Nine
years after 9/11, it was left to Pastor Terry
Jones of Florida to make the point that escaped
even some bitter critics of the US course under
former President George W. Bush. They have talked
of what the Washington-Pentagon warmongers have
done to parts of the world, in alleged response to
the Twin Towers tragedy and the threat of "global
terror". The man who raised the torch menacingly
over the Quran showed what they had done to
America and a minority of Americans.
The rise of the Far
Right, or the Crazy Right as some commentators
call it more aptly, at home was bound to follow
the wars of alleged pre-emption and pursuit
abroad. It did. The phenomenon has acquired bigger
and uglier proportions after Barack Hussein Obama
was voted to the White House. Racism and religious
bigotry have combined with the machinations of the
military-industrial complex to work against the
voters' verdict and to reverse a change, over
which many of us rejoiced too soon. A larger
political role seems reserved for the yesteryear's
lunatic fringe.
Away from American
shores, nearly a decade of military misadventures
has done a manufactured cause of "anti-terrorism"
damage beyond easy repair or redemption. As Obama
announced the end of US combat operations in Iraq
on August 31, he could make no convincing claim
about the gains of a war launched on March 20,
2003. The doctrine of ":regime change" and the
devastation of a country under the pretext of
unearthing non-existent weapons of mass
destruction have served the ends of neither
"democracy" nor "freedom": The unrelenting
offensive has left nearly a hundred thousand Iraqi
civilians dead, 46 per cent of them women
and 39 per cent children.
The war
unleashed on Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, soon
after 9/11, has been even more wounding. It has
left close to a million Afghans dead, without
promising any liberation of the long-suffering
people from the Taliban. The country groans under
the notoriously corrupt government of President
Hamid Karzai, the warlords continue to wield power
in provinces and the narcotics trade thrives,
while Nato troops play secret games of sadistic
killings of civilians. The military "surge",
promised by the Obama Administration, sounds like
a mockery of the grave situation on ground.
Washington and the Pentagon vow
unremitting pursuit of al Qaeda leaders, while no
one can vouch for the whereabouts or even the
existence of Osama bin Laden. The theory, equating
the capture and death of this individual with the
end of terrorism, meanwhile, only provokes mirth
outside the Oval Office and the rest of the
presidential precincts.
For South Asia,
9/11 has had strange consequences. Both India and
Pakistan were extraordinarily quick to join the
"alliance against global terror", but have managed
to remain adversaries, especially on the issue of
terrorism. Each has been keen to try and turn the
alliance against the other. New Delhi under then
Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee extended
support to the idea of a pre-emptive war in the
hope, and nearly on the condition, of India being
allowed the same privilege in the officially
unnamed Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Islamabad,
under then President General Pervez Musharraf,
insisted that its support for the US served its
"core interests", including the one involved in
Kashmir.
Little wonder that the
"anti-terror alliance" led to aggravated tensions
in the subcontinent, especially after the attack
of December 13, 2001, on India's Parliament.
The summer of 2002 saw a dangerous military
standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbours in
Kashmir. South Asia might have been pulled back
from the brink of a nuclear war, but
"anti-terrorism" of the post-9/11 kind had proved
a tenuous basis indeed for India-Pakistan
peace.
In dealing
with Pastor Jones, Obama faced a very different
America from the one that voted him to power. And
the US President will not encounter the same South
Asia that Bush visited in March 2006. It is time
for the world to learn its post-9/11 lessons and
move on to more meaningful anti-terror
cooperation.
by J. Sri
Raman
