The Mumbai Massacres as the Defeat of Counter-terrorism

[ZingPao]

by Gilad Atzmon

At the time I am writing these notes it is far from being clear what really happened in Mumbai. The questions I ask myself are the same ones most everyone else is asking: Who were the attackers? Who was behind them and what did they try to achieve? However one thing is evident. The War on Terror is a total disaster. The so-called ‘terrorists’, whoever they are, have won. America and its allies have been defeated.

But it doesn’t stop there, throughout this war America has lost its primacy as a super power. It is now financially ruined. Its leadership is regarded by most people around the world as a solid core of evil. It doesn’t take a genius to gather that this enormous defeat is an outcome of a chain of events that started with a single orchestrated attack that took place in September 2001. To those who fail to remember, the 19 terrorists who devastated the world on 9/11 didn’t carry a nuclear bomb, they weren’t equipped with some advanced weaponry. All they carried were box cutters. As bizarre as it may sound, all it took to bring the American empire down was 19 highly motivated people armed with box cutters.

Unfortunately, America and Britain, on their way down, have managed to get themselves involved in some war crimes of colossal magnitude. Two million Iraqis and Afghans are dead. Many more millions are gravely wounded, millions of others are refugees. Each of these victims is a direct outcome of an illegal war launched by the Anglo American democracies.

In spite of the carnage, these Anglo American colonial wars are far from being over. For weeks we are reading about American airplanes dropping bombs on Pakistani villagers. We learn about the so-called allies targeting ‘alleged terrorist suspects’ in rural Pakistan. Evidently our elected democratic leaders see innocent Muslim civilians and villagers as disposable soft targets. Hence, it shouldn’t really take us by surprise that some people out there in the East see us as equally, subject to terror. They see us as potential soft targets. Yet, while British and American crimes are committed in our behalf, in the name of democracy, by leaders we ourselves put in power, the crimes that were committed yesterday in Mumbai were committed by an unknown body and not an elected one. The crimes in Mumbai were committed solely in the name of those who commit them. The Anglo American crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria are committed by elected governments on behalf of the British and the American people.

Terrorism is a message written on the wall, but for some reason most Westerners fail to read it. Our enthusiasm to bring Coca-Cola to the Muslim world must be curbed immediately. We should keep our liberal democratic fantasy to ourselves, especially now when it had been proven as a faulty concept. Our insistence upon making Arabs and Muslims as stupid as us is not going to work. We must let people live their lives according to their beliefs and cultural heritage.

The British foreign minister Miliband, along with other politicians, announced yesterday that the attack in Mumbai is an attack against Western democracy. I think we had better face it: as long as the Western democracies treat Muslims as soft targets, the Western people may be as well subject to retaliation and terror.

I would suggest Miliband and his colleagues immediately stop trying to democratise the world. Doing so would simply make this world a far safer place and by far nicer place to live.


http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/1...#comment-32854