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Toward the rest of humanity, Britain's wartime prime minister betrayed a prejudice that can only be described as racist. For example, he famously informed U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt that same year that the people of India were undeserving of the freedoms for which the Allies were presumably at war with Germany.
Churchill's belief that the natural order of things was for those of European origin to rule the rest was genuine, and as a consequence, the prime ministerial eyebrows were frequently raised at the respect with which his U.S. counterpart treated Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek -- another backer of independence for India. Independence was finally secured in 1947, when Churchill was no longer in government.
Almost all the intellectual mentors of U.S. President George W. Bush are votaries of "Churchillian" methods. So it is no surprise that they persist in the view that the continued military occupation of Iraq is "in the interests of the people of Iraq." This after more than a decade of harsh economic sanctions pressured the entire population of Iraq, followed by the 2003 invasion and near-complete destruction of the civilian infrastructure of the country, and its reduction to penury and chaos.
With each passing month, though the situation for the Iraqi people grows steadily worse, the Churchillian chorus in Washington insists that only the occupation is preserving the remnants of order. Almost no policymaker in the United States is examining what the reaction of the U.S. population would be to what General David Petraeus and his cohorts are doing in Iraq -- a country that has been handed over to them and to Britain for infinity by a U.N. Security Council resolution that shames the institution set up in 1945 to try and protect the peace of the world.
In today's "free" Iraq, even the most senior police officers have to defer to the commands of junior officers of the Coalition in matters relating to their jurisdiction. Whether it is control over the country's oil resources or the final word on the distribution of capital to different schemes, the last word is invariably with the national of a foreign country, although mercifully these are no longer called "administrators" of Iraq but simply "advisers."
It is grotesque to watch as U.S. officials and lawmakers ceaselessly blame present conditions in that country on a regime that lacks substantive powers -- except to give press conferences and make speeches from within the confines of the "Green Zone." Such an audacious passing of responsibility is reminiscent of the drumbeat of op-ed pieces expressing surprise that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein "concealed the fact that he had no WMD," when in fact the now-deceased dictator publicly and repeatedly affirmed that he had no stocks of weapons of mass destruction. He gave instructions to destroy WMD capabilities in 1996 in order to prevent the very invasion that he faced, defenseless, in 2003.
After watching the final minutes of Saddam Hussein's life on television, few within the leadership of countries such as Iran and North Korea would believe that unilateral destruction of offensive capabilities would prevent an attack by the United States and its Western allies. Small wonder that informed individuals claim Pyongyang is concealing substitute production capabilities for fissile material, or that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is pressing ahead with the production of enriched uranium.
Despite their loathing for the regimes sitting on their backs, the example of Iraq has snuffed out any desire for NATO-orchestrated regime change in Iran and other countries on the wrong side of Bush and Vice President Cheney, both of whom have made Saddam Hussein seem like Queen Victoria in comparison to the rule of their factotums, few of whom are eager to admit that they are the primary problem, rather than the essential element in the solution. Even after four years of carnage the situation in Iraq is still salvageable should the United States rescue itself from the Churchillian delusion that it is indispensable in an occupied country.
Both Hong Kong and Singapore began to develop only after Britain withdrew "east of Suez," thereby removing much of the micromanagement that had previously been imposed on these two territories. And as for the "jewel in the crown," India, over the final nine decades of British rule more than 60 million people are estimated to have died from famine and the diseases that spring from malnutrition -- hardly a record to be proud of. More than 12 million died in the single year of 1943, when Churchill snarled at Roosevelt's suggestion that India be promised its freedom after the war. This was in the context of more than 2 million of the country's sons fighting in the ranks of the Allies, a contribution that is seldom mentioned to schoolchildren in Europe studying the war.
Soon after U.S. and British forces rolled up Saddam Hussein's conventional forces in 2003, this columnist wrote in the "Economic Times" that George W. Bush and Tony Blair would do well to emulate the example of Indira Gandhi, who withdrew her forces from what then became Bangladesh weeks after routing the Pakistan army. It was added that only a free election would stabilize Iraq, and that those who said the people of that country were "not ready" for democracy could be compared to the many in the West who wrote during the 1950s that the illiterate and poverty-ridden population of India was "unfit for democracy."
If an administration thrown up by the people of Iraq is unable to resolve the problems bedeviling that country, the same cannot be solved by any outside force, least of all one that is unable to introduce a workable polity even in a tiny territory such as Kosovo.
It speaks of the ignorance and insensitivity of U.S. forces commander Gen. David Petraeus and his backers that he is unable or unwilling to see that the forces of chaos and disorder in Iraq have sprung up largely as a reaction to the continued subjugation of a noble people -- this time not by a sadistic dictator but by a well-intentioned clutch of those who have forgotten the maxim that the path to Hell is paved with good intentions.
Churchill was wrong about India. Hopefully, it will not be long before the United States extricates itself from following in Iraq the example set by that proponent of an Anglo-Saxon master race.
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(Professor M.D. Nalapat is vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and professor of geopolitics at Manipal University.)
