FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS - Good Americans and the circle of terror Ashok Mitra

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS - Good Americans and the circle of terror

Ashok Mitra http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110523/jsp/opinion/story_13997496.jsp

It may yet happen, May 1 will be formally declared as the Second Thanksgiving Day in the United States of America. Osama bin Laden was evil incarnate, the Satan; what a relief he is now dead, every household from Alaska to Louisiana is awash with joy and happiness. God always blesses America. This deep hatred for bin Laden nurtured over the past decades needs no sophisticated psychological explanation. The Saudi had frightened the daylights out of Middle America. To the average American, the horror of war was an alien concept. War was fought in distant lands, the US had sometimes to join in such wars to ensue peace and justice across the world or to tackle miscreants who indulged in global terror. True, American boys had to be sent overseas to take part in these operations; there were, inevitably, casualties suffered by US troops, sorrow descended on some American homes. Consolation was however sought in the thought that their boys had died fighting for the nation's honour, parents clung to the memory of their departed children, their mourning was submerged in their pride. For the overwhelming majority of American citizenry, war was still something vague and abstract. Only during the 1960s, with the US's gory involvement in a country thousands of miles away, a crude awakening took place. Loss of American lives in Vietnam was increasingly high, calling for larger and larger recruitment for the defence forces. Growing reluctance of American youth to get drafted and sent to the graveyard of Vietnam led to raucous protests in university and college campuses across the country, full-throated chanting of "Hell, no,/ We won't go" rent the air, the discontent assumed the form of a national convulsion, for the first time questions around the pros and cons of military intervention in foreign lands ravaged domestic tranquillity. Once the Vietnam folly was wound down, the American way of life returned to its accustomed placidity. War remained a spectacle to watch on the television screen, the average American had little grasp of its empirical correlates. The British had been blitzkrieged during World War II, London was battered, entire Europe was mowed down, palaces, cathedrals and apartment blocks were destroyed along with humble huts and cottages in village after village, thousands perished, thousands were crippled, food and shelter were scarce even after peace was restored, life was cruelly harsh for ordinary men and women. Such experience never visited the US. The gruesome consequences of war on daily existence, the pall of tragedy it casts over the life and living of the multitude euphemistically called 'the common man' did not touch the inhabitants of god's own country; war was a kind of 'away' event, Americans did not need to worry over it. Osama bin Laden changed all that. He brought war and the terror accompanying it to the clothesline in the backyard of American households. The hitherto cherished, almost axiomatic, belief that no external aggressors could ever penetrate into the US mainland was shattered. The hundreds of billions of dollars invested to build a foolproof strategic defence network was rendered dysfunctional; Americans watched with petrified horror the demolition of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in downtown Manhattan. Bin Laden had even the effrontery to strike at the Pentagon, symbol of American might, just as the World Trade Center was symbol of American prosperity. In the ensuing panic, the nation's president had to experience the indignity of scurrying to an undisclosed underground shelter. Close to 500 good Americans died at the World Trade Center now beatified as Ground Zero, as its towers crumbled. Every year, on September 11, Americans mourn for the victims of bin Laden's bestialities; they are not the dearly loved ones of their own families alone, they are the most loved ones of the entire nation. Obliterating political divide, each and every American citizen is at one with the US administration in its resolve to avenge the killing of these loved ones. Bin Laden became the world's Most Wanted Person. After relentless pursuit over the years, the Satan was finally cornered in his lair in Pakistan; he richly deserved to be shot like a dog, he was shot like a dog by the American avengers who flew in the four Navy Seals. The blackguard who imported terror to American homes has finally received his just deserts. The nation is aglow with quiet satisfaction. It will approve with tearful eyes any suggestion to have May 1 declared as Thanksgiving Day II. But there was yet another scoundrel stalking West Asia and bent on doing harm to the US. Among other nefarious acts, Saddam Hussein, that wretched president of Iraq, was also challenging the hegemonic control the US exercised over oil suppliers in the region. He was no less an enemy of the peace-loving, god-fearing