[IMC Bombay] [Fwd: AN AMERICAN ANNIVERSARY By VIR SANGHVI,EDITOR ,THE HINDUSTAN TIMES]

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From: "nishi vasudeva" <nishi9@hotmail.com>
To: keith.pinto@bol.net.in
Subject:  AN AMERICAN ANNIVERSARY By VIR SANGHVI,EDITOR ,THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
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Vir Sanghvi
September 07

If you haven't already been submerged beneath a sea of
September 11 articles and analyses, then brace
yourself: the first anniversary of the attacks is on
Wednesday and it will be impossible to keep your head
above water as the media and TV channels remind us of
the horrors of the WTC attacks.

Nobody who saw the second plane going into the World
Trade tower — and nearly all of us saw the footage
after it was repeated endlessly on every channel —
will forget the power of that image. Nor will we
forget the carnage and destruction that followed: the
loss of thousand of innocent lives, the collapse of
the towers and the cloud of dust and debris that
enveloped downtown New York.

But as the anniversary approaches, here's my question:
as horrific as the attacks were, is America
overstating their global significance?

According to America, September 11 was the day that
changed the world. Nothing was ever the same. The only
possible parallel  in its historical significance is
the attack on Pearl Harbor — the so-called day of
infamy — when the US (or at least Hawaii) also faced
death and destruction from the skies.

You will note that nobody in America mentions the one
day that really did change the world: when the Enola
Gay dropped its nuclear payload on the city of
Hiroshima. Surely, by any objective standards — number
of deaths, level of destruction, the launch of the
nuclear age etc. — that was a much more significant
event than an air raid on a US naval base or a
terrorist attack on a New York office block.

There are reasons for America's preoccupation with the
WTC attacks. The US has always fought its wars in
other people's countries. Even the Pearl Harbor raid
did not touch the mainland (Hawaii is an island). So,
any attack on the continental US — let alone,
America's financial capital — is an event of
unprecedented significance for US citizens.

But is it an event that changed the world?

In the first few days after September 11, when the
semi-articulate George W. Bush had finally been
brought to Washington after crazily crisscrossing the
country and Dick Cheney had emerged from the
underground bunker where he had been hiding, there was
some hope that the world would really change, that a
new global order would emerge.

There was, first of all, the personality of George W.
Bush to consider. Though Bush responded to the terror
of September 11 with all the eloquence of a yokel
(“We're gonna get the folks who did this.” Folks?),
there was enough in the statements that came out of
Washington to suggest that the President had changed,
that he had made the transition from isolationist,
death penalty-loving party boy to global statesman.
Perhaps there would be, as Colin Powell promised, a
continuous and concerted war against terror.

A year later, it seems clear that those hopes were
misplaced.

The first lesson of September 11, or so Bush told us,
was revenge. Not only was he going to get the
perpetrators — sorry, 'folks' — but, speaking of Osama
bin Laden, he declared, “There's a poster in the Old
West that says, 'Wanted: Dead or Alive'.” In other
words, you didn't just bring down the might of the law
on the terrorists, you dispensed your own brand of
frontier justice.

The second lesson followed from the first: you didn't
bother about proof, you followed your own instincts.
The US had no evidence that would stand up in a court
of law that Al Qaeda was behind the WTC attacks. But
it had intelligence leads that suggested a bin Laden
connection. And it reckoned that once it went into bin
Laden's lair, it would probably find the proof it
needed. (Sure enough, a videotape in which bin Laden
discussed the WTC attacks was eventually found in
Kabul.)

The third lesson was that anybody who associated with
or harboured a terrorist suspect was to be treated on
par with the terrorist. For instance, Mullah Omar, the
one-eyed leader of the Taliban, is a thoroughly
unpleasant man. But there's still no evidence at all
that he ever sponsored terrorism, let alone engaged in
it. But if he refused to hand bin Laden over to the
Americans, then, said Bush, he would also be treated
as the enemy.

