The Hindu Business Line : Ludicrous comparison

HAUNTED by all the outrageous fibs fabricated against Iraq — possession of weapons of mass destruction, ability to launch them at 45 minutes' notice, collaboration with Al Qaeda to test chemical weapons, forging links with international jehadi terrorists — to justify its attack and occupation of the hapless country, the US is finding itself in a horrendous mess from which it is unable to extricate itself.

Constitution-making has got into a morass, with all the makings of a civil war. The number of American soldiers dead and injured in operations against insurgency after the war has exceeded that of the casualties in the course of the unprovoked aggression itself. The future prospect is grim, the US being forced to bear the brunt in terms of further loss of precious American lives and drain on the exchequer which some compute at $220 billion or more.

The situation is further worsened for the President, Mr George Bush, in particular, by the mounting domestic discontent over the flower of American youth being sacrificed in a far away land to bolster the vanity of his coterie and the trauma being inflicted on many families at home on that account. A hitherto unknown woman, Ms Cindy Sheehan, of California, the mother of a young soldier killed in Iraq, pitching her lonely tent in a form of Gandhi's satyagraha at the Texas ranch of Mr Bush, has become a world-renowned celebrity and a rallying point for the nation-wide demand to bring the soldiers back to the US. The rating of Mr Bush has plummeted to the lowest ever level of only 45 per cent being satisfied with his policies.

So, what does Mr Bush do? Undertake a reappraisal of the whole muddle that Iraq has become? Chalk out an exit strategy that will undo all the havoc caused by half-baked and ill-conceived crazy quilt patchwork in that country? Call a special international conference to put Iraq back on its rails? No, Sir! Mr Bush has sought to drum up support for keeping American forces in Iraq by calling the US mission "the modern-day moral equivalent of the struggle against Nazi fascism and Japanese imperialism in World War II". It is a pity that Mr Bush does not realise that such ludicrous comparisons only damage the case irreparably.

B. S. Raghavan

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