Maybe I’m wrong but Outlook seems to be the only Indian magazine to have sourced a wide range of hard-hitting articles on Iraq (Blitzed!, April 7). It is a welcome change from the largely parochial reporting in the western press. The millions of words and images they are subjecting us to seems a monologue the West is having with itself. It’s like Octavio Paz wrote in his book The Labyrinth of Solitude 30 years back: "The United States, smiling or angry, its hand open or clenched, neither sees nor hears us but keeps striding on, and as it does so, enters our land and crushes us. It is impossible to hold back a giant; it is possible, though far from easy, to make him listen to others, if he listens, that opens the possibility of coexistence. Because of their origins (the Puritan speaks only with God and himself...), and above all because of their power, the North Americans are outstanding in the art of monologue: they are eloquent and they also know the value of silence. But conversation is not their forte: they do not know how to listen or reply."
Anuradha Moulee, Sydney, Australia
As a Malayali, I strongly object to your putting Bush in the headdress of a theyyam on your cover. The theyyam does not represent an unjust warmonger like Bush. Rather, he protects people from evil. By projecting Bush as a theyyam, you’ve associated it with evil and demeaned it. Kindly do more research in the future before appropriating folk images just for the effect.
Sanjay M., on e-mail
Your issue on Iraq had a good cross-section of articles and views on Iraq. A War Against Eurocrats, An Empire of Corpses and The CNN Son et Lumiere summed up the motives, issues and the likely aftermath well.
Lalit Chainwala, Bangalore
Has Outlook forgotten the time it predicted 105 seats for the Congress in Gujarat and ended with egg on its face (86 Per Cent Oppose Bush’s Invasion of Iraq)? Why can’t you people conduct a poll on whether a Ram temple ought to be built in Ayodhya?
Priya Dixit, Salem
Perhaps if you had included the question "Would you support a US invasion of Pakistan?", the responses to whether Saddam is an evil dictator would have been cent per cent. India may have no dog in this fight, as one wag from the mea remarked, but a large number of Indians don’t seem to have any doggone sense.
Vijay Dandapani, New York, US
An Empire of Corpses was an interesting column by Hani Shukrallah, not for its insights, but for its prejudices and fallacies. The simple fact that undermines what Shukrallah says is that no US administration official suggested this war would be quick or easy. In fact, on the very first day of the war, President Bush very clearly warned the US public that the war could be difficult. War is always regrettable, but what is even more regrettable is the disingenuous condemnation of the coalition forces and the implied support of an evil and brutal regime.
Michael Stockinger, Toronto, Canada
In one stroke, a bunch of greedy men and a parasitic media have reduced the US to a moral pygmy. Respect does not flow from the end of a barrel. Who respects America today? The bombs it rained on Baghdad were more to be feared than any wmds Iraq might have had. One can only be grateful that the Arab world today has clearer voices than in 1991 and the worldview is not dominated by US media conglomerates.
A. Iyer, Mumbai
The frustration expressed by Prem Shankar Jha in his column After Iraq, Kashmir? (April 14) is quite understandable. Recognising the LoC as the international boundary seems the best possible solution for Kashmir. It is optimistic to think that the US will come to India’s rescue should the occasion arise. The Indian foreign office needs to evaluate the situation objectively. Hawkish statements, as those made by foreign minister Yashwant Sinha, can only be damaging for the country.
Lachman Singh Rana, Delhi
For whom the bells toll? They toll for thee too. When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, none had thought the war would be at their doorsteps soon, including Neville Chamberlain, the then UK premier and a great friend of Hitler’s. As for the current conscience-keeper of the world and the apostle of human rights, the United States too had failed to realise the magnitude of the war until it arrived on its shores in 1941. Now history is repeating itself, only the actors and settings are different. Hitler buried the League of Nations and Bush is now lighting the pyre of the United Nations. Who knows, one fine morning, he’ll ask for a regime change and give prime minister A.B. Vajpayee 48 hours to leave the country or else.
D.V. Madhava Rao, Chennai
In her column The cnn Son et Lumiere, Anita Pratap talks of two things people can do when they are humiliated: either they surrender and die, or die fighting. I can think of a third possibility. The engendering of sheer hate, embedded in memory for generations to come and leading to greater bloodshed in the future.
Sunil Gupta, Mumbai
A War Against Eurocrats was a very far-fetched explanation for why Bush went to war. Prior to the war, the usd had fallen to about 110 per Euro from about 100 and it is now expected to go down even further in the coming year. Its downward trend against the Euro is because of its $500 billion per year current account deficit, an over-valued equity market and very low interest rates. This means there’s just no reason for people to buy US assets. Ask me, I run a currency hedge fund and have been selling dollars for over a year.
