4th of July reflections
reprinted from a 2006
This 4th of July America will celebrate its 132nd Independence Day. I have seen exactly 6 such events since I came to America in 2001. After spending seven years in America, I have begun on reflecting on my experience of America and it raises many thoughts about my path in the future of my American experience. As an Indian national who arrived in the twilight of 9/11, my initiation to America was very different than I had expected. I haven't seen the Clinton years and I hear it was different, which I would never know because as we know today, since 9/11 the world has changed and is defined in terms of pre- 9/11 or post- 9/11. I might add here that in reality the world really changed long before 9/11 at different times for different people of the world, now connected in an global economy. It is simply that the upper or privileged half or less than a quarter of the world got an opportunity to give a label to an event on 9/11, via its instruments of mass media. So, now we have a post and pre 9/11 world of another layer of identities, axis of evils, radical Islamists, terrorists and aliens. The other half which never gets an opportunity to label anything , still lives in squalor and disenfranchised economical microcosms and for them the world had changed years before and it still changes while they are never a part of it. In this changed world, America looks very different like a suspicious boyfriend, who suspects every neighbor as immoral and unworthy. It was never than America ever cared about its neighbors, but now it cared more about neighbors who did not care about America. So, Venezuela,Columbia , Bolivia,Cuba, Chile are all somehow part of the axis that were evil or were evil at a certain point in American history. Is it a coincidence that the world's largest economy is surrounded by poor, undeveloped Latin countries who have been struggling with democracy in the last five decades. America's list of hated despots are the rulers of fragile economies viz...Casto, Che, Chavez..etc
I grew up around every outlet of information and media announcing the American supremacy in the world of innovation, technology and free market success. The story was that America was the place where people could achieve anything with determination and hard work. It was the only place in Indian folklore that resembled ancient Indian emperor Vikramaditya's court, that provided justice and fairness to all. But somewhere as the events unfolded since I landed that sunny afternoon in Chicago, my pride in my assumptions about America lay shattered to smithereens and my understanding ruined. I left India on the day of India's 52nd anniversary of independence. My journey of self-discovery and self determination outside the shadow of my parents influence was to head to the new world. The best path forward for most kids of my generation was an American education and an outside world "foreign" experience. Going to America was never a question for me or my family like my mother jostled for attention among her women friends in Mumbai who all had at least one son or a daughter in America.
Barely a month after I arrived, 9/11 happened and everything changed. America was rightfully not only hurt but very angry. Public opinion for a revenge was unquestionable. Barely before every human loss was accounted for in the rubble, America launched a war on Afghanistan. The world too wept with America by sending love notes and offering refueling points for jets to bomb Afghanistan. For the first time, America announced it will put an end to all forms of terrorism. India rejoiced hoping that Pakistan's covert war using terrorists as Mujahadeen's would finally be put to an end. The Taliban fell in no time and Afghanistan was bombed back to 10 century, not that it wasn't already there, thanks to the long waged battle between the Northern Alliance funded by erstwhile Soviet Union and the Taliban funded by American CIA.
Even as the war was not over, a new war was announced on Iraq. The patience for scrutiny of evidence had run out as blood gushed to the brains of the annoyed and angered panel of presenters at the UN Security Council. No evidence was enough to potray the anger of America but was enough to potray the evidence. UN weapons inspectors were replaced with random disdain if arguments arose about the authenticity of evidence presented.To quote Indira Gandhi ironically to this argument considering she was India's only real tyrannical leader elected through democratic process said "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist".America was not in the mood to make friends. France, with its contribution of potato fries and sparkling wine, found itself on the wrong side of the equation. Their Fries were renamed and rechristened to Freedom Fries. Ironically, the statue of Liberty , the Symbol of American Liberty was gifted by none other than the French. In the twilight of the looming war, as the war countdown was begining to run out in 2003, I was finishing my thesis at UWM. My thesis mates, comprising largely of students from the Wisconsin, except few international students like us, met to discuss the arrangements for the thesis day.I found it nonplussing that very few of my thesis mates gave a rats ass about the looming war. Architecture schools in India teach a lot about history and humantities and we learnt that Iraq was a place of reverence for its architecture and culture. A war in Iraq would mean a splurging of all the world treasures of human history that Iraq holds. I learnt only later that architecture schools in America had very little mandatory history courses on architecture outside of Europe.Could I blame the nonchalance of my friends to the education of history in America? Well, America in general was very non-chalant about the impending war and its consequences. My school invited a speaker , Keller Easterling , a Phd professor from Yale who studded her lecture with hateful references against the protesters of America's war against Iraq. Could it be that Americans generally give very little value to historical or cultural assets? Could it be that the world's youngest country has very little regard to anything historical?
