When will this madness stop?

Valmiki Faleiro
 

[TGF foreword: July 11, 2006 - Tragedy has struck the nerve centre of India, Mumbai formerly known as Bombay. Seven bombs ripped apart not only the train compartments, but also the very sentiment of living the life that has become synonymous with Bombay. Scores of innocent people were killed and countless others injured.

Words can never describe the carnage that these anarchists create. The suffering that innocent bystanders have to undergo because of the power play of others, is unfathomable.

Credit is due to the good and hard working  Mumbaikars or  Bombayites as they are famously known. The tragedy was yesterday. Today is another day. They picked up and went back to their usual life. In the midst of tragedy, people of all faiths Hindu, Muslim, Christian and all walks of life,  held each other's hand, and moved ahead with what they had to do. Well done good people of Bombay. Well done indeed. Peace will eventually overcome violence and its messengers ]

“When will this madness stop?” A feeble sentiment, an useless reaction ... in the face of organized, sponsored insanity. That which rips apart steel, tears and tosses human limbs and body parts, shreds a thousand families, more than one and half hundred of which are today in inconsolable grief. For no apparent reason, no fault of theirs, no reparation of past sin.

Those who plan and execute such mindless massacre of innocent humans have water running in their cold veins. They understand no language, except that of war-like violence calculated to spread terror. They can be spoken to only in the same language.

Yes, India must go to war. An all-out war. A full-fledged, no-holds-barred war. Not a conventional war in the military sense. Nor a war against another sovereign nation. But an all-out, unrestrained, unconventional war against the masterminds, the planners, indeed the entire apparatus – however organized, structured and funded.

There comes a time in the life of every nation when tough decisions need to be made. Ours came in 1947, at the dawn of freedom. It revisits us now, at the peril of stealing that freedom and replacing it with a siege mentality. The time has come to pro-actively pursue these authors of terror, within and across national borders, and destroy or bring them to justice.

Time to “smoke them out.” Not on the U.S. model. With all its technological and military superiority, the Bush administration has hardly succeeded in flushing out the foxholes in the Afghan-Pakistan border hills.

We must learn from the Israeli model. No high tech superiority is needed to step up intelligence gathering from enemy territory, the way the Israeli Mossad does. No need of sea and air launched cruise missiles and smart bombs to attack and destroy, the way small groups of Israeli commandos do. Are ours any less?

Unconventional methods must be fought in like manner, with unconventional means. Whatever the provocation, it would be silly for us to get into another conventional war.

India is firmly on the path of a world economic powerhouse a decade or two down the line, whether men like Dr. Manmohan Singh, P. Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia have a free hand or must depend on commie support. Our national resources must go into this economic surge, not frittered away on mindless military action that any enemy would ache us to.

Wars in future will be fought not over territory, like the beautiful J&K or the icy Siachen. They will be economic wars. India must be economically powerful to hold any adversary at bay. We must not lose sight of that reality while formulating quick and effective responses to the likes of 7/11 Mumbai. More will surely follow if we wear kid gloves even now.

Post Script: Why didn’t Mumbai police realise that jamming the telephone network, when rail and road networks already were, would add more to people’s misery than help nab the killers or stymie riots-fuelling rumour? Instant communication channels were available a short drive away. The perpetrators had all the time to drive out. Poor Mumbaikars got jammed.


Valmiki Faleiro
July 12, 2006

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