Dr Farrukh Saleem

The writer is an Islamabad-based

freelance columnist

farrukh15@hotmail.com

Reagan bombed Grenada and Libya. Bush Sr bombed Panama and Iraq. Clinton takes the prize. He bombed Bosnia, Sudan and Yugoslavia. Bush Jr would have to bomb at least one more country during his 4-year tenure just to keep up with the average. Can Iraq help Bush Jr stay competitive with his predecessors?

In 1985, Reagan had invited a group of bearded Afghan mujahideen to the White House. Reagan introduced them to everyone as the "moral equivalent of America's founding fathers". Back then, the mujahideen were pals with the Americans fighting Reagan's 'evil empire'.

You are good if you are with America. You become evil if you turn against the US. That has long been the definition of terrorism on Pennsylvania Avenue. President George W should now be inviting Burhanuddin Rabbani, General Rashid Dostum, Ismail Khan, General Fahim, Haji Qadeer and Yunus Qanooni (all leaders of the Northern Alliance) to address a joint session of the House and the Senate.

On 7 November 2001, Clinton, while addressing students at Georgetown University, defined terrorism as the "killing of non-combatants for economic, political or religious reasons". If Clinton is right then Kissinger is way ahead of Osama (Kissinger has been instrumental in the killing of non-combatants in Indonesia, Cambodia, Cyprus, the Philippines, South Africa and Iran). When Nic Kynaston, Managing Editor of Guinness World Records, decides to allocate a separate chapter to terrorism he is bound to seriously consider both President Harry Truman and President Bush Sr as top contenders. On 6 August 1945, at 8:15 am, an American B-29 bomber dropped 'Little Boy' over Hiroshima that incinerated at least 150,000 non-combatants. Sanctions imposed by Bush Sr have so far killed half a million Iraqi children.

The problem may indeed be double standards. Democracy for America and dictatorship for all her client-states. Condoning terrorism if undertaken by America's allies (read: Israel) and condemning it in most other cases. Someone intelligent once said, "If you maintain double standards you shall be paid back in double standards." Osama, not the person but the phenomenon, wants democracy, justice and freedom for his own country but hits back at the symbols of democracy and freedom to make his point. That's double standards on both sides.

Is America listening? America has certainly been wronged this time around but the only debate going on within America is how to make Americans safe. There is little or no attention being paid to other injustices around the globe. Victims of these injustices may also act up in tones that are not too comfortable for America.

Rumsfeld, leading all other hawks, has his unfinished agenda in Iraq. For President George W the choice is between "Iraq first" or "Palestine first". Hawks want to bomb Iraq and switch America's oil supplies from the Gulf to Mexico. Some are in America favour creating a Palestinian state prior to any more bombing expeditions. Hawks have, however, been winning all along. So, get ready Iraq!

If America is not listening neither are the Muslims. We continue to blame the US for all our failures. Salman Rushdie is convinced that America's 'war on terrorism' is all about Islam. Rushdie says what we have is a "paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, 'infidels' for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world." Rushdie goes to add that "if Islam is to be reconciled with modernity ...the restoration of religion to the sphere of the personal, its de-politicisation, is the nettle that all Muslim societies must grasp in order to become modern. The only aspect of modernity interesting to the terrorists is technology, which they see as a weapon that can be turned on its makers. If terrorism is to be defeated, the world of Islam must take on board the secularist-humanist principles on which the modern is based, and without which Muslim countries' freedom will remain a distant dream."

I see American soldiers on TV preparing to board their aircraft carriers, hugging their mothers and their girlfriends, tears on cheeks and one can tell they just have too much to live for. The American public values American life (a quality worth emulating). This indeed is hostile territory for American troops. I, therefore, feel that they are not going to stay here for very long. Oil and gas pipeline theories are everywhere but American lives are high up on the priority list, pipelines are way down.

Wars somehow make presidents popular. Eisenhower bombed Guatemala, Indonesia and Cuba. Kennedy bombed Vietnam. Johnson bombed Laos, Congo and Peru. Nixon bombed Cambodia. On 6 January 1941, President Franklin D Roosevelt had declared that "lives of foreign civilians were as precious as our own." Is America listening?

The Indian Ocean is littered with American and British war ships of all shapes and forms. Right next to Pakistan are USS Vinson, HMS Illustrious, USS Roosevelt, USS Kitty Hawk, USS Peleliu, USS Bataan and USS Stennis. Would the fasting Wendy please tell us why are they here. Are they all here to get Osama?

On 12 October 1998, Eqbal Ahmed told students at the University of Colorado that "the experience of violence by a stronger party has historically turned victims into terrorists." If the hijackers had wanted to kill Americans they would have struck the World Trade Centre during peak office hours. They didn't. Their objective was to send a message. If Rumsfeld was on the side of the hijackers he would have termed innocent lives lost in New York as "collateral damage".

Arundhati Roy insists that "the wars of the new century will be waged .......by box-cutters, penknives and cold anger. Anger is the lock pick. It slips through customs unnoticed. Doesn't show up in baggage checks...American people ought to know that it is not them but their government's policies that are so hated." Is America listening?

America is the richest and the strongest. The real question is if America is behaving any better by taking innocent lives around the world than what the hijackers did in New York.