Sunday, April 24, 2005

GOP's Feeding Tube of Faith

In a recent appearance on “The Daily Show” to promote his new book entitled, “The World Is Flat”, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, talked about how the global economy is leveling the playing field between the United States and the developing world. Mr. Friedman expressed genuine concern about the diminishing interest among our youth to pursue science and engineering careers. Without making light of Mr. Friedman’s apprehension, I would point to a sense of misplaced priorities within the Bush Administration that have exacerbated not only this problem but several other more pressing issues of the day.

From the under-funded “No Child Left Behind” program to the over-hyped “Clear Skies” initiative, the Bush Administration has paid more lip service to the domestic economy than the facts bear out. President Bush has gone around the country for the past sixty days touting a fix to the Social Security system that might go bankrupt in 2041, while he continues to ignore a soaring half-trillion dollar budget deficit and a seven and one-half trillion dollar national debt, which are both here and now. Ironically, the President signed a Bankruptcy Bill last Wednesday – this is tantamount to the Bush Administration telling us that if we live beyond your means, we will no longer be able to escape the consequences – which is fine. But then, the Bush Administration continues to spend our money like there is no tomorrow – with no repercussions to worry about. That's the beauty of "political capital" - it's the President’s to spend now and for someone else to clean up later!

Speaking of cleaning up and “Clear Skies”, it seems even Mother Nature expressed its displeasure at the Bush Administration’s environmental policy on Earth Day last Friday. The Washington Post reported that the weather refused to cooperate with the President’s plan to celebrate Earth Day in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One wouldn’t normally have associated any sort of divine justice in this weather-related intervention, if it weren’t for the deliberate choice of the Republican leadership to play up the “faith factor” at every possible opportunity since the last election. In what seems to be an audacious power play, Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist will just not let the GOP’s feeding tube of faith be unplugged from the nation’s consciousness. New York Times columnist, Frank Rich, warns us about “A High-Tech Lynching in Prime Time” about to take place tonight. With his unabashed participation in “Justice Sunday”, Senator Frist only confirms that the GOP has moved so far to the right that – if the world were really flat – most of the GOP leadership would be falling off a cliff in the next galaxy!

But this is hardly the “Revenge of the Sith” and would that we all were so lucky? The Republican leadership is turning the GOP into that awful relative – one that you cannot live with, and yet one that you cannot get rid off. Just as you begin to think that it’s only our domestic policies that are screwed up, because the Bush Administration really has the foreign policy under control, along comes this bombshell. In a report yesterday entitled, “U.S. eliminates annual terrorism report”, The Seattle Times tells us that
“The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985”.
Holy cow! I thought we were winning this thing, and with freedom and democracy sprouting all over the world, we were all going to live as one big happy family? Talk about a leap of faith!

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Imagine – no more 9/11s – it’s easy if you try!

My first reaction while reading Senator John Kyl’s “Unready For This Attack” in today’s Washington Post was that the senator has been watching Fox’s primetime TV hit “24” this season. Earlier this year, “24” featured an episode wherein a section of downtown Los Angeles is brought down by “an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack” by terrorists. But then Senator Kyl concluded his article with the following warning:
The Sept. 11 commission report stated that our biggest failure was one of "imagination." No one imagined that terrorists would do what they did on Sept. 11. Today few Americans can conceive of the possibility that terrorists could bring our society to its knees by destroying everything we rely on that runs on electricity. But this time we've been warned, and we'd better be prepared to respond.

Well, Senator you don’t know Jack! Now, I mean that quite literally – while you probably recognize Jack Bauer, the hero of “24”, you surely have not heard of yours truly – Jack Nargundkar of Germantown, Maryland? On the eve of the new Millennium (December 31, 1999), almost two years prior to 9/11, I had written an article entitled, “Musings for the New Millennium”, which is still posted on my web site. In it I had dreamed up this rather fatalistic scenario:

Finally there has been a whole lot written about the best “this” of the century and the best “that” of the millennium. In my opinion, the single most seminal discovery, since the beginning of time, is undoubtedly the invention of electricity! Mankind’s dependence on this fundamental phenomenon of nature as a source of energy is so basic to our existence – from the simple light bulb to sophisticated electronic appliances, from computers to communications, from transportation to manufacturing, from health care to agriculture, from the outer reaches of space to the inner depths of sub-molecular matter, etc. – we would be back in the Stone Ages if the concept of electricity failed! Our transition from the mechanical age to the Industrial Age, and on to the Information Age has been possible because of our dependence on this basic resource. We have tried to harness electric power through various means using drivers like water, the wind, the sun, and even nuclear reactions. Y2K bugs don’t scare me even a fraction of what would happen if those electrons suddenly stopped moving? It gives new meaning to the saying “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”!
So I’d like to say, Senator, people do have vivid imaginations – but most of us, unlike the terrorists, don’t use our minds for destructive purposes. I would like to add that I personally believe that it will be very difficult for terrorists to carry out another 9/11-type attack on the United States. The terrorists possessed the “operational expertise” to execute a 9/11. However, unless they recruit – an interconnected network of people with the necessary talent and skills –within our borders, I suspect that they are going to find it almost impossible to carry out any more attacks on our homeland that require the kind of sophisticated intellectual expertise, which Senator Kyl worries about. Having said that, I wouldn’t suggest for a second that we not remain vigilant – it has become the eternal price to maintain our way of life. I would like to end by mentioning that my “Musings for the New Millennium” article was more prescient in another respect – I had actually called the historic 2000 presidential election almost a year in advance with this fantastic, or so it seemed at the time, outcome:

In fact, this could turn out to be a squeaker, where the losing candidate gets a slightly higher percentage (possibly within a 1 percent margin of the winning candidate) of the popular vote, but the winning candidate scores a majority of the Electoral College delegates. You read it here first!
Imagine, Senator, it’s easy if you try, as John Lennon once did:

You may say I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
and the world will live as one

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Third World Power Play

When China and India “hook up”, it’s more like a third of the world in play – because the power is in their sheer numbers. John Lancaster’s report entitled “India, China Hoping to 'Reshape the World Order' Together” in today’s Washington Post makes me want to say “I told you so”. In any event, the highlights of Mr. Lancaster’s report are as follows:

* “India-China relations have now acquired a global and strategic character” per a joint statement by the two nations
* China also announced its support for India's bid for a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council
* China and India signed agreements on trade, economic cooperation, technology sharing, civil aviation and other matters
* India and China pledged to boost their trade to $20 billion by 2008 (the same level as US-India trade in 2004)
Well, nearly two years ago, in response to a George Melloan article[1], I had written a letter to The Wall Street Journal on June 24, 2003. Although it was never published, I would like to reproduce the following excerpt from that letter, which I have also included in my book, “The Bush Diaries”:

Coincidentally, only a day earlier, the leader of the world’s most populous country, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China welcomed the leader of the world’s largest democracy, Prime Minister Vajpayee of India. If President Bush were following a truly principled foreign policy, which actually saw the forest for the trees, he would recognize that our long-term interests are not being served by sacrificing our democratic ideals at the expense of our security needs? Pushing India, a close ally of Russia, into the arms of China – creates a triumvirate with far-reaching influence across the globe! How long before Germany and France jump on that bandwagon?
Then in January of this year, I made this further observation in my yet to be published “The Bush Diaries”:

But I see two headstrong democracies, the oldest and the largest, butting heads over foreign policy differences, much along the lines that I have written throughout this book. Now that India’s economy has opened up, I can see the United States and India getting closer as economic partners – in the long run, probably developing stronger economic ties than we have with China? Whether we can make India a true political and military ally anytime soon is highly doubtful? Our post-9/11 tilt towards Pakistan, despite its links to the Taliban government in Afghanistan, did not sit well with the larger Indian population. Also, the recent rewarding of “major non-NATO ally” status to Pakistan, while Osama Bin Laden is still on the loose inside Pakistan, was a slap in the face to India. If the U.S. pushes for making India a permanent member of the Security Council, as it should be, then “Old Europe could make some headway for New Delhi”. Although I do believe that we do not need to sacrifice Old Europe, in order to make new friends. Nevertheless, it is a strategic imperative for the United States to quickly re-align itself to the new realities in the Asia-Pacific region.
When Thom Shanker and Joel Brinkley's report entitled, "U.S. Is Set to Sell Jets to Pakistan; India Is Critical" appeared recently in The New York Times, I notched up another unpublished letter (dated March 26, 2005) that provided this blunt admonition:

