When a dictator falls...
Well Nebuchadrezzar has swung ,making some people very happy and others very angry.
However this is not about Saddam Hussein (good riddance to the bad rubbish) or the fact that he was at one time leader of state (those who live by sword, die by it), this is also not about America's Iraq policy (random termination of dictators with no long term objective is hardly a policy).
Rather this is about Indian response to the execution. To put it bluntly Indian response has been hypocritical, but the main issue is not Indian or for that matter American hypocrisy ( Hypocrisy, cornerstone of sound statesmanship, something which Chanakya might have said, if only he had seen pulp fiction). Hypocrisy is a device employed in order to achieve a particular goal. In case of nations, this goal is national interest, and the decisions that are taken are supposed to take into account short term versus long terms objectives.
And that is the problem, because this projection of Saddam as Martyr arises from two both of them morbid and repugnant.
First is rabid Anti American-ism, a direct consequence of communist and socialist stranglehold over Indian intellectual mind scape. In a comrade's world, USA is the greatest enemy, because it has always been the unabashed votary of capitalism and individual freedom, it is because of this that US is cast in a role where in cruelty it is a successor to British imperialism, and even Indians who are otherwise inimical to communist ideal adopt a negative attitude towards America due to this rather imaginative interpretation of history.
The consequence of being fed on constant diet of Marxist non-sense, is that in India the intellectual as well as common perception is a rather hazy mish mash of victim hood complex, fatalism and homilies self congratulatory in nature. This self deception is the result that by and large there is national interest remains neglected subject in public or for that matter even academic sphere.
The second is in order to appease a particular segment. From Khilafat movement to LTTE, it has been this shortsightedness of Indian political leader which has done incalculable harm to nation. Somehow, in all the wisdom of diversity and harmony, claims for membership of quasi -political formations beyond nation, with conflicting interests are tolerated.
If India has to have any semblance of national policy, these two tendencies must be countered.
Update: Well, this is funny in a not so funny way (link courtsey Rohit). Where do such critters come from.
4 comments:
G
I felt sad about the dictator, the manner in which he was treated (he who became an ingredient of the history)
*since u endorsed "minimalism" across ur space, much against my wishes, I am resisting self.this is unfair. Revenge: A Dish Best Served Cold (Chinese saying on Kill Bill...ah! my dearest Tarantino)..I will come back to this soon!..J
J,
Really !
Dont you think he killed too many innocents to be grieved over.
Minimalism was for me. You are invited to weave and delight by fabric of tender notes
G
I am not opposing the Iraqi tyrant at the gallows..but I regret the manner in which it was handled,the lack of hygenic level of dignity
shown at the time of execution...
....death/punishment by hanging, i feel (I am not someone who has the domain expertise..but as a human) is private an affair. If it has to be telecast live, certain degree of propriety should have been maintained by the system. Capturing the whole process on a mobile n beaming it across the world,the cacophony, chants of protest..I agree he was a crminal, he killed many innocents then.The man was humbler now, we need not venerate him but could treat him well with dignity, some respect we pay fr the human over there who is about to lose his life....
I dont endorse encroachment of technology here.. I felt sad for this..!
..do read this....the Nazi inner circle...
In the early hours of October 16, 1946, the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, executed ten men for their roles in Hitler’s Third Reich. Convicted of crimes against humanity and crimes against peace, these former high-ranking members of the Nazi regime faced the sentence of death by hanging. As far as formal executions go, the Allies dispatched the ten quite efficiently, in under two hours. Whitney R. Harris, in his remarkable Tyranny on Trial (Southern Methodist Press, 1954), vividly describes the first convict on his way to the gallows, the “white-faced” foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop:
“At eleven minutes past one o-clock in the morning . . . [Ribbentrop] stepped through the door into the execution chamber and faced the gallows on which he and the others . . . were to be hanged. His hands were unmanacled and bound behind him with a leather thong. Ribbentrop walked to the foot of the thirteen stairs leading to the gallows platform. He was asked to state his name, and answered weakly, ‘Joachim von Ribbentrop.’ Flanked by two guards and followed by the chaplain, he slowly mounted the stairs. On the platform he saw the hangman with the noose of thirteen coils and the hangman’s assistant with the black hood. He stood on the trap, and his feet were bound with a webbed army belt.” His final words were, “God protect Germany, God have mercy on my soul. My last wish is that German unity be maintained, that understanding between East and West be realized and there be peace for the world.” (Ribbentrop would then dangle for almost twenty minutes before dying.)
....Afterwards, the bodies of the executed were photographed and, writes Anthony Read in The Devil’s Disciples (W.W. Norton, 2004), “wrapped in mattress covers, sealed in coffins, then driven off in army trucks . .
.....it's private an affair, carried out with certain poignancy
J,
A valid point, I agree with you but for different reasons, guess I will write a post on it.
Post a Comment