The world changed since the twin tower attack on September 11, 2001. America invaded Afghanistan (2001) and then Iraq (2003); virtually destroyed both countries; killed and injured hundreds of thousands civilians, and continues endless ‘war on terror’– all seemingly to avenge the attack on its homeland.
   Iraq was accused of possessing weapons of mass destruction, of having active chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes, and of having direct link with al-Qaeda. None proved true. No regrets or apologies were ever offered.
   Ever since 9/11, the world resonated with intense unceasing rhetoric (emanating mainly from Washington and London) of ‘bringing terrorists to justice’, ‘doing the right’ things, ‘defending’ values and ‘winning the ideological contest’; and the ‘obligation’ to defend and spread ‘freedom and liberty’ everywhere in the world as the ‘gift of God’.
   Those who share such common ‘universal’ values—presumably high moral conduct, dispensation of rule of law and justice, and unequivocal principles human rights—were exhorted to rally around in a new ‘crusade’ against oppression and tyranny across the whole world. In this great war of the 21st century, America and its special ally Britain are the vanguards. Others are to be compliant or else seen to be enemies. Terrorists kill innocents with bestial cruelty and without discrimination, while we kill them in other lands to prevent attack on our homeland.
   In this crusade (officially called ‘war on terror’), ‘evil’ dictators have been hanged, others killed or hounded; ‘rogue’ regimes toppled or brought under severe sanctions; two countries have been bombed to stone age, their population made homeless starving refugees. If you need examples, you are invited to visit Iraq and Afghanistan for a start, though you cannot be assured of safe journeys unless protected by occupation army—perhaps not even then. You could also throw in side trips to Occupied Palestine Territories, and Lebanon.
   The narrative and statistics of civilian deaths in Iraq are in the public domain thanks to the joint survey in 2006 by Johns Hopkins University team and its Iraqi associates- the death toll since American
   invasion in 2003 is estimated to have crossed the colossal figure of six hundred thousand.
   Those dead are beyond physical and mental sufferings. Those who survive live in extreme insecurity and in sub human conditions. By the most recent (2007) report on Iraq by Oxfam, a renowned international charity, half of the Iraqi population is below the poverty line; nearly 70 per cent have no sanitary facilities and are without safe drinking water. More tragically, a third of child population is undernourished. These and other health indicators now place Iraq parallel or below the sub Saharan region of Africa. The infant and child death rates, the maternal mortality rates have risen too.
   The gravity of such appalling decline of population health status and general living standards is a telling indictment of the occupation of Iraq which failed not only to provide minimal security of life but also basic needs of the citizens for mere survival. It should be recalled that the Iraqi population had enjoyed much higher health indicators before 2003, and even higher levels before the economic sanctions (1990) and the first gulf war of 1991.
   Having ruined the once adequate civilian infrastructure of Iraq by disproportionate use of military weaponry, the occupation administration and its Iraqi counterpart failed to rebuild and reconstruct due to gross corruption, mismanagement and incompetence. This has been testified by the recent (2007) audit report commissioned by an unhappy US Congress.
   The Iraqi economy simply does not exist. With very high unemployment (estimated to be above 70 per cent), most families inside Iraq are without income to buy their needs; they have to depend upon food rations doled out by charities. Many families feel it below their dignity to get food charity given by local and foreign agencies of humanitarian relief.
   The Oxfam report also confirms the dire nature of the looming humanitarian crisis when already an estimated eight million Iraqis—a third of the entire population are in dire need and depends on food charity for survival.
   Those Iraqis of the affluent and middle class, those in the professions like doctors, teachers, engineers have migrated, and many more with relatives outside Iraq have, during the post invasion years, taken shelter in neighbouring countries. Syria and Jordan are hosts to more than two million Iraqi refugees. In the short term, such exodus of migrants and refugees drain the skilled human resources so necessary for reconstruction, which again is a pre-requisite for improving security inside the country and create a semblance of a united
   society that serves all Iraqis.
   None of the conditions described above, contributes to the restoration of Iraq as a sovereign united country providing security and services to its people. On the contrary, if the present security situation persists, the refugee out flux will rise. If the economy and employment plummets further, if services deteriorate even more, a very bleak if not catastrophic humanitarian crisis could plunge Iraq into depth of despair and deprivation unmatched by anything of this nature since the Second World War.
