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Mainstream, Vol XLIX No 17, April 16, 2011

America Does It Again

Thursday 21 April 2011, by Humra Quraishi

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America is at it again. Yes, once again. Doing what it’s infamous for—killing of civilians, perishing of beings, bombarding those locales which are far beyond its official jurisdiction. It seems bizarre and yet in this new world order you have a pack of countries which send their fighter jets to bombard those lands which dare defy its orders. What with American President Obama chanting that he ‘can’t stand idly’ and so he did indulge in that pastime—air strikes. This time on the Libyans. And before we get fooled by Obama’s another one-liner that he wouldn’t be ordering his ground troops to barge into Libya, let’s not overlook the basic why to it—he is not sending American ground troops for that would have meant heavy casualties for his troops, so he neatly avoided that for fear of a backlash from his voters… And if you were to study the patterns-cum-trends it seems more than obvious that this sudden round of unrest in the Arab countries couldn’t have got sparked off without the rebels getting support-cum-backing from vested Western interests. Some sort of a well-executed expansionist game plan.

America and its allies had to penetrate in that zone! Either through those politically twisted moves or else through heavy bombardments. And as far as we in India are concerned, I think we’d be saved from those bombardments. No, not because America is in a mood to shower mercy or charity on us. But because we seem to be already standing tilted. Behaving just right, to put across in that cowboy jargon… Warfare or military intrusion is not needed here. Much before WikiLeaks came up with the latest round of disclosures, those patterns seemed to relay that the political rulers in the Indian scenario are more than tilted towards America. So why should America opt for warfare when battles can be won by bloodless diplomatic moves!

In fact, I was deeply disappointed seeing those shots of External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna coming up with those guarded words on these bombardments in Libya. He was probably reading aloud those two or three lines from some hand-written chit. Reading them out so mechanically. It sounded such a hopeless exercise sans the slightest trace of zest. As though we lack that courage to even voice a fullthroated cry to halt these bombardments for the expansionist moves of the Western powers. Thankfully, later Pranab Mukherjee managed to get off from the sitting-on-the-fence attitude and sounded critical of the American air strikes on Libyan territory and those hapless civilians who seem to be getting perished from all possible quarters. But couldn’t India had taken a more definite and defiant stand? And why did we have to wait all these days to come up with this criticism?

AND what could be termed disturbing is the enthusiasm for these bombardments shown by the allies—particularly France and the UK. A couple of weeks back there was this particular news report that the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was scared of a rat which had sneaked its way into his official residence. No, he couldn’t dare kill or bombard or shoot down that Brit rat but in this Libyan context he is seen giving all those lengthy explanations for these bombardments on the Libyans. And French President Sarkozy, who has been leading this pack, could not have sounded more hollow and bogus as he’d went about justifying these attacks, those additional killings.

And what is most unfortunate is that this pack of men are not countered by us—Asians, Central Asians, Africans and the Arabs. Though in times to come we’d be severely affected—directly or indirectly—by these forces who are hell-bent on ruling our lands. Ready to strike and invade under all those pretexts and under the cover of utter lies and deceit and disgusting alibis. Bogus propaganda hits before they strike …and they strike to kill and move inwards.

In the midst of this devastation taking place in Libya, have you wondered why Israel is keeping a strange and an unsettling silence? Preoccupied in killing and firing at the Palestinians. Heaping another round of havoc on the Palestinians whilst its allies are indulging in similar moves in Libya …in fact, whilst I’m keying in, words of Gaddafi’s son, Saif-El-Islam, come back—words along the strain of his anger against Israel’s massacre of the Palestinians and together with that the humiliation heaped on the Arabs by the duo—America and Israel.

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