september 11, 2010
Scuttle and Run
The US military formally leaves Iraq, leaving it in economic, social and political ruins.
A
cts of idiocy by the powerful come rather frequently
these days, but few in recent times have matched the
vulgarity of the flight-suited swagger down the deck of
the aircraft carrier, USS Abraham Lincoln, by a smirking George
W Bush on 1 May 2003. Few indeed can remotely approach the
foolhardiness of the banner that provided the backdrop to his an-
nouncement that day, of a Mission Accomplished in Iraq.
If that was farce, Bushs successor in the job, once regarded as
the most powerful in the world, was condemned to re-enact it as
tragedy. Seven years and four months from Mission Accom-
plished, Barack Obama announced in a nationwide address that
the US military was pulling out of Iraq, after fulfilling its respon-
sibilities. Apart from announcing the end of the combat mission
in Iraq, Obama was also seeking to mobilise his bitterly riven
nation to cope with ongoing security challenges and the need
to rebuild at home. And though at pains to avoid deprecatory
references to the misadventures of his predecessor, Obama spelt
out the consequences of Iraq with a certain, though selective,
attention to detail: Thousands of Americans gave their lives;
tens of thousands have been wounded. Our relations abroad
were strained. Our unity at home was tested.
Missing in this narration is any remorse over the hundred
thousand Iraqis killed a conservative estimate or the destruc-
tion of the civic infrastructure that the people of Iraq had built
up through years of arduous effort. Omitted entirely is the
unsettled, potentially explosive, political mix that the US has
bequeathed. Iraq is a nation where the generation today, grow-
ing into adulthood, has spent its infancy and childhood under a
regime of sanctions and starvation, imposed by the US to deny
all possibilities of growth. And the US chose military invasion
only when it found that sanctions and starvation were failing to
do what it sought.
Obama does express regret at the economic vicissitudes that
have beset the US since the Iraq misadventure, though without
drawing a direct linkage between the two. He laments that over
the last decade, the US has failed to do what is necessary to shore
up the foundation of (its) own prosperity. The grit and energy and
common purpose that went into the war effort, he says, now need
to be brought home to tackle the woes of the US economy. Obamas
renunciation of the civilising mission also signals that it is entirely
the job of the people of Iraq to fix a mess the US has created. This
Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 11, 2010 vol xlv no 37
famous retreat from the imperial ambition of reconfiguring the
entire region has, fortuitously, coincided with the release of the
political memoir of Bushs principal partner in crime, the former
British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Always self-serving and willing to stretch the truth, Blair
parades his famously convoluted morality across 700 pages of
prose that he proudly claims as entirely his own. While disdaining
a ghost-writer, Blair chooses not to identify the unseen demons
that prompted him to march in lockstep with a George Bush
across the Atlantic, in a mission to rearrange a region that the
British empire had scuttled away from over six decades before.
He does so, quite simply, through the demonisation of a man long
since dead.
Saddam Hussein, the deposed president of Iraq, since executed
in a ghoulish ritual of revenge, is, in Blairs narration, a scourge
the Iraqi people had to be rid of. The US and the UK launched
their war on a mistaken premise that he possessed weapons of
mass destruction but succeeded nevertheless in achieving the
laudable goal of toppling a detestable regime. It was not just the
execrable track record of the Saddam regime that was at issue,
but the potential and the intent for mischief he embodied. Blair
concedes that Saddam had no known links with the Al Qaida
terrorists who rained death and destruction on the US one
September morning in 2001, but insists that he could have
teamed up with his worst enemies in common antagonism
towards western values.
Astonishingly then, Blair offers the alibi that the enterprise in
Iraq would have been a glorious success, but for Al Qaida and
Iran moving into the power vacuum created by the overthrow
of Saddam. This is an exercise in dissimulation so characteristic
of the war cabal, that it needs to be unpackaged: Saddam
kept Al Qaida and Iran out of Iraq, but could potentially have
teamed up with them to wreck western civilisation. Our, i e, the
Bush-Blair axis, invasion of Iraq would have been a glorious
success but for Al Qaida and Iran moving in to Iraq after we
toppled Saddam, with the mere intention of undermining our
civilisational mission.
While the circus artistes perform their incredible feats of moral
contortion, the ringmaster remains discretely hidden. Neither
Israel nor Palestine finds a mention anywhere in Obamas
speech of renunciation. But there is an obvious connection
7
EDITORIALS
between his declaration of victory in Iraq and the launch of direct
negotiations shortly afterwards, between Israel and the quisling
Palestine regime of Mahmoud Abbas. Like all previous efforts by
the US to bring the Zionist entity to some semblance of accommo-
dation with the Palestinian people, this too is destined to fail.
