The shocking, unfortunate and moving events of the last week have brought back into public focus, the total, or in some cases partial, failure of the various national security setup including the Police, the Intelligence and the polity. Like all other fellow human beings (I refrained from saying 'Indians' because this act would, for obvious reasons appear equally dastardly for all 'humans' regardless of their race, religion, cast or nationality), I am appalled at the amount of destruction. This in a country which is amongst the elite group of 20 nations economically, demographically and militarily. What a shame!
Having said that, everyone (more so, every Indian) is seething with rage and wants answers from the government, action from Pakistan and moral support from the International community to pursue and punish the perpetrators of this act. Every self-respecting Indian wants vengeance. I endorse this view completely. There are endless debates on Indian TV on who's responsible and how we can fight the terrorists better. However, the one point everyone seems to have missed completely, is 'prevention' or 'Root Cause Analysis'. Without doubt, we must answer an act of war such as this, with determination and sincerity; but not only in fighting the terrorists but also battling terrorism. What I am trying to bring to public attention is nothing new. It’s pretty much an undisputed and accepted ideology that effective and long lasting peace can be brought about not by simply addressing the symptoms of terrorism but also by simultaneously investigating and then assuaging the terrorist mentality – the hatred within. Let me reiterate, no efforts must be spared to punish or eliminate those who’ve done and/or planned such activities – I am an advocate of Capital Punishment and I also support the so called un-civilized punishment methodology of the Arabs, Taliban etc. A punishment is no good if it doesn’t evoke the ‘fear of god’ in the most hardened criminals (leave alone you and me); it’s objective is to deter further crimes and therefore I do endorse a measure of barbarism as far as that goes. Once we’re done punishing those responsible though, we need an equal amount of dedication and commitment to find out what’s causing all this hatred.
I am sure the reader realizes that to do what an Asad Kasav did or what other ‘Fidayeen’ do, takes an infinite amount of hatred. We need to sit down, do some retrospection and introspection to find out what must have caused some people to hate us so much that they’re willing to sacrifice their future, their career, their ‘just-about-everything’ so they can go around killing innocent men, women and children in the name of ‘Jihad’. And we need to address it if we want lasting peace and brotherhood. Think about it, you and me are seething with anger over the incidents of the last few decades, but are we willing to do what the Fidayeen do? No, because we’re not angry enough or rather our hatred hasn’t reached a stage where we’d be willing to give up everything and get on the path of guilt, destruction and misery. Of course, some ‘experts’ might argue that the terror factories do what they do to not out of hatred alone but out of a sick addiction to the feeling of power. And they’ll say there are no issues to resolve – the terror masterminds just want to kill people for the heck of it and no amount of peace-building measures would motivate them to give up arms. And these ‘experts’ may be right – albeit in some cases, not all. I believe we can establish trust, love and brotherhood in most cases. Let’s take an example, that of the Kashmir issue. This issue highlights both points of view very well. On the one hand, one might say that the militancy in Kashmir is nothing but an imported problem. It’s been proven more often than not, that the battle of the Kashmiris is being fought by the people outside it. So no amount of peace-process in the valley will bring the elusive peace as long as Pakistan’s involvement is not out of the equation. On the other hand however, have we, in the last 60 years of India’s Independence, been able to being about growth and prosperity in Kashmir the way we have in say Maharashtra or Punjab ? The answer is a firm ‘No’. Through our shameless governance that stinks of inefficiency and ‘kut-niti’ in place of ‘raj-niti’, we’ve created enough reasons for the peace loving Kashmiri to get totally disgruntled. Pakistan has simply exploited this opportunity to hit us, and hit us hard. Not once but on several occasions. I say let’s set-up a hundred schools, a hundred hospitals, a few industries; let’s just really spend (not on-the-paper spending) on Kashmir even half of it’s allocated yearly budget. I find it hard to believe there still will be disgruntlement and hatred. Once that happens, peace will very much be on it’s merry way. I might be totally wrong, but there is certainly no other option left to try.
To conclude, I will repeat what’s usually said – Prevention is better than cure. While it is critically important at this juncture to provide symptomatic relief to this nemesis of mankind, it’s also necessary to remember (after all the trials and punishments and improvements in the terror-fighting mechanism) to look for a way to stop people from hating us so much. It’s not really that hard to spread the language of love, it takes an effort and it needs a first-step.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Towards real peace
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3 comments:
“Every self-respecting Indian wants vengeance. I endorse this view completely.”
Do you remember that the promise of vengeance was a major part of the public justification for the US to invade, destroy, and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. That that wasn’t the real reason, of course wasn’t said, and as we now know (some earlier than others) none of the other stated reasons were true either.
The problems with vengeance are several:
1. It appeals to our emotions rather than to reason.
2. Because our reason is, thus, blinded we are very likely to miss the real culprits – hitting a small actor, a patsy or a scapegoat.
3. If we value the principles of civilization, then we have to follow them and seek justice through official investigation and public trial.
It is also worth remembering that despite the pious assertions of their governments, the US and Israel are the world leaders in state-sponsored terrorism – both covert (CIA and Mossad, and clients like Pakistan’s ISI) and overt (bombings, wars and occupations). The US interference in other countries – friend and foe – is documented for over 100 years in the writings of Gen. Smedley Butler, War is a Racket, Michael McClintock Instruments of Statecraft, and William Blum, Rogue State. Some of Israel’s activity is documented by Victor Ostrovsky, By Way of Deception: The Making and Unmaking of a Mossad Officer, and don’t forget the dancing Israelis on 9/11/01. Britain for its part has had inciting colonial factions to fight among themselves as a national policy for at least 300 years, including in India (see . The US government has done the same to the Sunni, Shia, and Kurds with a vengeance in Iraq with British help “Divide and Conquer: The Anglo-American Imperial Project”.
