America's Chicken Salad

Son, in politics you've got to learn that overnight, chicken shit can turn to chicken salad." This was Lyndon B. Johnson in '58, answering a reporter's query on his turnabout when Johnson embraced Richard Nixon, who he'd earlier called "chicken shit". Today, we can safely say President Musharraf is America's chicken salad. And, it's happened not only due to America's own self-interest but because, most discomfortingly, Musharraf is winning the war against India.

Musharraf has instinctively understood that in today's war, more than anything else, as Marshall McLuhan said in 1971, "Politics will eventually be replaced by imagery. The politician will be only too happy to abdicate in favour of his image, because the image will be more powerful than he could ever be." Beginning with the Agra summit, when Musharraf hijacked India's senior editors into a "private" breakfast which he later had broadcast, he has waged an unrelenting war to build his image. He doesn't deserve to be called shrewd or super-intelligent. It is the most obvious thing anyone with below average IQ would do.

As Mark Crispin wrote, "Like propaganda generally advertising must thus pervade the atmosphere, for it wants, paradoxically, to startle its beholders without really being noticed by them. Its aim is to jolt us, not 'into thinking' as in a Brechtian formulation, but specifically away from thought, into quasi-automatic action." As a Coca-Cola executive put it, "Communication is message assimilation—the respondent must be shown to behave in some way that proves they have come to accept the message, not merely to have received it."

This week Musharraf arrived in Washington to meet President George Bush. His mind-perception activators have been busy. While The New York Times carried a full-page story by Somani Sengupta on Mumbai slums with graphic descriptions on how slum-dwellers relieve themselves publicly, there were reports splashed everywhere how India has attacked "Azad Kashmir" (sic), killing three children. Musharraf is projecting himself as a man of peace who wants to talk to India, while India, the war-mongering state that ignores human rights, refuses to do so. Americans are buying Musharraf's Coca-Cola along with the chicken salad.

India's position on Kashmir is strong, despite historical mistakes by past governments. Today, few people, even in India, know that the UN resolution that Pakistan waves in everybody's faces first calls for an unconditional removal of Pakistani troops from all of Kashmir, including PoK, before any plebiscite takes place. Not Indian troops, only Pakistani. But, we only hear of the plebiscite.

Pakistan-planted stories have appeared in the US press that Indian intelligence is responsible for Daniel Pearl's kidnapping. Refutation of this preposterous idea, giving surprising capabilities to our intelligence agencies, is nowhere to be seen. But then, I forgot, our foreign ministry has always told us journalists when queried on our inadequacies in putting forward our position for world consumption, "We will not stoop to their level". We are, of course, high-minded enough to presume that our position is so unexceptionable that there is no need to even propound it. But, in politics, being ridiculous is more damaging than being extreme.

The fact that our prime minister, home minister and defence minister have stated repeatedly that Musharraf is not doing enough to curb cross-border terrorism has barely received any coverage in the world press. Instead, Bush and Colin Powell have gone out of their way to praise their new chicken salad for what he has done to stop terrorism. What has he done? Cosmetic surgery which looks good to the Americans, but like all face-lifts, will eventually droop.

Compare the US reaction to Yasser Arafat's actions to stop Palestinian terrorism.Powell said: "We still do not believe Arafat has done enough. The violence has to end or else there is no basis to move forward." Isn't that India's stand on Pakistan? He continued, "Arafat should arrest people responsible for terrorist actions and put them in real jails from where they would not be walking out several days later. He must stop appealing to the passions on the street." Powell should have been using the exact words for Musharraf.

In December last year, Arafat called for an end to attacks on Israel and pledged to punish perpetrators. Though Washington welcomed the statement, it added, "words were not enough". Words seem to have been more than enough in Musharraf's case. Arafat's taken stronger actions than Musharraf, but double standards have been the cornerstone of US foreign policy. Musharraf's allowed the same terrorists to move their bases to PoK and the violence has anything but ceased. Arafat faces a much more serious threat of dissent from Hamas than Musharraf has from anyone. And like Musharraf, Arafat repeatedly calls for talks which like India, Israel has refused.

US foreign policy is historically littered with short-sighted support of chicken salads. The fact that Pearl's kidnapping was carried out by Ahmed Omar Sheikh, arrested and released by India and on the list India is demanding for return, shows clearly that US support of Musharraf is a swaying house of cards. Pakistan's two decades of training Islamic militants and Musharraf's insistence in calling them 'freedom fighters', yet now espousing the war against terrorism, makes for a schizophrenic political policy. Nirupama Rao, foreign ministry spokeswoman, has stated that Musharraf will have to end cross-border terrorism before India comes to the table. She accused him of having "reverted to yesterday's cliches". A bit too genteel a response. It's we who are stuck in cliches. We need some fire and brimstone to get our message across, if that's what it takes. If Indian intelligence is responsible for the kidnapping, why has the foreign ministry not asked for proof? But then, I forgot again, we don't stoop to their level. Meanwhile, Musharraf stoops to conquer.