   All those words of stubborn denial by the American president, all those pious pontifications at press conferences at the White House or Camp David prove hollow and without a shred of credibility. The truth is: the occupation has already failed and failed miserably and completely. It is not therefore a matter of ‘if we fail’; we have already failed. Not relevant is the logic ‘if we withdraw the terrorists will be emboldened’; the terrorists are already emboldened such that they have thwarted the troops surge already. So one moot question very few are asking the US president is ‘what are you waiting for?’ To plunge Iraq into a humanitarian catastrophe of unprecedented magnitude and incalculable damage? To bring about a worse chaos (if such a thing is possible) in Iraq that will engulf Iraq and its neighbours into a cataclysmic turmoil with unthinkable geopolitical and economic consequences for the world beyond? Or are we waiting to destroy Iraq and the Middle East to midwife the birth of democracy, freedom and liberty in the Arab World?
   Countries around Iraq are being lectured to do more, to help out the failed occupation extricate itself out of the quagmire of its own making. And the Iraqi government a protégé of American occupation is admonished for not getting to the benchmarks set by its master, failing to comprehend that a creature of foreign occupation never did enjoy the legitimacy nor the sovereignty in the eyes of its own people to secure their trust and confidence. Imagine, when the occupation with over a hundred fifty thousand well armed troops fail to bring order and stability, how a fledgling poorly trained and equipped Iraqi army riddled by sectarian militias can do the job? Yet, the charade of handing over the charge to Iraqis under continuing occupation of Iraq goes on
   from the pulpit of the new ‘pope’ of the post- 9/11 crusades.
   Let the US Congress go on with its tepid and timid debate around troops withdrawal, as it wishes. But it is the US Congress that can and should do more if it wishes to assert its representation of the will of the American people. By not doing what it can it has thus far abrogated its duty. As to the current US administration, it has no longer the autonomy to choose on its own the timetable for withdrawal unless it chooses to retreat in shame and disgrace.
   There is here a huge question of accountability. Nothing will absolve it of its moral delinquency of having gone to war and destroyed a country and its people. To assert that the US has a moral duty to
   salvage Iraq is yet another myth.
   The Iraqis have lost faith whatever they once had in the ill conceived and inept American enterprise shattered by failures and abuses. They clearly do not support the American occupation perhaps any more than they support al-Qaeda extremists. Only those who fabricate myths and camouflage truth by perfidy (as they did in the run up to the invasion) can dwell in concocted faith in their own credibility. Let that be.
   Let us revert to the subject of accountability. Even in our post 9/11 world (our world has changed forever), accountability has not lost relevance or thrown out of jurisprudence. In a major war, and especially in a war launched upon a non-aggressor by a predatory power, as the war on Iraq, accountability resonates more loudly and in defiance of the enforced legitimacy of the occupier.
   Those who assert vehemently their manifest destiny to defend and disseminate freedom, democracy, human values and civilization, bear a much higher duty and therefore accountability than others. Those who bring justice to others by brutal force must at least submit to the rule of justice by court if not by military force. There is no military power left today that can enforce justice upon the most powerful military of the present world. But there still is justice meted out by the court of world public opinion. And then there is the International Criminal Court that has the competence and international legitimacy but unfortunately not the capacity to put on trial the perpetrators of crimes against the people of Iraq (or Afghanistan for that matter). Which court will bring justice to the terrorists who are also the most powerful and predatory and who can remain above international law.
   The Hague Tribunal may have tried and sentenced those who committed crimes like ethnic cleansing. And according to some legal luminaries, a ‘kangaroo court’ like in occupied Iraq tried and hanged a former head of state.
   But with over half a million civilian Iraqis killed, over two million refugees driven into exile and more made refugees in their own homeland, thousands of detainees abused and tortured on mere suspicion, and now a looming sectarian war fuelled by a ‘divide and rule’ doctrine of occupation on false and fabricated pretext, who will bring those responsible to account for their deeds or bring justice to them? Who other than the high and mighty should have the courage and integrity to admit the inescapable accountability for the consequences of their deeds?

If the substance of the Indo-US nuclear deal agreed to in Washington squares up with the fine print of the text and it crosses the various hurdles it has to, it is as good an arrangement as India could have got. But the more important question it throws up is the future direction of India’s foreign policy and the new urgency of playing the diplomatic game with the utmost diligence and finesse.
