The Hindu Business Line : Enigma that is the US

The US never ceases to fascinate — both its triumphs and tragedies are on a mind-boggling scale. It is the world's richest, mightiest and scientifically and technologically the most advanced nation. It has to its credit the largest number of patents, Nobel laureates, medals in sport and games, publications of all kinds, flights into space, discoveries in medicine, and achievements along the broadest band. The size of its corporations and the volumes of their transactions equal the GDP of many countries. Well, the US stands farthest out by being home for the `mostest' in most things!

Its impulses also at the most basic level are noble and generous. It could have kept itself aloof from the two World Wars of the last century: But it jumped into the fray in order to make the world safe for democracy and put an end to tyranny, much in the spirit of Lord Krishna's vow in the Bhagavad Gita to destroy the wicked and reinstate the virtuous.

Even its Vietnam misadventure and Iraqi entrapment were the result of its donning the mantle of a chivalrous knight-errant to rescue nations which, it thought, had got into the clutches of dangerous demons.

In carrying out its purported mission of purging the world of looming threats, as gauged by it, to its vision of an ideal political and economic world order, it has unhesitatingly and unstintingly made the largest quantum of sacrifices in terms of human, financial and material resources. In short, it has unwaveringly put its money where its mouth is.

But, then, the US is also a paradox and an enigma when viewed from certain other angles. For all its preachings on governance, management, accountability, transparency, ethics and the like, the kind of goof-ups that individuals in high places are capable of committing can be appalling. Combined with woefully poor judgment and the lack of intellectual, professional and personal integrity, the damage done has in many instances been incalculable.

The sinking without trace of a behemoth such as Enron, dragging with it the accounting firm of Anderson, and the monstrous fabrications about Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction and conspiracies with Al Qaeda terrorists are, of course, still fresh in the people's memory. Horrible mess

It is two years since hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and there is no end to the spate of stories of corruption, embezzlement and wastage in respect of huge amounts and relief materials. Young Collectors in Tamil Nadu handled the unprecedented aftermath of the tsunami so competently as to be held out to be models for the rest of the world.

It is hard to find any parallel to the horrible mess in which the World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, and the US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, find themselves. Those exalted personages, besides making mincemeat of norms of propriety, have been tying themselves into knots in offering untenable excuses!

In his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the indefensible firing of eight federal attorneys, the Attorney-General, according to The Washington Post, `uttered the phrase "I don't recall" and its variants ("I have no recollection," or "I have no memory") 64 times as against his chief aide's tally of 122 times in his testimony before the same Committee three weeks ago! Both have been shown the door in no uncertain terms, but are refusing to budge. Incredible!

B. S. RAGHAVAN