Lalit Bagai, Denmark
The dollar’s weakness stems from its over $300 billion annual trade deficit and not by 26 billion Euros being converted on a one-time basis as you seem to think. People don’t go to war for these reasons.
Aroon Ajinkya, on e-mail
Even if one were to go by your juvenile claim that the US has gone to war with Iraq to prevent dollars from being converted to Euros, how does getting the Iraqi oilfields help the cause? There are a host of other reasons that go into trading currency selection and the strength of currencies.
Deepak Kumar, on e-mail
The second world war cost the US more than two trillion dollars in today’s terms. The current war would have cost the US up to $45 billion for only the ground operations. Wells Fargo and Co calculated that the cost would have been a whopping $650 billion had the war prolonged beyond three months. This much money for hatred! Why can’t it be spent for love?
G. Jayan, Thiruvananthapuram
In the war forecast for India (Brevity is the All-of-It, March 31), you say that if oil prices zoom to $40 a barrel, the inflation rate will climb to 9.7 per cent and the industrial rate will come down to 2.5 per cent. This is our worst-case scenario, but it is something our government should prepare for.
Vinod Chowdhury, Delhi
George Bush is bad because he wants to end an oppressive, dictatorial regime and prevent the spread of dangerous weapons and Spain, Britain and the US are rogue states because they are doing what they believe is right. What about Russia which is more concerned about the $8 billion debt which Iraq owes it or France and Germany who are going along with public sentiment and gaining approval or other regimes like Egypt which have made their people so unhappy that their governments are all too happy to shift the focus from their demoralising rule to painting the US as Satan’s agent? Or our honourable prime minister who endorses and supports fundamentalists like Narendra Modi and restricts truth like in the Tehelka affair. C’mon Outlook, where is your fabled (mythical?) sense of fair play?
Vignesh Prakash, Hyderabad
America is the most militaristic nation on earth. Newspapers, television, universities and even churches are dedicated to warfare and any voice that speaks out against it is silenced. You will notice that newspapers refer to anti-war spokesmen as "those so-called peaceniks". Cartoonists depict them as lunatics. TV commentators speak of them as rioters and scum who should be driven out of the streets. America feels it has to silence these critics because it knows that to keep their country functioning, they must have war.
Jacob David, Madurai
The US has long been touting the slogan of demilitarising the world and at the same time doubling its own arsenal and expenditure. It is the first country which should be demilitarised. The UN should bear upon it to show all its nuclear installations and get an audit on its weapons of mass destruction.
Anshumali Bhushan, New Delhi
So this is how the military-industrial complex in the US justifies its existence: by having one war every three years.
Biswapriya Purkayastha, Shillong
In a very apt turn of phrase, the Iraqi information minister kept referring to the US and UK as "mercenaries". Indeed this devious duo has succeeded in commandeering practically every international organisation, be it the wto, the imf or the World Bank, and used them to cater to their own selfish interests. At environmental summits, the US knocks down every suggestion that seeks the common good. And now that it has depleted its own resources, it is preying on weaker countries. It’s time the world stood up to this insatiable monster that is cornering the bulk of world resources.
Edwin Pinto, Goa
I think Bush has gone cuckoo considering himself to be at the zenith of his power and Saddam a big goose-egg.
Shallen Srivastava, Mumbai
Bush and Blair have achieved the near-impossible: crafting and putting in place the most advanced and highly-evolved form of totalitarianism ever—at the very heart of which lies the doctrine of naked white supremacy. The Thousand Year Aryan Reich can now be said to have truly arrived. One wonders what Orwell would have done had he been around.
Ranjith Thomas, Bangalore
Your headline Out-of-Ranger brought back Roger Waters’ words, apt for Bush and Co: "Turn up the TV sounds, the war has started on the ground, just love those laser-guided bombs, they’re really great for righting wrongs, you hit the target, win the game, from bars 3,000 miles away, We play the game with the bravery of being out of range. We zap and maim, with the bravery of being out of range. We gain terrain with the bravery of being out of range."
Nitin Khanna, Pune
If tomorrow you have another 9/11, don’t tell us we didn’t warn you, Mr President!