The fourth lesson was that the concept of national
sovereignty and of international borders was
irrelevant in the fight against terror. Today's
terrorists recognize no nations and respect no
borders. Bin Laden, an Arab, was based in Afghanistan
and headed a force that included Sudanese, Jordanians,
Egyptians, etc. If you were fighting international
terrorists than you had to adopt their rules. If they
did not respect borders, then you had to do the same.
Afghanistan had never attacked the US. But if
terrorists were based in Afghanistan, then it was
entirely legitimate to invade that country.

Take these four lessons — the very foundations of the
US's post-September 11 response — and place them in an
Indian context. Unlike America, which faced terrorism
on this scale for the first time, we are no strangers
to terror. We have lived with it for over a decade.
We've been subjected to serial bomb blasts in our
commercial capital, Bombay. And long before George W.
Bush discovered how bad the Taliban were, we had to
deal with them over the hijacking of IC 814.

Assume now, that we were to respond to terrorism on
the basis of the four principles that guided American
policy after September 11. According to these lessons,
you seek revenge without worrying about hard evidence,
ignore all this nonsense about international borders
and treat anybody who associates with terrorists as
being a terrorist himself.

We have evidence — and it is more substantial than the
leads that US gathered after September 11 — that the
Bombay serial blasts were masterminded by Dawood
Ibrahim. We know also that Dawood lives in Pakistan
—this is cheerfully admitted by the Pakistan press.
So, if we were to follow the US's lead, then we should
seek revenge on Dawood — “dead or alive” — and if
necessary, invade Pakistan to capture or kill him.

Or, take the instance of the IC 814 hijacking. We know
the identities of the hijackers. We know that they are
Pakistanis. We know — and the Taliban confirmed this —
that after they left the aircraft at Kandahar airport,
they spent the next few days in Afghanistan and then
crossed over into Pakistan. We have proof that of the
three terrorists who were exchanged for the
passengers, two ended up in Pakistan. Masood Azhar
became a public figure and Omar Sheikh later kidnapped
Daniel Pearl.

According to the principles followed by America,
post-September 11, we would be justified in hunting
down and killing the hijackers or Masood Azhar. Even
the Americans accept that Omar Sheikh had ISI
controllers, so we would be as justified in targeting
the Pakistan government as the US was in attacking the
Taliban.

But were we to do any of this, we would be accused of
spreading tension in the region and asked to desist
from any action.

And who would stop us?

Why, America, of course!

So much for the new world order. So much for the
global war against terror. And so much for the day
that changed the world.

The truth is that September 11 changed America. And it
changed the way that America looked at the world. For
decades, the US had told us that dialogue was better
than war. When other countries were faced with
terrorist movements or suicide bombers, the US told us
that we needed to address the roots of the violence.

But when America was attacked, these principles flew
out of the window. Today, no American has any interest
in dialogue. And as for fighting global terror, it is
quite happy to do business with the ISI, the sponsors
of the Taliban and the protectors of bin Laden.

When US interests are involved, the end justifies all
the means.

I am not entirely unsympathetic to the American
response. The notion that all terrorism flows from
genuine grievances is a bizarre one. Nor is dialogue
always the answer. What kind of dialogue can anyone
have with the madmen of the Lashkar-e-Toiba? For a
certain kind of religious fanatic, Kashmir is not the
issue; it is the excuse.

But my problem is this: America still does not grant
us the right to respond as it does itself. It still
forces the world to adopt solutions that America
itself has discarded.

And that ultimately is why, one year later, the
anniversary of September 11 has much more significance
for America than it does for the rest of the world.
All of us who've been victims of suicide bombers and
ruthless terrorists believed, on September 11, that
just as we were one with America in its shock and
sorrow, America would be one with us in fighting the
menace of global terror.

Sadly, we were mistaken.

American chose to go it alone. It fought its own
private battle.

And in the process, it became even more isolated from
the rest of the world.










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