LETTER FROM AMERICA Benghazi hearing clears Hillary Clinton's path to nomination

Fakhruddin Ahmed

THE only new information gleaned from Hillary Clinton's Congressional hearing on the September, 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, is that she loves Indian food, which she promptly ordered after her 11-hour ordeal on October 22!
Four Americans, including the US Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, a friend of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, died in the attack by Islamic militants. Secretary Clinton took responsibility for the security lapses. This was the eighth hearing on the Benghazi attack held by the majority Congressional Republicans, the second with Hillary as the witness.
The Congressional Republicans invested enormous amount of time, and taxpayers' money hoping to destroy Clinton's presidential aspirations through the Benghazi hearings. Things did not quite go their way. Actually, the hearing was doomed before it started.
In Washington, a gaffe is defined as the truth a politician utters unwittingly. On September 29, Republican Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, presented Hillary with the ultimate gift of gaffe. McCarthy told Fox News: "Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she's untrustworthy. But no one would have known any of that had happened had we not fought."  To the chagrin of the Republicans, New York Republican Congressman, Richard Hanna, backed McCarthy's inadvertent admission, stressing that the Benghazi panel was designed to target Clinton.






















Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state, testified before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. Photo: AFP

The latest Benghazi hearing was doomed to fail. Republicans' expectations were a pie in the sky. They hoped to prove the preposterous: that Hillary Clinton was negligent at best, and in collusion with the militants at worst!  The fact is, after the killing of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya was a dangerous place. But when the US Embassy in Libya requested funding for more security, it was the Republicans in Congress that denied the request.
Republicans also attempted to make hay with Hillary's personal email server.  They hoped to prove that Clinton compromised national security by using a personal email server at home.  That “indiscretion” will land Hillary in jail, predicted the “savant” Ben Carson. The fact is no national security was breached.  Every reasonable person could relate to what Clinton did; she took work home, for which she should be commended, not condemned!
The actual hearing was full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Republican Congressmen were rude to Hillary. It was more an inquisition than an inquiry.  Republicans hoped that their verbal assault would intimidate Hillary. But, they forgot that they were dealing with a two-term US Senator from New York, and a very successful one-term Secretary of State. Hillary deftly parried their blows, and sometimes like AB de Villiers, hit the ball for a six!

The Republicans stretched the hearing to 11 hours, hoping that Hillary would tire, and like Zinedine Zidane's head-butt in the extra time of the 2006 World Cup final, do or say something dumb. No such luck! Hillary kept her composure in the face of incessant insults. Even the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump conceded that the hearing was partisan. At the end of the hearing, the Chairman of the Benghazi panel, Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, admitted that nothing new transpired from the latest Benghazi hearing. In other words, it was a walkover for Hillary Clinton!
With the two road blocks – Benghazi hearing and email controversy – removed, Hillary Clinton's path to the Democratic Party's presidential nomination is now smooth. She has token opposition: former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, and the independent Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders. Nationally, O'Malley polls around 5 percent among Democrats, Sanders around 31 percent and Hillary Clinton around 62 percent.  That is in sharp contrast with the latest poll of Republican candidates which finds Ben Carson at 29 percent, Donald Trump at 23 percent, Marco Rubio at 11 percent, Ted Cruz at 10 percent and Jeb Bush at 8 percent. While the Republican field shows no clear leader, Hillary Clinton is a frontrunner among Democrats.
Hillary Clinton should not celebrate just yet. Eight years ago, Hillary was labelled “the inevitable nominee” with a commanding lead. Then Barack Obama happened. It is incredible how super intelligent people can make dumb mistakes.
Many people who watched then Illinois State Senator Barack Hussein Obama's keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston at the invitation of the nominee John Kerry (when Obama said: “We are not Republican America or Democratic America, black America or white America; we are the United States of America!”) predicted that Obama would be elected President someday. Yet, the Clinton campaign ignored the Obama threat.
Hillary Clinton's strategist and pollster was the Harvard and Columbia-educated Mark Penn. He had just written a book, “Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes.” He was considered a genius and the best political prognosticator. He advised Hillary not to compete in the Caucus states, and to concentrate on the primary states. That strategy was a blunder. It cost Hillary the nomination.
In thirteen US states the Democrats select their delegates for the presidential nominees though caucusing. Voters meet in arenas like town houses and select delegates for candidates through voting. The rest of the states hold primaries where voters go to the polling stations and cast their vote for the candidate of their choice just as in any other election.
Hillary Clinton participated in the Iowa caucus where she finished third; Obama won.  Senator Clinton lost Iowa because she had voted to authorise the 2003 Iraq war. Illinois State Senator Barack Obama had opposed the war. Astonishingly, Hillary Clinton's campaign believed that her nomination was so “inevitable” that they skipped most of the remaining caucus states.
Although during the second half of her 2008 Democratic campaign Hillary Clinton won more delegates than Barack Obama in the primary states, because Obama scooped up all the delegates from those caucus states, he won the Democratic nomination.
Hillary Clinton has learnt her lesson from 2008. Mark Penn is gone from her campaign! With little competition, this time around, Hillary really is the inevitable nominee.

The writer is a Rhodes Scholar.

India's sacred cows and unholy politics (Exclusive to The Daily Star)

Shashi Tharoor

The headlines out of India in recent weeks have often made sickening reading. Startlingly, the central protagonist in most of these stories is that most peaceable and innocent of animals, the cow.
A Muslim man was beaten to death by a mob in a small town an hour from New Delhi in response to rumours that he had slaughtered and eaten a cow, sacred to Hindus. Another man died after being attacked by villagers who believed he was involved in cattle smuggling. And a trucker was killed in Udhampur, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, over rumours that he had been involved in cow killings. Three deaths in just three weeks.
Public officials, too, are getting in on the action. After the chief minister of Karnataka, a member of the opposition Congress party, recently declared that he would eat beef, a politician from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) threatened to behead him if he follows through.
Likewise, 20 policemen stormed the canteen of the Kerala state government's outpost in Delhi, because it advertised a “beef fry” on its menu. Kashmiri legislator Engineer Abdul Rashid had his face smeared with black paint for throwing a “beef party.” And the chief minister of BJP-ruled Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, declared that Muslims living in India would have to give up eating beef.

