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B. S. Raghavan

THE neocons now dominating the Bush Administration in the US have been doing their damnedest to cause revulsion and hostility against that country in every possible way. The hauteur with which they have been dealing with other nations, and the total lack of accountability to world opinion make them resemble members of a mafia intent on visiting their critics and opponents with murder and mayhem, forfeiting any claim to be regarded as heirs to the likes of Jefferson, Madison and Franklin.

Indeed, ever since the neocons took up position in Washington, their policies and actions have done nothing but reduce the resoundingly evocative values of the Declaration of Independence to garbage. Even to a world, sufficiently benumbed by being neoconned at one end and pulverised by unipolarism at the other, the latest abhorrent manifestation of the sordid and unseemly onslaught by those wielding power in the US on the minimum essential decencies that ought to govern relations among nations must have come as a shock. I refer to the execrable exercise of veto by the US of the Security Council resolution that sought to restrain Israel from carrying out its outrageously open threat of getting rid of the elected President of the Palestinian Authority, Mr Yasser Arafat, by all means possible, killing him outright not excluded. The ostensible US defence of the veto is that the resolution did not explicitly condemn Palestinian terror outfits such as the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad or the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

Assuming the omission to be a blemish that the resolution could have done without, does it still justify a veto? If the US felt that, with the Presidential election close at hand, the Jewish lobby should be kept happy, it could have abstained, as Britain, Bulgaria and Germany did, and shown deference to the will of the 11 of the 15 members of the Council. Instead, it has erased it off the record, signalling its willingness to connive at whatever murderous designs Israel has on Mr Arafat.

India can no longer duck the question whether identifying itself too closely with either the US or Israel is in its national interest and in conformity with its commitment to the UN Charter.

It should not bury its head in sands and hope for the best. The mindset of the neocons is such that they will stick at nothing to have the world at their feet. Such unadulterated contempt for humanity was not witnessed even in the worst days of racism-driven imperialism.

It is unfortunate that India is adopting towards the US not only the attitude of the three Chinese monkeys but even cozying up to it. God knows to what end. It passes one's comprehension how India's rulers could be so inexplicably impervious to the noble principles that have nurtured the nation. All that the deeply disturbed observers of the happenings can do is cry out: Jawaharlal Nehru, thou shouldst be living at this hour!

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