Random Thoughts
Next Stop Iran!
Unfortunately it doesn't even make a tough quiz question - what do New York, London, Karachi, Tel Aviv, Bali, New Delhi... have in common? Now we are truly living in a global village. Terrorism is no longer limited to certain 'difficult' countries, far away from the comforts of home, which have had a history of domestic violence and ethnic strife. Hence it should hardly come as a shock that the blasts in New Delhi's Jama Masjid and the seven serial explosions in Srinagar immediately followed the blasts in Karachi.
News of blasts, bombings and suicide attacks aimed at specific populations and communities are making front page news everyday, simply the city and casualty numbers change. The editorials denouncing these inhuman acts of carnage are becoming repetitive and possibly several of these are written much in advance by enterprising team, barely leaving blanks for the city and the statistics of those killed and injured. After all these attacks are precisely like others in the past.
Although I am sure that the cities of Karachi, New Delhi and Srinagar do not figure on the foreign policy map of the Bush administration, this should come as a rude wake-up call to the American President's motley group of advisors. Their prime target Osama Bin Laden is reportedly alive in Pakistan. The war on the Amasser of WMDs Saddam Hussein hasn't yielded results - nor yielded any WMDs for that matter. To add to the long list of Bush's failures, the war on terror doesn't seem to have diminished the terror activities around the globe.
The Americans need to understand that terrorism hurts everyone anywhere. It cannot be eradicated by bombing Afghanistan and Iraq. However one can trust President Bush to rely on trusted solutions. He is yet again attempting what seems to have worked favorably in the past - divert public attention to whip up public support in his favor. When 9/11 happened, he went and bombed Afghanistan. When he couldn't find Osama in the mountains of Baluchistan he went on a mission to find nuclear weapons and other unmentionable biological warfare in Iraq. As the body bags being sent back home refuse to halt, the long drawn battle in Iraq is rapidly threatening to be Bush's bloody presidential legacy to the United States. To shift attention from Iraq, American Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld & Inc. have started making threatening forecasts about Iran and its nuclear arsenal. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has suddenly displaced Saddam and become Enemy no. 1.
Following a Friday prayer meeting in Teheran, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of Iran's Guardian Council warned the US that Iran was not Iraq or Afghanistan. "Now we are much more powerful than before," he said. In retaliation U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has warned that Iran could face severe charges in the UN on Tuesday.
However for a change, George Bush is in a quandary. Should he thank the Lord, that contrary to the past, this time he will not be accused of lying and misleading the Americans into war with an enemy who didn't possess the promised military hardware. Or should he blame providence that Iran does possess nuclear weapons and hence cannot be taken to task.
That's what I call a Presidential Dilemma!
16-Apr-2006
More by :
Usha Kakkar
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