'Dead in the water'                     [Guardian Unlimited, U.K.]

The Nation, Pakistan

After September 11, a

'Blind, Untrammeled

Ruthless' Policy Failure

"A commonsense response to the disaster would have been a dispassionate reading of the forces behind the outrage, to better understand the grievances of the attackers and address them in a serious manner."

EDITORIAL

September 12, 2007

Pakistan - The Nation - Original Article (English)

Sadly, for the past six years, American's response to the September 11 tragedy has been guided by a vengeful spirit of blind untrammeled ruthlessness. No doubt, the terrorist attacks at the heart of New York and Washington grievously damaged the superpower's ego. A commonsense response to the disaster would have been a dispassionate reading of the forces behind the outrage, to better understand the grievances of the attackers and address them in a serious manner, thus avoiding a recurrence of further bloodshed. But instead, the United States adopted a ham-handed, aggressive approach that, as the Bush Administration must now realize in hindsight, has provided fertile ground for swelling the ranks of extremists, besides causing human suffering of gigantic proportions.

America's own losses in Iraq alone have passed the 3,750 mark, much more than the tally of dead at the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on 9-11. While this death toll is in one respect remarkably low thanks largely to the poorly equipped resistance and highly protective gear the GIs are laced with, the military onslaught in Iraq is the first war in recent history in which the number of wounded has been so disproportionately high - on the order of 20,000. A fairly large number have been crippled for life. On top of that, an unjust war against an elusive target tends to provoke the firing off of weapons in desperation, hitting anyone in sight. Large-scale civilian casualties are the obvious outcome. NGOs that compile the figures of Iraqi losses record several hundred thousand dead. The destruction of land and property and the consequent homelessness of the population are well known, and the story is much the same in the Afghan arena.

To the outside world, which opposed this brutal war right from the start, has been added the voice of a majority of American citizens, who want a quick recall of their men. This has put the administration in a quandary of either going deeper into the quagmire and incurring greater losses of men and material, or retreating from the scene and facing the global humiliation of defeat.

The way out of the mess is to address the root causes of extremist and terrorist behavior and remove the sense of economic and political injustice that some have suffered for centuries.