http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1642128,00300002.htm

Thank you, Mr Bush

SUNDAY SENTIMENTS | Karan Thapar

March 4, 2006

Advertisement

Have you noticed how the world doesn’t like America? Few countries
have anything good to say. The irony is that those for whom it has
done the most tend to be least grateful. And this applies regardless
of whether the recipient state is Asian, Latin American or European.

In the 1950s, when the Marshall Plan was reviving Europe’s crushed
fortunes, it was commonplace in England to joke about Yankee
unpopularity. The one that became best known went like this: “We hate
them for three reasons, because they are over-paid, over-sexed and
over-here.” This snide if successful strand of humour has roots that
stretch far back into Europe’s relations with the ‘New World’. Oscar
Wilde was a past master: “It was wonderful to find America, but it
would have been more wonderful still to have missed it”, or “America
had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been
hushed up.”

Even the French had their little digs. Clemenceau, who was Prime
Minister during World War I, is best known for the following
witticism: “America is the only country to have progressed from
barbarism to decadence without experiencing the intervening stage of
civilisation.” Freud: “America is the most grandiose experiment the
world has seen but, I’m afraid, it’s not going to succeed.”

What lies behind such humour is rank jealousy. Success, no doubt,
breeds envy but when your own impoverishment or incapacity adds the
curse of dependence envy turns rapidly into dislike. The more the
world needs America the more it hates itself for it. And since one
cannot swear at oneself, America becomes the next best victim.

Of course, Yankee crassness, at times their innocence and often their
idiocy have added to this. Americans are hardly their own best
ambassadors. I recall a US Senator at the Cambridge Union who single
handedly helped his side lose the motion “This House reaffirms its
faith in America.” It happened when, carried away by his eloquence, he
warmed to the subject and promised to lift the poor cities of the
world “up, up, up — all the way till they look like Kansas City.” That
shattered all prospects of a vote in favour.

And yet if America feels let down, stung by ingratitude, even
lacerated, I can understand its feelings. Because those who need
America the most are often the ones to kick hardest. This week India
came very close to joining the list of the ungrateful.

Consider the facts. After nearly forty years of undisputed existence,
the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, one of the world’s
most sacred holy cows, has been dismantled to admit one single
country. Of itself this is epoch-making. It’s revolutionary. But when
you add the fact that this will give India, a country that was
sometimes called a nuclear rogue state, the capacity to enlarge its
civilian nuclear industry, which otherwise simply couldn’t have
happened, the magnitude becomes enormous.

But are we grateful? Not if you look at the Left or the Samajwadi
Party. Nor if you judge by the so-called popular protest on the
streets. Not even if you go by the polls published by newspapers like
this one. Instead, we’re more concerned about Bush’s Iraq policy or
his threats to Iran, by his duplicity in the war on terrorism or even
his simplistic, moralistic, little-Christian attitudes. We prefer to
see reasons to dislike him. We ignore all cause for gratitude.

My point is simple. If Bush is so terrible why did we seek him out for
help? If his Iraq policy is so unforgivable and if he is, as Arundhati
Roy insists, a killer, why did we ask for his assistance? The choice
to not do so was always there. But we consciously acted otherwise.
Now, having got what we wanted, and possibly in far greater measure
than expected, does it become us to carp and criticise?

The truth is we have in George W. Bush a president more pro-Indian
than any before him. In fact the same nuclear deal would not have been
possible under Clinton or Kerry or Gore. Bush alone made it happen.
And he did so despite our Parliament’s well-known stand on Iraq and
the ill-disguised contempt our elite have for him. If he could rise
above all that then, surely, in return we could have expressed our
gratitude more clearly and with good cheer. The protests should have
been postponed or muted. They were hardly a suitable way of saying
thank you.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1642128,00300002.htm
Thank you, Mr Bush SUNDAY SENTIMENTS | Karan Thapar
March 4, 200 Advertisement
Have you noticed how the world doesn’t like America? Few countries
have anything good to say. The irony is that those for whom it has
done the most tend to be least grateful. And this applies regardless
of whether the recipient state is Asian, Latin American or European.

The truth is we have in George W. Bush a president more pro-Indian
than any before him. In fact the same nuclear deal would not have been
possible under Clinton or Kerry or Gore.

And he did so despite our Parliament’s well-known stand on Iraq and
the ill-disguised contempt our elite have for him. If he could rise
above all that then, surely, in return we could have expressed our
gratitude more clearly and with good cheer. The protests should have
been postponed or muted. They were hardly a suitable way of saying
thank you.