About seven years have passed since the war was announced and Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind is still a fugitive. Somewhere in these 7 years a country named Iraq was caught in this vortex of purging terror. Iraq or Babylon , the cradle of civilization, somehow found its foot at the wrong place and the wrong time. Its brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, became the most hated man in North America. After his death, the graphic video of Saddam being hung unceremoniously became a form of entertainment to American teens seeking adult or mature fun. Saddam , for all his brutality was a very secular dictator. He promoted education for women and worked to bring the minorirties of Iraq together. Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq's pre-Islamic role as Mesopotamia, the ancient cradle of civilization, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar II and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.(source wiki). Did he deserve the inconsequential death as he did? Maybe he did, but who makes that choice, America or hundreds of Kurds who died at his hands. For the world his trial leading to his death , regardless of how America would like to tell the story, would seem staged and doctored to American needs. But the most shocking irony of the story is that Saddam Hussein was a leader who came to power with the help of America and the person at the center of this event was someone none other than Mr Donald Rumsfield, the Secretary of Defense during Iraq War of 2003.
For that matter, most Americans have been pretty ignorant and ill informed about recent political history or geography. As an Indian living in India, we knew that Saddam Hussein was a past American ally after the fall of the democratic government in Iraq. We also knew that Osama Bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban were an American funded covert CIA operation to keep communism out of Afghanistan. So, its surprising that most Americans were even unaware of these linkages even as a conspiracy theory. I get asked quite often at bars and drinking establishment "Why does the world hate America?"..Most tell me, that I wanna live in peace. They often tell " They hate our freedoms and success". I ask my reader , Do they truly believe that people around the world hate America because it has more freedom than the rest of the world? Can more freedom be defined in a nation that prosecutes and incarcerates foreign prisoners with no legal representations in a jail camp built on occupied land?. Can America with the world's second largest number of crimes, almost 4 times that of Germany be considered a free society. India with 1.13 billion people in differing social and economic demographics had about 1/20th number of crimes as America.
I presumed the fact that every major media outlet in the world had some American connection meant that Americans knew everything. I used to love watching the NGC TV series and was always at awe about this American enterprise discovering the world for us. I was sure people living around the source of such a wonderful institution would know everything. Well!! I was very wrong, as I discovered later that most Americans don't watch NGC.
America, Iraq War, Bin Laden, Donald Rumsfield, Saddam Hussein, Freedom Fries, Indira Gandhi
This 4th of July America will celebrate its 132nd Independence Day. I have seen exactly 6 such events since I came to America in 2001. After spending seven years in America, I have begun on reflecting on my experience of America and it raises many thoughts about my path in the future of my American experience. As an Indian national who arrived in the twilight of 9/11, my initiation to America was very different than I had expected. I haven't seen the Clinton years and I hear it was different, which I would never know because as we know today, since 9/11 the world has changed and is defined in terms of pre- 9/11 or post- 9/11. I might add here that in reality the world really changed long before 9/11 at different times for different people of the world, now connected in an global economy. It is simply that the upper or privileged half or less than a quarter of the world got an opportunity to give a label to an event on 9/11, via its instruments of mass media. So, now we have a post and pre 9/11 world of another layer of identities, axis of evils, radical Islamists, terrorists and aliens. The other half which never gets an opportunity to label anything , still lives in squalor and disenfranchised economical microcosms and for them the world had changed years before and it still changes while they are never a part of it. In this changed world, America looks very different like a suspicious boyfriend, who suspects every neighbor as immoral and unworthy. It was never than America ever cared about its neighbors, but now it cared more about neighbors who did not care about America. So, Venezuela,Columbia , Bolivia,Cuba, Chile are all somehow part of the axis that were evil or were evil at a certain point in American history. Is it a coincidence that the world's largest economy is surrounded by poor, undeveloped Latin countries who have been struggling with democracy in the last five decades. America's list of hated despots are the rulers of fragile economies viz...Casto, Che, Chavez..etc
I grew up around every outlet of information and media announcing the American supremacy in the world of innovation, technology and free market success. The story was that America was the place where people could achieve anything with determination and hard work. It was the only place in Indian folklore that resembled ancient Indian emperor Vikramaditya's court, that provided justice and fairness to all. But somewhere as the events unfolded since I landed that sunny afternoon in Chicago, my pride in my assumptions about America lay shattered to smithereens and my understanding ruined. I left India on the day of India's 52nd anniversary of independence. My journey of self-discovery and self determination outside the shadow of my parents influence was to head to the new world. The best path forward for most kids of my generation was an American education and an outside world "foreign" experience. Going to America was never a question for me or my family like my mother jostled for attention among her women friends in Mumbai who all had at least one son or a daughter in America.
Barely a month after I arrived, 9/11 happened and everything changed. America was rightfully not only hurt but very angry. Public opinion for a revenge was unquestionable. Barely before every human loss was accounted for in the rubble, America launched a war on Afghanistan. The world too wept with America by sending love notes and offering refueling points for jets to bomb Afghanistan. For the first time, America announced it will put an end to all forms of terrorism. India rejoiced hoping that Pakistan's covert war using terrorists as Mujahadeen's would finally be put to an end. The Taliban fell in no time and Afghanistan was bombed back to 10 century, not that it wasn't already there, thanks to the long waged battle between the Northern Alliance funded by erstwhile Soviet Union and the Taliban funded by American CIA.