K.B. Somanna, on e-mail
Hats off to Fr V.M. Thomas (Making a Difference, April 7) for carrying out his Bosco Barefoot College and Deprived Urban Children projects in Guwahati. The two programmes would help quite a lot in minimising, if not eliminating, illiteracy and unemployment. dbyes is doing an excellent job in educating the masses, especially vocationally. However, I want to remind Fr Thomas that limiting his activities to Guwahati alone would not suffice. He should think of establishing such units in other areas of the Northeast as well. Especially Nagaon, where such a dream project would be welcome.
Shudipta Kumar Baruah, Nagaon, Assam
Corruptio optimi pessima—the corruption of the best is the worst of all—that seems to sum up the Supreme Court’s decision on the issue of electoral reforms (I’ll Hide, You Seek, April 7). The bjp leaders have become "sin-eaters" and part of the "original sin". They should rest their case with argumentum ad judicium instead of opposing the apex court!
A.S. Raj, on e-mail
Raja Bimlendra Mohan Pratap Mishra, ex-prince of Ayodhya estate, strikes a refreshing note in saying, "If left to the Muslims and Hindus of Ayodhya and Faizabad, the issue would be settled in no time." (Dream Theme, March 31). Leaving the undisputed site for temple construction and the masjid site and the Waqf land around it for masjid construction would be indeed an ideal solution. Provided politics, vested interests, votes, etc do not stand in the way.
A. Jacob Sahayam, Karigiri, Tamil Nadu
The petulant rejoinder by Kasturi Gupta Menon, ex-director general, asi, in Letters (March 31) made for amusing reading. It’s a pity ias officers colonised the top body for archaeological research and scholarship for over a decade and half. Time was when Sir Mortimer Wheeler and A.K. Ghosh held this post and made invaluable contributions. It was Prof Ghosh who cautioned against B.B. Lal’s disproportionate stress on oral traditions in the Hastinapur excavation. His warning was prophetic as we see Sangh parivar vandals ruling the roost today. Menon and her singularly unworthy ias predecessors resemble the proverbial monkey distributing apples between two cats.
Judhisthir Sarkar, Calcutta
Manu Joseph’s observation, "Why can’t we name all the 11 players who play for Mumbai or Delhi?" (Fine Strokes, Copybook Style, April 7) was a humdinger. I ask the same question everytime the kerfuffle surrounding media events like the World Cup becomes brimful. Yes, what about the Gautam Gambhirs, Irfan Pathans and Avishkar Salvis of Indian cricket? Perhaps one day they’ll also ride the Indian cricket lovers’ Ferris wheel, but before they do, they will have to learn how to squeeze past the ticket counter.
Kundan Chakrabarty, Calcutta
This is with regard to A.K. Aggarwal’s letter on US ambassador to India Robert D. Blackwill in your April 7 issue. I’ve had a personal encounter with Mr Blackwill which it seems appropriate to recount. He was invited to speak by a society at a reputed college in Delhi University where I was a student. At that event, he was rude, arrogant, and downright offensive. He was incensed that we did not agree with his political views and angered by our rather cutting questions. He went so far as to tell a Vietnamese boy, whose mother had been a victim of the conflict there, that Vietnam was an ‘academic question’ that ought to be debated in an ‘academic forum’! Astoundingly, he denied that Madeleine Albright had ever said that the death of half million Iraqi babies was a ‘price worth paying’. (It’s a well documented quote—she said it on CBS 60 minutes II). There are other examples of his rudeness (he asked one of us to ‘leave the room’ after a particularly nasty question!). At the end of the talk, some of the American exchange students thought it fit to apologise on his behalf. It was interesting to note that a day or two later, there were reports in all the leading newspapers that US embassy officials had expressed their concerns about the high-handed manner in which Mr Blackwill operated. Anyway, apart from all of this, I wish to point out to Mr Aggarwal that merely teaching at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, or being a ‘respected academician’ does not maketh a man. Our experience of Mr Blackwill proves otherwise. He is intolerant of dissent, and quite frankly a bad diplomat. If despite all this, if he is a ‘friend of India’...then maybe we need to reconsider the kind of friendship we have?
Antara Datta, Oxford, UK
I find parents who use detective services to spy on their children absolutely revolting (Peepin’ Moms, April 7). Lack of honest dialogue, inability to discuss sex, drugs, etc, points to an endemic malaise across the Indian middle class—one that does not know how to deal with completely normal growth pressures. The more you suppress your child and overprotect him, the more he will have reason to break free and not tell you about it.
Ramu Dhara, New York, US
Apropos Crops in Foreign Fields (March 31), we would like to clarify that since April 2001, there have been no "country of origin" or any other kind of commercial conditionalities to the UK’s development assistance programmes.
Charlotte Seymour-Smith, DFID India
