Despots, East
And West
By Satya Sagar
01 April, 2005
Countercurrents.org
On
March 19, 2003 when the United States initiated its illegal and immoral
invasion of Iraq I strongly believed that George Bush Jr. deserved to
be put in the same prison cell as Saddam Hussein. Two years of war is
a long time and I no longer hold that simplistic, emotional view.
I am fully convinced
now that Bush Jr. deserves to be put away in a separate cell of his
own. After all he has earned his no-share, single bed place in the global
hall of infamy so why should he be put in the same league as some two
bit ageing Iraqi dictator.
Seriously, if there
is anything truly, truly foolish to do in our world it is to
naively equate an Occidental despot with an Oriental one. And it is
a harsh realization to make for someone from Asia but the simple truth
is that there is no comparison at all the Western demagogue or
dictator is way more devastating than anything the East has ever produced
( good ol Genghis being an exception !).
When it comes to
both the scale and sophistication of modern despotism, the East
is East and the West is West, And Never Shall the Twain Meet.
(One can add Except when the East falls at the Wests feet
as I will explain later).
Here are some reasons
why I believe a Western Despot like Bush Jr., the latest in a long historical
line, is much, much superior to his Eastern counterparts and deserves
a special cell of his own if not an entire prison (preferably privatized).
For convenience sake henceforth Western Despots shall be referred to
as WDs and Eastern ones as EDs.
You know what?
The WD is invisible, the ED is permanently on your TV screen:
You can understand what I am getting at by observing how difficult
it is to put an adjective as lovely as Western together
with ugly ones like demagogue and dictator without
provoking many to raise their eyebrows way beyond physical or internationally
permissible limits.
Going by the mythology
of mainstream media, leave alone official propaganda (spot the difference)
the leaders of the Western world are always, always democratic. This
is because they have an institution called the general election
and every leader produced by this procedure is naturally democratic.
While this is not historically true even in the West (after all even
Hitler was elected to power) it is a patent falsehood when
one considers how so called democratic Western governments
ran outright dictatorships in their colonies around the world for much
of the past few centuries.
Just to give one
example of colonial crimes against humanity, Winston Churchill, (Dubya
self-confessed role model) as British Prime Minister, presided over
the easily preventable deaths of 2 million Indians during the Great
Bengal Famine of 1943. And yet this fat monster manages to get away
with a historical appraisal that treats him like a cross between an
action hero and a holy saint.
Since George Bush
Jr. happens to be slithering down the same old colonial path he needs
to be reminded that just because a certain section of US citizens happen
to elect him their President he does not get the right to take away
the lives of men, women and children in faraway countries. The fact
that he does get away with mass murder, and does not have even a bad
adjective slapped against him, leave alone a prison sentence, shows
how the WDs of our world are surely quite an invisible lot except to
those hapless millions who bear the brunt of their despotic deeds.
WDs (if they
exist at all) are always right, EDs are always wrong: The invasion
of Iraq after all was undertaken on the pretext of preventing Saddam
from developing Weapons of Mass Destruction. But when no WMDs were discovered
it became all about removing Saddam the ED. And then it was about fighting
the Iraqi resistance painted as the new Al Qaeda clones. Finally it
turns out that the entire exercise in mass slaughter of Iraqis was undertaken
to promote freedom and democracy throughout the Middle-East.
And what is most
amazing about all these brazen lies put out by the US rulers to justify
an obviously colonial adventure is that they still have takers among
those who believe that the invasion was a genuine mistake.
Some of them even want the US troops to stay on till they finish
the wonderful civilizational mission they are on. Imagine a decade and
a half ago allowing Saddams troops to stay on in Kuwait- to
finish the job they started !
This brings us to
the essential difference between a WD and an ED- both make mistakes
but only the latter get hanged for it.
WDs are always
cool, EDs are clumsy clods: There used to be a fellow in my town
in central India who made quite a name for himself by speaking entire
paragraphs that sounded exactly like English. All this was without ever
using a single word from the language. It was all about mimicking the
drawls, twangs and accent of the native English speaker- in a Jabberwocky
sort of way- that for most of us was awesomely like English. So what
if it meant nothing.