   India is entering uncharted waters because the Congress-led coalition government has come to the conclusion that it is in the country’s interest to align with the United States because Washington, for its own reasons, is looking benignly at the rise of India. This alignment, somewhat like the Indo-Soviet treaty of the old days with another power, represents a tilt for short-term advantage in the hope that Indian diplomacy is sufficiently resourceful to exploit the fluid state of world politics to be able to balance closer relations with Washington with simultaneously strengthening relations with such countries as Russia, Japan and China and through a proliferation of regional arrangements, with the emerging developing world as well as the European Union.
   The premise, of course, is that India needs the active support of the US in order to achieve its full potential in a changing world across the field — in trade, technology, defence cooperation and the evolving political scenario. If the US cannot make India a great power, as it has promised to, its benign neutrality is essential to the country finding its place in the world.
   Obviously, America’s new approach is determined by its desire to embrace India in a virtual alliance in pursuit of its policies in Asia, particularly vis-à-vis China, and in West Asia and the wider world. New Delhi must, therefore, seek to take America’s helping hand while drawing red lines as far as containing China is concerned and in guarding its own interests in West Asia, which will inevitably conflict with some US policies. In other words, India must always maintain the ability to say ‘no’ even as it is vital not to confuse tactical compromises with strategy.
   US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has already pointed to the irrelevance of non-alignment to today’s world, but nonalignment as a concept of taking independent foreign policy positions is deeply rooted in the Indian psyche and will prove a valuable counterweight to prevent the country from becoming a camp follower. If India has lived through the Indo-Soviet treaty without causing irreparable damage to its capacity for independent thinking and action, it can live through the new tilt towards America.
   New Delhi understands that there are areas of convergence and conflict in the policies and interests of the two countries, inevitable in view of the worldview of the sole superpower and an emerging power seeking its place in the sun. These differences stem not merely from the neoconservative unilateralist policies of President George W Bush, particularly in his first term, but from the political mythology of the United States of America — that it is the shining city on the hill, that world rules do not apply to it and that, considering its pre-eminent military might, it should be a Second Roman Empire ruling the world directly or through proxies.
   The Iraq quagmire has dented some of these beliefs but India must understand that the view of America’s uniqueness is shared by the political class across party lines although there are obvious differences in how and when to use force to pursue national objectives and the priority to be given to a multilateral approach as against going it alone. America’s is a very America-centred view of the world, despite its worldwide role and military presence.
   There is a new convergence of Indian and American views on our immediate neighbours although Pakistan remains an area of many complexities. On China, America’s attempt to use India as a partner in containment will be resisted, although no one can quarrel with the theory that, in a larger sense, a more powerful India will serve as some kind of a balance in Asia. In West Asia, India’s growing relations with Israel is an area of great convergence, but there is public anger over American complicity in condemning Palestinians to continuing Israeli occupation. Privately, the Indian ruling establishment takes the view that India cannot be more Palestinian than the neighbouring Arab states, which have been singularly supine, with the exception of the revival of the Saudi peace plan.
   In the broader field, India is distinctly for a multi-polar world, which has morphed into a dirty phrase for US policymakers, and believes passionately that the developing world is far from achieving a level playing field, whether in the composition of the UN Security Council or in trade and commerce. Nor does India believe that the selective use America has made of President Bush’s ‘war on terror’ serves India’s own struggle against terrorism of many varieties.
   The nuclear deal is then part of a new architecture America is seeking to build to try to serve its objectives by drawing India into a western consensus on how the world should be run. Equally, it is New Delhi’s objective to employ the new US approach to acquire greater power and influence while maintaining groupings that keep its relations with the European Union, Russia, China, Latin America and Africa in good repair. For instance, it is not in India’s interest that Russia be contained through an ever-tightening noose, most recently by planning to base components of a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. And India has much sympathy for Latin America in its attempts to chart its own course away from the concept of banana republics.
   There are risks involved in India’s pursuit of the sun, but that is no reason to shy away from the journey. Rather, the imperative is to enter the new phase of international relations with eyes wide open, armed with the knowledge that it will require all the resources of good diplomacy to pursue closer relations with the United States while keeping the non-aligned mindset intact.