Israel simply does not feel any sense of accountability for the
Will Truth Prevail?
In its current form, the whistle-blowers bill will simply not do.
T
he Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons
Making the Disclosure Bill, 2010 was recently tabled in the
Lok Sabha. The Law Commission of India had first drafted
a bill on providing protection to whistle-blowers in 2001. Since
then the murder of two whistle-blowers (Satyendra Dubey in
2003 and Manjunath Shanmugham in 2007) brought the issue
of the vulnerability of those who expose corruption into public
focus. Following a Supreme Court order in 2004, the government
issued the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection of Informers
Resolution. Since this resolution is not sufficient to provide
statutory protection to people who report corruption, a law was
required to provide effective protection to those who expose
corruption and wrongdoing.
Everywhere in the world whistle-blowers have to be unusually
committed and unafraid of risks, but strong protection laws go a
long way in reassuring them of safety. However, given the
endemic proportions of corruption in public life in India and
corruption-related violence (eight Right to Information (RTI)
activists have been murdered since January this year), the moot
point is how far it will be possible to implement the provisions of
the proposed legislation and how far the infrastructure available
will support effective implementation.
The bill covers acts of corruption or wilful misuse of power
by public servants belonging to the central and state govern-
ments or any corporations, societies, local bodies and categories
under their jurisdiction. It provides for adequate protection
to public servants or citizens reporting such corruption and
a regular mechanism to encourage them to disclose such acts.
It prevents victimisation of such complainants, and empowers
the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) or the designated com-
petent authorityto penalise those who reveal their identity. The
CVC which is the nodal agency in all such cases will have the
powers of a civil court. It also enjoins punishment for false or
frivolous complaints.
Protecting the identity of whistle-blowers is always very
difficult and in the past few years the United States has witnessed
high-profile cases of whistle-blowers who have exposed illegal
acts in large corporations being subjected to harassment. Pro-
tection will require an exceptionally strong legal help mecha-
nism, a committed and sensitive investigative agency and strong
support systems. In the bill introduced in Parliament, the rele-
vant clause 10 only says that in case of victimisation the compe-
tent authority shall take action as deemed fit, direct the
8 september 11, 2010 vol xlv no 37 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
millions of refugees it created while claiming its supposed na-
tional patrimony in Palestine. And the US, after creating an esti-
mated four million refugees from Iraq the best of the countrys
middle-class and intelligentsia feels little remorse that it was
tweaked into a foreordained military disaster, to serve the strate-
gic ambitions of a recalcitrant ally.
concerned government authorities (including police) to ensure
protection and that these directions will be binding. Nothing is
spelt out and clearly everything is left to the discretion of the
concerned agencies.
The whistle-blowers bill does not cover the private sector,
concerned as it is with only central and state governments. There
is no reason why the private sector should be left out of the
purview of the bill. Also, any disclosure of corruption made five
years after the corrupt act was allegedly done will not be investi-
gated. This provision is rather baffling and has the potential to
encourage fudging of dates and backdating of documents.
Since the CVC has no investigative mechanism of its own, the
bill envisages that a public authority (against whom a disclosure
is made and to whom the CVC sends an inquiry) will create an
appropriate machinery to deal with the inquiry which the CVC
is empowered to superintend. The CVC can also take the assistance
of police authorities and the Central Bureau of Investigation for
making inquiries. Both these agencies are periodically mired in
controversies and are accused of being vulnerable to pressures
from the ruling political establishment.
The fight against corruption has many ramifications and
has to be carried out on many fronts. The RTI Act has been a
particularly effective one not only because it is a strong piece of
legislation but also because RTI activists across the country are a
vigilant lot. In the US which has perhaps seen the most high-
profile whistle-blowing cases than those of any other country
disclosures of corruption are covered by a number of laws
which are constantly being revised to give them more teeth. For
example, the US Whistleblowers Protection Act, 1989 to protect
federal employees making disclosures was amended in 1994 and
an Office of Special Counsel was set up to aid them and prevent
victimisation. After the Enron collapse, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act
of 2002 was passed giving wide legal protection to disclosures in
publicly traded companies, providing for exemplary punishment
to anyone retaliating and placing a deadline for completion
of investigation.
The Public Interest Disclosure Bill needs to be vigorously
debated in the public and thoroughly revised so as to give it more
teeth lest it becomes yet another cosmetic exercise. How may the
risk involved in blowing-the-whistle be significantly reduced?
How best may the anonymity of the whistle-blower be scrupu-
lously maintained? How may the whistle-blower be adequately
protected against retaliatory action?