Bush Jr. has mastered
the same art apparently of saying nonsensical things with a smirk, a
frown or whatever suits the occasion all of which sound very
important. There are too many people in the world except again
those losing kith, kin or life and limb to American bombs- who do not
really care whether he makes sense or not as long as he sounds confident
and convincing. Saddam could never get away with something like this-
because he does not even know how to imitate native English
leave alone speak it. Boy, if only Saddam spoke English with a British
accent, the course of modern history would have been so different- who
knows he might have still been the Bush familys best friend and
Blair might have been calling him Uncle or even worse Sir.
WDs kill because
they love people, EDs because they hate them: For me the most symbolic
image of the entire US invasion of Iraq was the photograph from Falluja
last year of a US Marine shooting an unarmed, injured Iraqi inside a
mosque out of sheer mercy. So that is what the entire thing
has been about all along- mercy killing. These suffering
Arabs/Muslims need to be liberated from life itself and
who is more qualified to carry out this mission of love and kindness
than the compassionate conservatives of the United States ?
Outside Auswitsz
is the sign Work shall set you Free. In the mass graves
of Iraq or at Abu Gharib someone should write Freedom shall give
you Life and maybe Democracy brings Dignity.
Well, thanks folks,
but I would rather that you drop this fertilizer about Compassion, Love,
Freedom, whatever and just left us alone to our unbelieving ways ? If
you dont I can tell you for sure there are a lot of us here who
are going start Loving you as much as you Love
us. Surely those who run the US regime realize the age-old truth that
when it comes to love you really do get as much as you give-
sometimes even more.
WDs whatever
they do remain clean, honest folk. EDs are always thieves
and murderers: WDs stealing oil or any assets thousands of miles
away is clean and honest activity especially when these
belong to people who do not look and talk like you and have strange
names to boot. In fact it is quite a lot of fun too, ha, ha, ha! But
if an ED attempts to imitate his WD counterparts and does something
as foolish as capturing his neighbouring countrys oil fields that
is a very bad thing indeed.
Saddams real
problem was not that he was a dictator or a thief or a murderer - it
was simply that he was a fool. And according to the twisted rules of
the imperialists stupidity is the gravest of all crimes- surely punishable
by humiliation and death. And even more so if you happen to be a stupid
dictator sitting on large pools of precious motor fuel.
WDs have the
real toys, EDs work with borrowed or stolen ones: Bigger and better
weapons are really what give WDs the edge over EDs. That is why when
the EDs of Iran or North Korea or Libya try to acquire the same set
of toys the WDs get hopping mad. The ED is forever supposed to fight
with bows and arrows to the eternal amusement of the WD. If they acquire
weapons that level the playing field that is not fair play
at all says the WD.
Come on fellas,
give us a chance. True, the East pays too little attention to the development
of basic science and technology and is still far from matching its Western
peers . But while we play catch up to the West, surely there can be
nothing wrong with you guys sharing a few toys with us? Who knows, we
might be able to give you a few of our own some day. Remember gun powder
?
EDs are good,
only when WDs need them desperately: Marcos, Suharto, Sarit, Zia-ul-Haq-
all of these were EDs who survived because of their utility to the WDs
in their paranoid Cold War against the communists. Since direct plunder
and pillage through colonial rule had become difficult the EDs
nurtured and cultivated from amidst Eastern elites- were useful to keep
the rebellious natives under control.
I suspect however
the relationship between the WDs and EDs during the Cold War became
less and less like patron-client and more like parent-child.
When Kissinger, referring to some ED or the other, infamously said He
might be a son-of-a-bitch, but he is our son-of-a-bitch that was
no ordinary Freudian slip. It was really like a wicked mother talking
about her evil offspring-, which is what the usual relationship between
a WD and ED is all about.
Now, having proved
my point so well with all my very convincing arguments I suddenly realize
that George Bush Jr. should not be in the same cell as Saddam for another
reason also- Saddam does not deserve such company. For all the varied
crimes he committed during two decades of misrule in Iraq have been
far surpassed by Bush Jr. within just the past five years.
Two countries bombed
back to the Stone Age, over a 150,000 people dead, several more countries
in the crosshair, his troops shooting babies, old people, female journalists-
Bush Jr. really deserves a Pyramid- complete with all the stolen Iraqi
gold by his side. Move over Tutankhamen, here comes the New American
Pharaoh !
Satya Sagar
is a writer, journalist, video maker based in Thailand. He can be contacted
at [email protected]