In the post-Cold War era, U.S. foreign policy can no longer be based on equating its traditional ally, Pakistan, with India. This is tantamount to equating Taiwan with China - which continues to be under a Western nations arms embargo that the Bush Administration is pressuring the European Union from lifting. The overall effect of this Bush policy is going to bring, not only China and India closer, but also rekindle Russia as a potential arms supplier to both nations. From an economic standpoint, OPEC countries such as Iran and Venezuela have already announced as key suppliers of their energy needs. It isn't unrealistic to expect a new Shiite power (Iran-Iraq) to emerge as a counter to the reigning Sunni (Saudi Arabia-Kuwait-U.A.E) sway in OPEC.

As the new triumvirate of China-India-Russia becomes increasingly powerful, its influence will start drawing other nations such as Afghanistan, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, and eventually the new Iraq further away from the U.S. fold. If we do not play our foreign policy cards right, we could witness a structural realignment in the next decade, whose impact on the western world could be worse than that of the Cold War. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
In the light of today’s Post report, this power play - by two nations that represent a third of humanity - is the first big move towards aforementioned structural realignment. I trust that the foreign policy visionaries in the Bush Administration are looking beyond “freedom and democracy” in the Middle East. For there is a political tsunami brewing further east and it has the potential to wash up far beyond its shores!

[1] George Melloan writes the “Global View” column for The Wall Street Journal. This particular article entitled “Bush Wades Into Some of The World's Worst Messes” appeared in his column on June 24, 2003.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Jack Nargundkar vs. James Taranto in “Best of the Web Today”

Who would have thought that my letter published in The New York Times on Friday, April 1, 2005 would create such a buzz? The letter pointed out several lessons learned from the Terri Schiavo case. But this one point in the letter seemed to have especially galled conservatives:

The most critical conclusion to be drawn from the [Schiavo] case is that with the injection of religion into our politics and our governance, it has become increasingly difficult to differentiate between the demands of "evangelism" in a Western democracy and "fundamentalism" in a Middle Eastern theocracy.

So James Taranto, Editor of the OpinionJournal, offered me some help in his “Best of the Web Today” column yesterday. In offering me that unsolicited advice, I felt that Mr. Taranto had missed the crux of my argument. I therefore e-mailed him a clarification this morning. Sure enough, Mr. Taranto published only the first part of my response in his column today. Here’s the second part, which he did not publish, and which is critical to my line of reasoning:

James, in my letter to the The New York Times, I had also said, "If we really want to promote a 'culture of life', then human life ought to be precious in every situation, and not only under political circumstances." Politicians (Congress and the President) tried to force the courts to act in a certain way (i.e., reinsert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, in order to save her life). The courts, per their interpretation of the law, consistently refused to act in the way intended by these politicians. If we are to convince other nations, including fledgling democracies and Middle Eastern theocracies that we are a nation of laws, albeit, secular laws - then, evangelists in this country need to accept that fact as gospel! With your distinguishing remark, "If someone is demanding that a life be spared, he's probably an evangelist in a Western democracy. If he's demanding the infidels be murdered, chances are he's a fundamentalist in a Middle Eastern theocracy", you confirm my other observation in my letter to the Times - conservatives have let emotions override their better judgment on this issue!

In drawing “attention to sloppy thinking” in today's column, Mr. Taranto makes a conclusion, which I never did:
“But equating them to fundamentalist terrorists is a cheap shot, and an intellectually indefensible one.”
I never inferred that evangelical Christians, trying to save the life of a woman on life support, were the equivalent of fundamentalist terrorists. My larger point was simply this - if we let our religious beliefs dictate against the established law of the land, we are not only violating our constitution but also allowing ourselves to become like them. Mr. Taranto's refers to Martin Luther King as one:
"who made no effort to separate his belief in racial equality from its roots in Christianity".
But Mr. King equally drew from "The Declaration of Independence" in demanding this equality:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
It is OK to use one’s faith as a personal guide to govern, but it is unconstitutional to use one’s religion as an instrument of government – that’s what theocracies do. By honoring the principle of “separation of powers”, we should all want them to become more like us - that was my key message in my letter to the Times!