Books

[SIZE=4][COLOR=green]Requiem for Westphalian precedent[/COLOR] [/SIZE] [I]The End of Saddam Hussein — History through the Eyes of the Victims [/I] by Prem Shankar Jha; Rupa & Co; Price: Rs.395; 211 pp img:26:- Let me begin this book review with a humbling admission. I have never ever won an argument with Prem Shankar Jha (with whom I can claim a long and often stormy friendship), the highly knowledgeable and persuasive author of perhaps this very first book of the year 2004. And I have yet to meet anyone who has. To any subject he touches whether in print or in conversation, Jha (for many years an assistant editor of The Times of India, editor of The Hindustan Times and briefly, editor of The Economic Times) brings a formidable combination of facts, arguments and articulacy which is virtually unbeatable. Indeed it’s my considered and oft expressed opinion that in Jha and Swaminathan Aiyer, India is blessed with the very best economic journalists/ analysts in the world. Therefore entirely to my unsurprise, Jha brings to The End of Saddam Hussein — History through the Eyes of the Victims the same formidable scholarship, a consistent line of argument and excellent usage of English to argue the case that the American-British invasion of Iraq in May 2003 was morally, legally, ethically and otherwise unjustifiable. According to him, it has set a dangerous precedent for the exercise of hegemonic power by the United States which bodes ill for the peace and future of the world. In the very first sentence of this work of admirable research Jha plainly states his objective. “This book sets out to place on record the way in which the United States, later joined by the United Kingdom, destroyed a modern state and plunged its people into misery and chaos,” says Jha unambiguously in the preface of the book which ends with the words: “It’s not a pretty story.” The [I]End of Saddam Hussein [/I] consists of six chapters — ‘A Pawn in the Cold War’; ‘The Clinton Years’; ‘The Invasion of Iraq’; ‘Manufacturing Consent’; ‘The unraveling of Consent’; and ‘The Real Story’. In these pages Jha sets out his case that Saddam Hussein is a frankenstein created by the US (for a period actually on the CIA payroll), and was helped up the ladder in the anti-communist Ba’ath Party by the Americans in 1963 when the pro-Soviet Colonel Abdel Kassem was assassinated with the connivance of the CIA. Right through the seventies until he seized absolute power in 1979 Saddam was a top-level mole of the CIA in Iraq, says Jha. Nor does he find it surprising that Saddam seized absolute power in 1979. That was the year of revolution in neighbouring Iran when a clerical government inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini ousted the pretentious Shah of Iran and seized several American hostages. Immediately after taking charge of Iraq, in 1980 Saddam initiated a bloody eight year war with Iran which cost over a million lives on both sides and witnessed the use of chemical weapons of mass destruction. Jha makes a convincing case that chemical and biological weapons which later became the excuse for the invasion of Iraq by the US in 2003, were shipped to Saddam’s forces which had been fought to a standstill by the Iranians, by American firms. Similarly he adduces credible evidence that the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1991 which sparked off the first Gulf War was the consequence of Saddam regarding himself as a US ally in the Middle East and overplaying his hand as such. The Iraqi dictator who had a grievance against the Kuwait government for draining crude oil from across their common border, misinterpreted the US ambassador April Glaspie’s remark to the effect that “We have no opinion on Arab-Arab conflicts”, as an amber light to invade and annex Kuwait. But this proved the last straw which broke the back of the US-Saddam mutually beneficial relationship and transformed the latter from an ally of the US into its hate object. According to Jha, the neo-conservatives of the American Enterprise Institute and associated institutions began to make a case for a second invasion of Iraq immediately after President George Bush Sr. in conformity with the UN mandate to evict Saddam’s forces out of Kuwait, stopped short of marching on Baghdad to finish him off — which they viewed as a grave error in urgent need of rectification. Indeed the author advances an arguable case that after the first Gulf War and the sanctions that followed, Iraq was in no position to manufacture WMD (weapons of mass destruction) as repeatedly alleged by the US administration; that it had voluntarily destroyed its WMD after 1992; that allegations of Saddam’s links with Al Qaeda were wholly false; that the American public and media were deliberately panicked into supporting the second Gulf War through the creation of hype and mass hysteria; that the invasion and occupation of Iraq by the US and Britain has dealt a death blow to the international Westphalian order (which prohibits external interference in the internal affairs of sovereign nations) and not the least to the United Nations. Undoubtedly viewed from the perspective of precedent, past practice and settled international law, the American neo-cons’ case for the invasion of Iraq last year seems weak. But in the 21st century particularly after 9/11, new methodologies and guidelines to deal with rogue regimes which brazenly threaten external aggression need to be formulated. It is incontrovertible that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous megalomaniac. He had invaded two of his neighbour nations (Iran and Kuwait) without UN or any other international sanction. Moreover it is indisputable that he ruthlessly quashed any vestige of dissent within Iraq and used chemical weapons and gas against Iran and his own Kurdish minority. Nor can it be controverted that he expelled weapons inspectors from Iraq in violation of UN resolutions following the first Gulf War and