisation that is driving New India, and that needs to be embraced, even if it makes us uncomfortable.

Even America is dealing with its own democracy diva: Sarah Palin. American liberals are huffing and puffing about a woman who had never met a foreign Head of State until recently and didn’t get a passport till as late as 2007. Her gaffes on the Bush doctrine and marching into Iraq are now the stuff of satire. Columnists want to know how a woman who stands for style instead of substance can have the audacity to run for office. But Middle America loves her; they see themselves reflected both in her ordinariness and her aspiration for more and better.

India’s thinking classes have been forced to learn a similar lesson as they watch the contours of Bharat take shape well outside the world of editorials.

The truth is, in India, politics and ideas have stood far apart, with both sides contemptuous of the other. It’s when you blend the two that the world’s largest democracy and the world’s oldest one may learn something from each other.

Barkha Dutt is Group Editor, English News, NDTV

 

[pkpatriotic]

Deafening silence on Islamophobia
By Paul Woodward
October 20, 2008

Predictably, Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama has received a massive amount of media coverage. What is striking though is that the single issue that Powell chose to highlight above all others has been received so little comment. Out of a 1250-word endorsement, Powell devoted 325 words to his revulsion for the vilification of Muslims that has been fueled, sustained and tolerated by the McCain campaign and the GOP.

Here’s a typical response to what Powell identified as the particular point about which he feels so strongly. Josh Marshall writes:

…[Powell] said he was “disappointed” in McCain’s sleazy campaign tactics. Yes, ’sleazy’ is my word. But Powell’s own words were pretty clear — he was talking about McCain’s campaign of distortion and innuendo aimed at painting Obama as a crypto-Muslim and terrorist. It “goes too far”, said Powell, in something of an understatement.

No comment on Powell’s central point that no one should be insinuating that there’s something wrong with being a Muslim in America.

Or this from Matthew Yglesias:

We can’t allow ourselves to become a society where “Muslim” or “Arab” is a dirty word.

But the blatantly obvious truth is that we do live in a society where “Muslim” and “Arab” are dirty words.

The near universal response to claims that Obama is a Muslim has been to vigorously deny it and point out that he is a Christian. Peripheral to those denials have been the occasional and rather tepid denunciations of the use of this term as a slur.

If Obama was “accused” of being a Jew, his accusers would without hesitation be denounced as anti-Semites — no need to identify Obama’s actual religious affiliations. The issue that would be confronted unequivocally would be the use of the label “Jew” as a slur.

When a highly respected public figure highlights a social issue and fails to provoke debate, it is clear that what he has touched upon something that is insidious and crosses political and demographic lines.

The war on terrorism is widely perceived in the Middle East as a war on Islam. But that should hardly be surprising since in the minds of most Americans, the words “terrorism” and “Islam” have become deeply intertwined.

In this country, for every foul-mouthed Islamophobe there are a thousand others who might not share his or her hatred, do not see themselves nor are seen by others as bigots, but who nevertheless facilitate the expression of that hatred by failing to stand up for Muslims.

We have become to Muslims what so many million Germans were to the Jews.

The Obama campaign, unwilling to risk sacrificing itself on this point of principle, has sadly been among the passive facilitators of Islamophobia.