December 13, 2008
by Arundhati Roy
The Guardian and OutlookIndia.com
The Mumbai attacks have been dubbed 'India's 9/11', and there are calls for a 9/11-style response, including an attack on Pakistan. Instead, the country must fight terrorism with justice, or face civil war
... How should those of us whose hearts have been sickened by the knowledge of
all of this view the Mumbai attacks, and what are we to do about them? There
are those who point out that US strategy has been successful inasmuch as the
United States has not suffered a major attack on its home ground since 9/11.
However, some would say that what America is suffering now is far worse. If
the idea behind the 9/11 terror attacks was to goad America into showing its
true colors, what greater success could the terrorists have asked for? The US
army is bogged down in two unwinnable wars, which have made the United States
the most hated country in the world. Those wars have contributed greatly to
the unraveling of the American economy and who knows, perhaps eventually the
American empire. (Could it be that battered, bombed Afghanistan, the graveyard
of the Soviet Union, will be the undoing of this one too?) Hundreds of thousands
people including thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq
and Afghanistan. The frequency of terrorist strikes on U.S allies/agents (including
India) and U.S interests in the rest of the world has increased dramatically
since 9/11. George Bush, the man who led the US response to 9/11 is a despised
figure not just internationally, but also by his own people. Who can possibly
claim that the United States is winning the war on terror?
RELATED: Ms. Roy provided a fascinating interview on some of the historical aspects and political analysis realting to the Mumbai attacks this morning on Democracy Now! - Listen or read here.
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