Shouldn’t you consider, for example, the implications of the Mumbai terrorists rooming for 10 days at the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic / Nariman House before the attacks (attributed the Mumbai tabloid Mid-Day) and then that they murdered the Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife who were thorns in the side of the Israeli leadership? (Sorry, can’t find the link to the last point.) How would those murders serve the interests of an aggrieved indigenous group? How would indigenous terrorists have been able to room there? From the CounterCurrents article:
A Mossad/Israeli hand in the affair might seem far-fetched to some, but not so to others, who point to the role of Israeli agents in destabilizing a large number of countries as well as possibly operating within some radical Islamist movements, such as a group in Yemen styling itself ‘Islamic Jihad’, said to be responsible for the bombing of the American Embassy in Sanaa, and which is said to have close links with the Israeli intelligence. Some have raised the question if the Mossad or even the CIA might not be directly or otherwise instigating some disillusioned Muslim youth in India, Pakistan or elsewhere to take to terror by playing on Muslim grievances, operating through existing Islamist groups or spawning new ones for this purpose.
If this charge is true—although this remains to be conclusively established—the aim might be to further radicalize Muslims so as to provide further pretext for American and Israeli assaults on Islam and Muslim countries. The fact that the CIA had for years been in very close contact with the Pakistani ISI and radical Islamist groups in Pakistan is also being raised in this connection. The possible role of such foreign agencies of being behind some terror attacks that India has witnessed in recent years to further fan anti-Muslim hatred and also to weaken India is also being speculated on in some circles.
Whether all this is indeed true needs to be properly investigated. But the fact remains that it appears to be entirely in the interest of the Israeli establishment and powerful forces in America to create instability in India, fan Hindu-Muslim strife, even to the point of driving India and Pakistan to war with each other, and thereby drag India further into the deadly embrace of Zionists and American imperialists.
Therefore, while I agree with you that we should try to find the root causes of hatreds so that they can be addressed, I think that the roots of most terrorism are much deeper than slighted individuals on the ground – who are likely to be recruited to carry out and mask the political or economic agenda of some small, maybe foreign, elite group.
Yes, the root cause lies deep within. However, one of the ways to resolve this issue, or any issue for that matter would be to make it impossible for the criminals to get away. Everyone knows for example about the terror camps in Pakistan that have trained militants for decaded, but little can be done through Diplomatic means. That approach has to run parallel to the olive branch. Of course, I believe US was the one which created OBL and his ilk so it's more of a frankestein-ish monster that they have no choice but to neutralize. To that extent, going after Afghanistan was pretty much a no brainer but I couldn't understand why Iraq was invaded and Bush has admitted as much that the Intelligence goofed up.
Israel, well there are theories as you have mentioned but I find it hard to believe so many things could happen and nothing ever turns ugly and exposes their dealings; it might be true but sure is hard to believe. Fact they say IS stranger than fiction though.
Israel, well there are theories as you have mentioned but I find it hard to believe so many things could happen and nothing ever turns ugly and exposes their dealings
There are 40 terrorist attacks listed at Judicial-Inc – all within my memory – identified by analysts as having Israeli involvement, but since the controlled media persisted in blaming someone else they are properly called false flags. Most of those involvements I’ve known about for years, and the Lavon affair, the attack on the USS Liberty and the US 9/11 are particularly notorious for the US. So, in the light of serious unanswered questions about the terrorists’ command structure, motivations, financing, and actions, I would not rule out Israeli involvement. What I have also learned is that the intelligence services of the various countries are all rogues – secret and largely independent of public governance – who often cooperate with one another for their own purposes. The US 9/11, for instance, was fairly clearly a collaborative effort among parts the CIA, parts of the Pentagon, and Mossad and likely others. Bin Laden disavowed involvement in September, ‘01 and died in December that year ( here and here; subsequent videos were faked); at least six of the “Muslim hijackers” made public statements in September that year and are thus all clearly victims of that False Flag op – along with the 3000 dead, 1.3 million dead in Iraq, tens of thousands dead in Afghanistan, and all the people of the world who were deceived about the US objectives afterward.
Since in the USSR’s VietNam (Afghanistan) the US’s use of Al Qaida was an open secret, as was the US use of them “helping” the KLA in its war on Yugoslavia (I heard it on the evening news during those times) I doubt that they have ever been out of control. Their name is brought up regularly as one of the names of our terrorists – our bogeymen, never mind that the real Ts are members of our own government.
In addition, there are even bigger forces than national or sectarian at work around the world.
Basically, the Pentagon and the CIA are working in tandem to force targeted nations like India and Pakistan to accept the decision which has been made to "outsource" the terror war to them and other patsy nations like them. Agency contract hits like the Mumbai attack and bombings in FATA are blamed on "al Qaida" by the government-controlled media in the West and in the media controlled by the "patsy" foreign governments. Biased, hate-based reporting serves to drive patriotic fervor to a frenzied state. The duplicitous leaders in those countries then carry-out America's will, to set them upon a path to war, in effect, driving their own people into a "kill trap" where unwanted war is forced upon them. This pattern prevails all over the earth, wherever the US has imperial designs. We are all being herded into a global war trap, some call it world war III. Herding Humans For Profit by Peter Chamberlin
So, by all means keep calm, question everything in the public media – especially from any organization, e.g. government, with a potential axe to grind.
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