The so-called ‘war on terrorism’ has succeeded only in globalizing terror. A case in point is the Madrid massacres. The policy on terror is practically and perversely a recruiting tool for terrorism. While there is talk of extremism, the real source may lie in the extreme positions taken by US-Israeli policy makers. Today, a country as far away as Australia is rattled by fears of a terror attack. In Spain, the train attacks prompted 11 million people - one-quarter of Spain’s entire population - to protest against the terrorism and helped expedite the toppling of the Aznar government. The new government has immediately pledged to withdraw Spanish forces from Iraq.
But there are other casualties. The UN for one is seen as a concubine of the West. The US is slowly neither being respected nor being feared. The Muslim elites come across as aggressive at home and submissive abroad. Israel has not come out unscathed. Even Tony Blair has said: “UN resolutions should apply to Israel as much as to Iraq’’. So the issue of western double standards has again resurfaced with a vengeance.
Double standards are not limited to the West. The Muslim world as well needs to address its hypocrisy. Exempting friends from the norms of international law while applying the rule of law only to one’s foes is a recipe for continuous confrontation. The path of confrontation has proven to be a path of destruction.
The fault lines between the haves and have-nots, the street and the elite, and the Muslim world and the West have sharpened. In today’s world, the nameless, the faceless, and the stateless are calling the shots. They have nothing to lose and they are fighting against those who have everything to lose. They are craving death and are not deterred through the use of force. The argument of force has flunked the test. There has to be some other way from a course, which now threatens humanity as a whole.
The Guardian, in an editorial on March 13, called for Europe “to take the fight against terror out of America’s hands ... to get beyond them and us, the good guys and the bad guys, and seek a genuinely collective response” and that “Europe should seize the moment that America failed to grasp.”
The force of argument has to be kick-started. The post- 9/11 world has exposed the limits of power and technology.
