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Commensurate military response

Many in this world, including many in the United States of America itself, may cling to the few soft words in US President George Bush's address to the American nation last Friday. While breathing fire and vowing revenge most of the time, President Bush did also say that America would "meet violence with patient justice".

Even before the promised American military response has been launched however, the world's markets, especially Asian markets, have turned volatile and begun a serious downturn. And if a massive US-led attack of Afghanistan or other Islamic countries does occur, the social and political repercussions are so immense that no one has finished calculating them yet.

Already there are popular protests on the rise throughout Asia against a purely militarist response to the covert strikes on the USA. This is a reflection of the growing global concerns over the added burdens, perhaps of a catastrophic nature, if a single, precisely-targetted covert guerrilla attack is to be answered by massive conventional warfare that indiscriminately targets whole countries and societies.

The USA has made itself - and prides itself in being - the "No. 1" in the world today. It is incumbent, then, on the United States to ensure that its action against what it calls "international terrorism" must truly address the problem in all its global ramifications.

A military response must be one that is commensurate with the covert, guerrilla nature of the strikes on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon - and no more. Political and legal actions could be initiated globally to constrain the capacities of the guerrilla networks, even if, as the US Defence Secretary acknowledges, they cannot be totally defeated. At the same time, significant steps must be taken to resolve the international political problems that have given rise to this international insurgency. "Patient justice" cannot be anything else.

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