publicly and repeatedly threatened the US and western nations with cross-border terrorism and violence. From this body of evidence it could be reasonably inferred that his autocratic regime was a clear and present danger to world peace and in particular to the security of the US. That Saddam was a creation of the CIA or the US is neither here nor there because there are no permanent friends or enemies in international relations. Therefore though it may not be sanctioned by precedent, in the contemporary age of real-time communications and rapidly exportable terrorism, there is surely a case for pre-emptive military action against rogue states and regimes with provenly criminal records. Past precedent which mandates retaliation only after proven first strike damage is questionable, as indeed is the Westphalian order, damage to which Jha repeatedly laments. This is one more disputation I am likely to lose to the redoubtable Jha in the court of public opinion. But for what it’s worth the rule of Rylands vs. Fletcher, one of the foundational cases of common law jurisprudence, needs to be advanced mutatis mutandis for what it’s worth. Briefly it enunciates the principle that if a person or persons host a dangerous animal or substance on their land and it escapes causing damage to neighbours, the hosts of the dangerous animal or substance are liable in damages. It’s true that the still unresolved second Gulf War has inflicted great hardship and suffering upon the people of Iraq. But it has ousted (and arraigned) Saddam whom the people of Iraq tolerated too long. Now they are paying a stiff price for this prolonged sin of inertia or omission. The positive outcome of the Anglo-US intervention in Iraq could be that it will put lay people who tolerate rogue regimes on notice that in the crystallising new global order they will have to suffer if they don’t get rid of their dictators and demons. [B]Dilip Thakore[/B] [SIZE=4][COLOR=green]Ludicrous plausibility[/COLOR] [/SIZE] [I]Life of Pi [/I] by Yann Martel; Canongate Books; Price: Rs.574; 318 pp img:25:- Toronto-based novelist Yann Martel’s intriguing novel Life of Pi, which was awarded the Booker Prize in 2002 has a curious origin. Following the less than successful publication of his second novel in Canada in 1996, and in keeping with the spirit of globalisation, Martel took a plane to India where “a little money can go a long way” to write a novel set in Portugal in 1939. Unfortunately after he had set himself up in Matheran, a charming hill station within a few hours of Bombay (a.k.a Mumbai) —charming because motorcars and indeed all automotive vehicles are absolutely denied entry into this hill resort of splendid viewing points —“the novel sputtered, coughed and died”. Martel’s next stop was Pondicherry, down south. In this capital of that “most modest of colonial empires, French India,” in the India Coffee House in Nehru street where “the coffee is good, they serve French toast and conversation is easy to come by” he met Francis Adirubasamy, an elderly gent who informed him that he had a story which would make Martel believe in God. But the story which began in the zoo of Pondicherry’s Botanical Gardens wasn’t Adirubasamy’s, it was of a certain Mr. Patel who —guess what? — lived in Toronto. “We met many times. He showed me the diary he kept during the events. He showed me the yellowed newspaper clipping that made him briefly, obscurely famous. He told me his story. All the while I took notes. Nearly a year, after considerable difficulties I received a tape and a report from the Japanese Ministry of Transport. It was as I listened to that tape that I agreed with Mr. Adirubasamy that this was indeed a story to make you believe in God”, writes Martel in the preface. Yann Martel’s Life of Pi is a compelling mix of reality, surrealism and philosophy, woven into a first class adventure story. Written almost exclusively in the first person, Pi Patel’s narrative tells of a happy childhood when as the son of the zoo director of the Botanical Gardens, animals were an integral part of his childhood. Martel’s book is in turn warm and chilling, fusing tension, humour and horror, and never allowing a moment’s relaxation. Pi’s narrative in the first part of the book vividly describes the richness and diversity of his home in southern India, preparing us for the second half of the story in which he is shipwrecked and finds himself adrift on a lifeboat in the Pacific ocean with a strange set of companions — a wounded zebra, a spotted hyena, an orangutan who suffers from seasickness, and a 450 lb Bengal tiger whose name came about through a curious misunderstanding. To explain further would spoil the fun. Pi draws his subjects together as the story progresses, gradually revealing how his childhood experiences equipped him with the skill-sets of survival. He reminds us of the shared characteristics of animals and humans, the methods by which both assert their superiority, learn to know where they stand, and the bestiality of both when driven to the limits of endurance. Pi’s surrealist imagination is so convincingly woven into the narrative that the crossover between real and surreal is unnoticed. The practicalities of providing food and water for himself and his fellow creatures, his constant fear and command of the tiger who ends up as his sole companion after much bloodshed, and his continuous battle with boredom over his 227 days of isolation, are interlaced with incidents of ghostly visitors drifting past the lifeboat, and adventures on an improbable carnivorous island. The author induces a willing suspension of disbelief, testing the limits of the reader’s imagination before we become aware that it is all pure fantasy. The book creates a vivid sensation of uncertainty, and a desire to search for the reality hidden beneath the narrative. Strangely, this ludicrous scenario seems plausible, and one finds oneself believing in the impossible. [B]Jacqueline Thomas[/B]