A Goliath runs amuck

It is symbolic of the dangers ahead in the Afghan peace process that Hamid Karzai, chairman of the interim administration in Kabul, was hurt in an explosion near Kandahar in which three US marines lost their lives in what is described as “friendly fire”. That the “friendly fire” consisted of a 2,000 pound bomb dropped by a B-52 bomber will go down in the history of warfare as an astonishing episode.

How should one know what is going on in Kandahar? Just as one knows nothing of the massacre (or defeat) of hundreds of prisoners of war in the fort at Mazar-e-Sharif. Or the mysterious progress of the conflict in Konduz.

Ever since the Afghan conflict began the only “authentic” sources of information have been the regular briefings at the Pentagon in Washington. The US has made it clear that propaganda would have to be an integral part of the strategy to combat terrorism. Thus, President Bush’s absence from the White House (he returned after halting for two days at remote cantonments) was attributed to “authentic information” received by the secret service that Air Force One is next on the terrorists’ list. This was revealed to be a lie to cover up for the initial cold feet in the White House.

However exasperated we might feel with the US in its conduct in world affairs, the fact of the matter remains that it has durable, self-correcting instruments in place. For example, American journalists nailed the ‘Air Force One’ story as a lie.

Over the years, their self-correcting mechanism had been sought to be blunted by successive administrations in the name of “national security” and “national interest.” Journalists like Wa- lter Cronkite changed the course of history by exposing mistakes and falsehoods in the Vietnam policy.

Mind you, the Cold War was at its fiercest in those days and “national interest” could have been more plausibly cited to obstruct bold, audacious journalism on Vietnam. And yet it was the American liberal ideal which prevailed — an ideal which made America such an infectious concept, a factor which operated, in no small measure in bringing about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Will the same idealism come into operation once the war in Afghanistan ends? Are we going to have American journalists do the postmortem on Afghanistan?

There is a sense, a certain feeling doing the rounds, that the compulsion the US felt, to stand out as something of a role model, disappeared with the Cold War, that a sense of unfettered, ever brute power now dictates American conduct in world affairs. This callousness, it is feared, may also have infected important segments of the media. Particularly the media which is beamed globally. The image of the “ugly American” in the past derived from reasons, which were in fact flattering to the US. American success and prosperity invited envy.

The end of the Cold War has brought about a US so supremely powerful as to be totally insensitive to how others view it. A distinction is not being made between admired and being feared. I do not see how Americans can be comfortable with the Goliath image for long. Is Christian softness being abandoned in favour of some of the harsher passages in the Old Testament?

There are reasons why this pessimistic line may in the end turn out to be founded on weak ground. There is, for instance, a groundswell of opposition to US unilateralism in Europe. Now that the Afghan military campaign is in its closing stages, the unilateralists in Washington are planning a wider campaign, which even London is opposed to.

The crucial fact, however, is that there is considerable resistance to unilateralism even in the US. Washington’s special envoy to the Middle East, General Anthony Zinni, would be an extremely embarrassed man trying to place the Middle East peace process on track, even as powerful hawks in Washington and Jerusalem plan action against Iraq.

But it is unlikely that Washington will allow world focus to be diverted from Afghanistan just when the Americans themselves are poised to gain so much by way of public relations by being seen to be navigating the Bonn arrangements to fruition.

Much of what is attractive in the American profile since the Second World War has been its imaginative role in the reconstruction of Germany and Japan. That image has prevailed over its many global misadventures in the intervening years.

Now that the international community is embarked on the historic reconstruction of Afghanistan, the US must be seen to be there helping the process and not fly away to Iraq with its B52s. This will only accentuate the self-destructing image of a Goliath run amuck. Moreover, the anti-Bonn Afghan dissenter will grow incrementally if the US does not stay to stabilise the peace.

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