Americans than Osama bin Laden and the al Qaida were. Besides, he was a tyrant ruthlessly suppressing his political opponents. Saddam too deserved to be liquidated along with bin Laden. The US was god's chosen instrument to crush the global conspiracy against democracy and freedom. Al Qaida and the dictator's regime in Iraq were two faces of the same evil, bin Laden and Saddam were in cohorts. America would know no peace until both these scourges were firmly dealt with. The incumbent president, George W. Bush, undertook the double assignment on the nation's behalf. The hunt for the elusive bin Laden was intensified to the nth degree. Simultaneously, the blueprint was finalized to vanquish Saddam. Bush fortunately had a marvellous accomplice in the venture, Tony Blair, the British prime minister. For form's sake, a pretext had to be invented to justify the aggression planned against Iraq. Saddam, Bush and Blair thundered in unison, was stockpiling weaponry of mass destruction. The accusation has remained unproved till this day. So what, everything is fair in love and war, the pretence was good enough for the purpose at hand. Iraq, the bed of one of the world's most ancient civilizations, was duly occupied — and vandalized — by US forces. The process of capturing Saddam — and hanging him in a grisly public ceremony — occasioned some collateral damage: indiscriminate aerial strafing destroyed schools and hospitals as much as bridges, rail tracks and harbours, apart from massacring countless men, women and children. Mass anger at American brutalities rose to fever pitch. The cauldron Iraq was turned into is still burning. Saddam is dead and gone, but — some people can be so unreasonable — Iraqi resistance against foreign occupation refuses to simmer down. It never rains but pours. Global terror is obviously a hydra-headed monster. Even as Saddam Hussein was being punished for bin Laden's crime, terror in Islamic garb manifested itself at another spot in West Asia — this time in Afghanistan. There is tangible evidence suggesting that the Taliban were originally an American creation; way back in the 1980s, they were generously funded by the Central Intelligence Agency and played a major role in supplementing US efforts to outmanoeuvre the Soviet Union in the Afghan territories. Old history is however old history. The Taliban, having wrested power in Afghanistan, had now slid into a strident anti-Americanism. They too have to be taken care of so as to make the world secure for democracy. Afghanistan therefore needed to be run over. This mission was also successfully accomplished and the Taliban ejected from Kabul. Unfortunately, that has hardly improved matters. The Taliban remain in total control of the hilly terrains of the country, more and more US troops have to be despatched to that god-forsaken land to subdue them. Drones piloted by US airmen have to shower bombs on suspected Taliban terrorists lurking in caves, bushes and hutments. Again, there is some collateral damage, scores of innocent civilians are dying every day because of indiscriminate aerial attacks. More ill tidings, the Taliban have meanwhile infiltrated into Pakistan and even managed to get chummy with that country's military and intelligence establishments. So the drones are being forced to rain bombs on Pakistan territory too, leading once more to heavy civilian casualties. Good Americans will grieve for generations on end for the 500 citizens or thereabouts killed by bin Laden's goons on 9/11 and the immense loss of property. Good Americans will have no tears to spare for the hundreds of men, women and children who were killed and for the schools, hospitals, roads, bridges and other infrastructure laid to dust by marauding American forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. American lives and American property are ipso facto precious beyond measure; the lives of the multitudes who get slaughtered and property that is destroyed by US personnel in those remote countries cannot be helped, there is bound to be such collateral damage if global terror is to be put down and the world made safe for democracy. A doubt nonetheless rears its head. Are good Americans sure that mothers of children who were killed when schools in Baghdad or Kandahar were blown up by American bombs will agree with them? What if, instead, these women grieve for bin Laden who gave Americans a taste of their own medicine? What if Iraqi and Afghan mothers begin to pray for another bin Laden to rain retribution on the US? The regime in New Delhi is hemmed in by the conditionalities of the strategic alliance. There should still be grave disquiet at the assertion of the brazen doctrine that claims for the US the prerogative to despatch killing squads to any and every country of the world to track down and shoot in cold blood an unarmed, and not even American, citizen who might be perceived to have done some wrong to the world's mightiest power. Please do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it also tolls for the tribe in our own midst who are in raptures over the magnificence of American daredevilry to get rid of that beast, Osama bin Laden.