Even as the war was not over, a new war was announced on Iraq. The patience for scrutiny of evidence had run out as blood gushed to the brains of the annoyed and angered panel of presenters at the UN Security Council. No evidence was enough to potray the anger of America but was enough to potray the evidence. UN weapons inspectors were replaced with random disdain if arguments arose about the authenticity of evidence presented.To quote Indira Gandhi ironically to this argument considering she was India's only real tyrannical leader elected through democratic process said "You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist".America was not in the mood to make friends. France, with its contribution of potato fries and sparkling wine, found itself on the wrong side of the equation. Their Fries were renamed and rechristened to Freedom Fries. Ironically, the statue of Liberty , the Symbol of American Liberty was gifted by none other than the French. In the twilight of the looming war, as the war countdown was begining to run out in 2003, I was finishing my thesis at UWM. My thesis mates, comprising largely of students from the Wisconsin, except few international students like us, met to discuss the arrangements for the thesis day.I found it nonplussing that very few of my thesis mates gave a rats ass about the looming war. Architecture schools in India teach a lot about history and humantities and we learnt that Iraq was a place of reverence for its architecture and culture. A war in Iraq would mean a splurging of all the world treasures of human history that Iraq holds. I learnt only later that architecture schools in America had very little mandatory history courses on architecture outside of Europe.Could I blame the nonchalance of my friends to the education of history in America? Well, America in general was very non-chalant about the impending war and its consequences. My school invited a speaker , Keller Easterling , a Phd professor from Yale who studded her lecture with hateful references against the protesters of America's war against Iraq. Could it be that Americans generally give very little value to historical or cultural assets? Could it be that the world's youngest country has very little regard to anything historical?
About seven years have passed since the war was announced and Osama Bin Laden, the alleged mastermind is still a fugitive. Somewhere in these 7 years a country named Iraq was caught in this vortex of purging terror. Iraq or Babylon , the cradle of civilization, somehow found its foot at the wrong place and the wrong time. Its brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, became the most hated man in North America. After his death, the graphic video of Saddam being hung unceremoniously became a form of entertainment to American teens seeking adult or mature fun. Saddam , for all his brutality was a very secular dictator. He promoted education for women and worked to bring the minorirties of Iraq together. Saddam made frequent references to the Abbasid period, when Baghdad was the political, cultural, and economic capital of the Arab world. He also promoted Iraq's pre-Islamic role as Mesopotamia, the ancient cradle of civilization, alluding to such historical figures as Nebuchadrezzar II and Hammurabi. He devoted resources to archaeological explorations. In effect, Saddam sought to combine pan-Arabism and Iraqi nationalism, by promoting the vision of an Arab world united and led by Iraq.(source wiki). Did he deserve the inconsequential death as he did? Maybe he did, but who makes that choice, America or hundreds of Kurds who died at his hands. For the world his trial leading to his death , regardless of how America would like to tell the story, would seem staged and doctored to American needs. But the most shocking irony of the story is that Saddam Hussein was a leader who came to power with the help of America and the person at the center of this event was someone none other than Mr Donald Rumsfield, the Secretary of Defense during Iraq War of 2003.
For that matter, most Americans have been pretty ignorant and ill informed about recent political history or geography. As an Indian living in India, we knew that Saddam Hussein was a past American ally after the fall of the democratic government in Iraq. We also knew that Osama Bin Laden and the Afghan Taliban were an American funded covert CIA operation to keep communism out of Afghanistan. So, its surprising that most Americans were even unaware of these linkages even as a conspiracy theory. I get asked quite often at bars and drinking establishment "Why does the world hate America?"..Most tell me, that I wanna live in peace. They often tell " They hate our freedoms and success". I ask my reader , Do they truly believe that people around the world hate America because it has more freedom than the rest of the world? Can more freedom be defined in a nation that prosecutes and incarcerates foreign prisoners with no legal representations in a jail camp built on occupied land?. Can America with the world's second largest number of crimes, almost 4 times that of Germany be considered a free society. India with 1.13 billion people in differing social and economic demographics had about 1/20th number of crimes as America.
I presumed the fact that every major media outlet in the world had some American connection meant that Americans knew everything. I used to love watching the NGC TV series and was always at awe about this American enterprise discovering the world for us. I was sure people living around the source of such a wonderful institution would know everything. Well!! I was very wrong, as I discovered later that most Americans don't watch NGC.
America, Iraq War, Bin Laden, Donald Rumsfield, Saddam Hussein, Freedom Fries, Indira Gandhi
Comments
The Americans with their "the rest of the world hates us for our freedom" attitude have officially drunk the kool aid. That's George Bush's America, not mine!
My America is fair and just... or at least working to be that way once again (that upcoming election is looking REALLY good!).
The last time I went to France people were shocked that as an American I was choosing to vacation there (they now think that we hate them). I told them I love France and the French people, and that they need not listen to anything spewed from the mouth of George Bush.
This country was amazing during Clinton's presidency, and we can be that way again.