Monday, July 11, 2005

We need more KPS Gills

7/7/05.London Bombed.More than 50 people killed.

China must be smiling today. As the west engages itself in a frustrating battle against these hit-and-run cowards (read jihadis), China has all the reasons to smile.For the simple fact that China knows how to fight these terrorists & still remain out of focus.

While the worlds big & great democracies are looking for a solution to fight this monster (called terrorism), the Chinese goverment knows exactly how to deal with this menace. The Chinese solution is simple. Crush the terror before it raises its head. And the best part is the Chinese authorities are never bothered of the word 'accountability' - of their actions.
They have no worries of reasoning with the'human rights' experts or the 'liberal press' about any of their actions.They take action & thats it.

Lets take a hypothetical case. Lets say on a busy day of Shanghai, 6 bombs blasted on the metro rails.What would have been the turn of events ?

I will put my money on this.

The Govt controlled media would have reported that some miscreants tried to create terror in Shanghai.Casualties would have been misreported & and some statement would have been official released for the sake of formality.Period.
Beyond that pure speculation would have taken over, specially from the western observers.

But thats just a part of the story. What China would have done behind the scene is the real story. It would have created havoc in the Muslim majority region, unleashing its army on the hapless muslims & killed atleast 10 times more people.
And the best part is that this action of the chinese authorities would never have got reported. Not even in the Muslim world.
So no worry of backlash from Islamic forces. No worry of any debates from the liberal press & media. No worry for votes & banks.

Just simple tit-for-tat & its all over.

Sometimes this makes me wonder, can terrorism be fought in a democratic society? Can terrorism be fought when we have people like Kuldeep Nayar & Praful Bidwai in India & lets say their lesser cousins Michael Moore & Bill Maher in USA.
(Though i feel Michael Moore & Bill Maher are much more patriotic & nationalists than the Indian Idiots that i mentioned).

Democracy has its own limitations. And mind you their are many. I for one feel that 'Democracy is a phenomenon where the majority idiots decide the fate of the minority, even if minority is correct'.And nothing exemplifies this more than in India.

When a single family of little or no talent can rule a foolish population for over four decades,you know its democracy at work & you know that it is in India.

Osama is a hero in not only Pakistan & Arab world (where it is expected) but also in some muslim majority regions of the country (specially in some districts of Bihar,UP,Assam etc).Dawood Ibrahim is a hero in his native village in Maharashtra & surrounding areas.
On the other hand Narendra Modi is the biggest villain.
(By the Way, Gujarat under Modi has left the rest of the country far behind in economics.Apparently the Gujarat government is targetting
15% GDP this year. Something unheard of since Nehru coined 'Hindu rate of growth')

This is the problem with democracy. When majority decides that Osama is hero, he is hero & when majority decides Modi is villain,well,he's a villain. However foolish the majority is, the other half (or less) has to accept this.

But than what is the next best thing after democracy? Even if i gave the Chinese example, i would hate to have a Communist regime.
In democracy you atleast live with hope that things will someday change for the better. With Communism, you just loose everything, including hope.

So how does the democratic world, which thinks in terms of justice for all, freedom for all, liberty for all deal with terrorism within its framework?

Given that democracy allows the terrorist,if at all he's caught, equal rights to defend himself in court of law, how does the democracy really deal with this?
Are these Islamic terrorist who in effect are fighting the democracies of the world not taking the advantage of the same thing that democracy offers, ie, freedom ?

When democracy was conceptualised (in roman era) , there were only external threats. The internal threats were limited to clashes between groups, social uprisings etc. But no one could have imagined this kind of a threat which in real sense is external, but is played in one's own land, might come someday knocking at democracy's doors.

9/11 or for that matter 7/7 were both externally carried out operations, except that they were carried within the boundaries of country under attack.

Its a war of a different kind. And frankly none of the big nations (including USA,Russia,India etc) have an answer.All that USA could do in response to 9/11, under frustration,is send its army to Iraq, and create a bigger problem for itself.
(Now its clueless over the exit road).

How do you take the bull by the horns when the bull can appear from anywhere & any number of times? For the democracies fighting this battle (of terrorism) there's no single enemy or one target or one villian.There are several enemies. Within & outside.The enemies could be any one.
It could be the columnists of the free press, who often justify & sanitize the actions of the terrorists. It could be the politicians who do not want to hurt their votebanks.It could be the general public who do no want to fight the terror or even raise their voices.

There are lot of enemies the democracy has to fight. Not one.

I do not know a single Ismalic nation today which is democratic. In some sense Islam & Democracy are self contradictory.And in some ways Osama & his cohorts are fighting the very concept of Democracy & free world. A fight that he shares with his marxist friends.

One of the biggest challenges before the 'civilised' world in these coming years would be to manufacture a way to fight terrorism within the framework of democracy.

As of today the democracies can only come up with knee-jerk reactions to these attacks. There are no road maps, no sustained policies.Only bark, no bite. Fighting terrorism seems to be a herculan task for most countries sans China.

Afterall KPS Gill did root out terror from Punjab, showing his middle finger to all democratic norms.

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