Indian protesters shout slogans during a demonstration to condemn the lynching and murder of Mohammad Akhlaq who was attacked by a Hindu mob over rumours that he had stored and eaten beef. PHOTO: AFP

To be sure, there have been plenty of other repellent stories of intolerance that have nothing to do with cows. Two children from the impoverished Dalit community recently burned to death in their own home, in an arson attack by upper-caste goons. A prominent public intellectual had his face blackened with ink for organising a book release for a former Pakistani foreign minister in Mumbai. And Hindu zealots stormed a Cricket Control Board meeting to disrupt discussion of a possible India-Pakistan cricket series (which now seems unlikely to take place).
But none of these incidents has acquired the toxicity of the assaults on those deemed insufficiently respectful of the holy cow. Indeed, a signal illiberal achievement of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP regime has been the revival of the cow as an instrument of political warfare. And the recent spate of attacks reveals a serious problem with the country's trajectory under Modi.
Of course, the cow has long had a place in Indian politics: the country's constitution includes a provision explicitly urging a gradual movement toward full prohibition of cow slaughter – a ban that has already been implemented in most states.

For most of India's existence, however, the default approach has essentially been “live and let live” – make your own choice about beef, and let others do the same. I am a vegetarian myself, but I have never considered it my business what others eat. Where beef was legally available, it was consumed not just by Muslims and other minorities, but also by many poorer Hindus, who could not afford other kinds of meat.
But that response was possible only so long as relatively liberal or moderate officials (including an earlier BJP-led coalition government) were in power. The Modi government does not fit that description. Instead, it is full of leaders who seem more concerned with what goes into other people's mouths than what comes out of their own.
Modi's government has given voice to a peculiar kind of Hindu chauvinism, one that embraces activist assertion of a narrowly constructed version of the faith. It cannot be described as “fundamentalism,” for Hinduism is a religion singularly devoid of fundamentals: it lacks a single sacred book, a single version of divinity, and even the equivalent of a Sabbath day. In fact, Hindus who eat beef can, like those who abjure it, find support for their beliefs in the religion's ancient texts and scripture.
Rather, what Modi's government has fostered is a form of subjective intolerance, with supporters, emboldened by the BJP's absolute majority, imposing their particular view of what India should be, regardless of whom it hurts. The state of Maharashtra's recent beef ban – which threatens the livelihoods of a million Muslim butchers and truckers – would not have been imposed by any previous state government or supported by any previous administration in New Delhi.
Such bans are not really about beef, but about freedom. Indians have generally felt free to be themselves, within their dynamic and diverse society. It is that freedom that the BJP's representatives and followers are challenging today.
The good news is that a backlash has already emerged. Nearly 40 distinguished authors and poets have returned their prestigious Sahitya Akademi (Literary Academy) awards to protest the silence of the academy and other government bodies following the killing of three intellectuals by suspected Hindu hardliners. A top scientist has now followed suit, returning his Padma Bhushan, the government's third-highest honor. As these gestures highlight the explosion of Hindu chauvinism, support for Modi has begun to erode.
When Modi came to power, foreign observers lauded him as just the kind of decisive, business-minded economic reformer that India needed in order to fulfill its massive potential. During the election campaign, he seemed to recognise that achieving good economic results was more important than the politics of religious identity for which his party had been notorious.
To the dismay of many, Modi has underperformed economically, while the zealots have run amok, hijacking his development agenda. And his silence in the face of it all confirms what many in India had feared: his economic sloganeering was merely a ploy to secure power. Now that power is becoming a tool of the unsavoury agenda pursued by the Hindu chauvinists who enabled his rise.
As a result, divisive politics is now overwhelming constructive economic policymaking. Unfortunately for India, this is likely to continue until the cows come home.
The writer, a former UN under-secretary-general and former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and Minister of State for Human Resource Development, is currently Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and an MP for the Indian National Congress.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2015.
www.project-syndicate.org
(Exclusive to The Daily Star)

US sees threat of more attacks on foreigners in Bangladesh

Reuters, Washington

Foreigners may be attacked again in Bangladesh, the US State Department said in a travel alert on Tuesday that urged Americans to be cautious and vigilant in that country.
A Japanese citizen was shot dead in Bangladesh on October 3 and an Italian aid worker was killed in the same manner in the capital Dhaka on September 28 in attacks claimed by the Islamic State militant group.
"There is reliable information to suggest that terrorist attacks could occur against foreigners in Bangladesh, including against large gatherings of foreigners," the State Department said in a travel alert that cited the two killings as well as the October 24 bombing of a Sha religious procession.
"During 2015 there has been a series of threats and terrorist attacks targeting writers, publishers, and others in the media, including the murder of a US citizen blogger," it added. "The US government assesses that the terrorist threat remains real and credible, and further attacks are possible."
Attacks on foreigners are relatively rare in Bangladesh, despite a rising tide of Islamist violence over the past year that has seen four online critics of religious militancy hacked to death, among them a US citizen of Bangladeshi origin.
Asked about the fresh travel alerts, spokesperson of the US embassy in Dhaka told The Daily Star, "The Alert does not reflect a new threat. The Alert is intended to inform the public of the existing threat, given the increased numbers of foreigners expected to travel in the near future for large-scale public events."