Complications with Attacking Pakistan

In these times of angry rhetoric against Pakistan by anyone who considers himself an Indian worth his salt and urging for an immediate attack to wipe out the Pakistan army; I prefer to stick my neck out and say “Wait, attacking Pakistan outright is not really the best option”.
The reasons are there to see in history and the logic ever present in spirituality. Spirituality says when you attack hatred with hatred; it only results in escalation of hatred. This leads to more attacks from each side and then the blame game is blurred to the chicken and egg story of who started it first. But the potential damage of a one sided singular nation sponsored attack is the deep scars it leaves behind on the next generation whose very existence then is linked to their urge to seek revenge.
History provides us with enough examples to learn from those mistakes. The frequent attacks against US by Islamic fundamentalists are not because they envy the strong economy or democracy, as claimed by the Americans; but because of USA’s past actions. The USA has meddled too much in the Arab World politics while trying to control supply of oil for its own needs, the latest being invasion of Iraq to control the nations Oil wells. It has continued support of monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Jordan while saying they support democracy and attacking Iraq, Afghanistan, and Vietnam etc. Interestingly the US refuses to take action against Pakistan and North Korea, inspite of both the nations having higher qualifications than Iraq. The reason – The both don’t have oil nor any other interesting reserves and are too far from USA to even bother them security wise. But Al-Qaeda showed distances don’t ‘matter any longer. The Al Qaeda attacked US because of its deep hatred towards the Americans, nothing else. Now the important question is- Why do the Muslims in general hate USA? The answer, quite interestingly, comes from the bible.

The USA continues to support Israel, even though it doesn’t have even a semblance of a democracy. Israel is the only non-Muslim country in the Arab world, a tiny dot and it bothers why them why the US keeps protecting the tiny nation which harbours a lot of extremists. Why is the USA so interested in Israel?
According to the Bible, the Jews must remain in control of Jerusalem for the second coming of the Christ and therefore USA strives to support Israel, no matter what.

In the present context, US is going to support Pakistan at least till the Pakistani army helps it nab Osama Bin Laden. And the Pakistani army, knowing they would lose their leverage the moment they hand him over, is not going to do it in the near future. Arms and ammunition is not really a major reason for befriending Pakistan because the US supplies much more money to Pakistan just for being on its side. The US is unlikely to let all that money go waste.

Needless to say, the messed up foreign policies of US have hurt them badly and India must be cautious with the friends it keeps. Attacking Pakistan with USA could create many more enemies in the middle-east who would just start clubbing India with USA and Israel. It must strive to explain itself to other nations and try a UN mandated invasion of Pakistan, like the major nations did during the Gulf War in 1991. Following USA’s policy of rejecting the UN mandate to attack Iraq, is not a good idea in my opinion. It will only set a bad precedent and more hostility in the days to come.




Interesting links:
http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/israel/
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=64357&d=26&m=5&y=2005
http://www2.tbo.com/content/2008/jul/28/na-why-muslims-still-hate-us/
http://arabperceptions.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/why-do-they-hate-us/

Mumbai 26/11

It’s been saddening to see Mumbai, a city of a million people, being brought down to its knees by 10 insignificant people so easily. Its been even more disheartening for me personally to see places that I frequented for the past 20years of my life – Nariman point, gateway , G.T and Cama Hospitals (my mom and dad worked at G.T and Cama respectively for more than 10 years), colaba and vt will now bear scars forever. They won’t be the same again.

There are a hundred things that we could discuss about- inadeptness of the police in gathering intelligence or to benefit from it, the relevance of their equipment (or the lack of it), the ability of politicians to govern (or the lack of it) and play politics in serious times, our foreign policy and USA’s benevolence towards Pakistan and a lot more which have been discussed thread bare as I sat glued to the television coverage over the past 3 days. But what we need now, more than before, is a direct involvement of citizens in their own governance. Till now it’s been left to politicians by the educated who thought it too muddy to get dirty in and too shallow to benefit from. It was always a better option to get educated and earn your own money while being indifferent to the state of governance. If you didn’t like it, you could always move to greener pastures and leave the ‘lesser mortals’ to live through the deeds of their actions. What this attack on the affluent has done, is to jolt up the elite and tell them, you are no different and as responsible in the state of affairs as anyone else. When the chairmen of your banks are held at gunpoint and Board of directors as hostages, you ought to see reactionary pressures on the government to mend their ways. Heads will roll, no doubt but what I’d like to see is constant pressure on the ‘new heads’ to provide good governance and transparency.

I’ve always believed the average citizen in my country is more intelligent and smart than our politicians think when they connive them into voting for them or believing their actions. What has gladdened me the most is the refusal of the Karkare and Unnikrishan families ( who lost their sons in the gun battle with terrorists) to meet Chief Ministers of Gujrat and Kerala respectively and scuttle any plan of taking political mileage out of it besides rejecting the lure of money. It’s a big slap on these Chief Ministers egos and I hope they learn from it.