Terror’s Proud Merchants: The VHP and the Bajrang Dal in Gujarat were indistinguishable from terror outfits, manufacturing and distributing bombs, rocket launchers and firearms across the state.
MONSTER IN THE MIRROR
by Arundhati Roy
How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them?
There are those who point out that U.S. strategy has been successful inasmuch as the United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11. However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse.
If the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The U.S. military is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the American empire.
(Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?)
Hundreds of thousands of people, including thousands of American soldiers, have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S. allies/agents (including India) and U.S. interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically since 9/11.
George W. Bush, the man who led the U.S. response to 9/11, is a despised figure not just internationally, but also by his own people.
Who can possibly claim that the United States is winning the War on Terror?
Homeland Security has cost the U.S. government billions of dollars. Few countries, certainly not India, can afford that sort of price tag. But even if we could, the fact is that this vast homeland of ours cannot be secured or policed in the way the United States has been. It’s not that kind of homeland.
We have a hostile nuclear-weapons state that is slowly spinning out of control as a neighbor;we have a military occupation in Kashmir and a shamefully persecuted, impoverished minority of more than 150 million Muslims who are being targeted as a community and pushed to the wall, whose young see no justice on the horizon, and who, were they to totally lose hope and radicalize, will end up as a threat not just to India, but to the whole world.
If 10 men can hold off the NSG commandos and the police for three days, and if it takes half a million soldiers to hold down the Kashmir valley, do the math. What kind of Homeland Security can secure India? Nor for that matter will any other quick fix.
Anti-terrorism laws are not meant for terrorists; they’re for people that governments don’t like. That’s why they have a conviction rate of less than 2%. They’re just a means of putting inconvenient people away without bail for a long time and eventually letting them go.
Terrorists like those who attacked Mumbai are hardly likely to be deterred by the prospect of being refused bail or being sentenced to death. It’s what they want.
What we’re experiencing now is blowback, the cumulative result of decades of quick fixes and dirty deeds. The carpet’s squelching under our feet. The only way to contain – it would be naive to say end – terrorism is to look at the monster in the mirror. We’re standing at a fork in the road. One sign says “Justice,” the other “Civil War.” There’s no third sign and there’s no going back. Choose.
Concluded.
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I am not sure whether the unique brand of patriotism that Ms. Roy mentions here, whereby any one who points out the flaws in his/her own country’s systems or misdemeanours committed by his/her own country-men/women is declared unpatriotic, is only to be found in India and Pakistan or in other countries around the world as well.
Those who say that the US has become more secure post 9/11 should remember that it has lost more than 4000 soldiers in Iraq since then and that President Obama has recognised the need to withdraw troops from there within a specific time-frame.
The style of writing is very familiar . Did you write guest posts for other blogs?
Arundhati , Aseemananda ,Subhas Chandra Bose , Naxlites , Vivekananda , joyoti Basu ,Sarverker all are the products of the soil of Bengal in India .They all have agitated Indian intelect from time to time to emerge some thing new . Arundhati’s view is just a view but not the accepted view of Indian majority .