LEARNING FROM BOSTON
Even as the U.S government seems to establish what are
called good governance and rule of law principles in countries
such as Sri Lanka, the country's mainland is under attack.
Boston of all places is almost elementally US - considering that
town was home to the Boston Tea Party, the event in whose wake
the American revolution began.
But Boston is where the attackers struck - and it was at the
Boston marathon which is an inspiring sporting event, and
probably the last place U.S Homeland Security expected a
resurgent terrorist strike.
In the attack's aftermath, Barack Obama the U.S President
will no doubt say that the country's war on terror is far from
over, and this statement would of course be an advance indicator
that there will be more mayhem in Afghanistan and Pakistan and
other Muslim countries which bears the brunt of indiscriminate
U.S drone attacks etc., which are supposed to be in furtherance
of the cause of the war on terror.
This terror attack in the U.S heartland is a good indicator
as any that the chickens are bound to come home to roost, if the
U.S government under President Obama continues to launch
indiscriminate drone strikes which end up killing scores of
innocent civilians, including children. The Boston attack has
killed and maimed innocent children too.
Such carnage is condemned in these columns in the severest of
terms. But also condemned are the attacks that consume the lives
of innocent children in Afghanistan and Pakistan - the most
recent of which killed almost a dozen children who went
unhonoured and unsung on CNN, and received no mention in Obama's
homilies from the South Lawn or the Rose Garden.
This is why the world hopes that the Boston attack marks a
turning point, with the U.S regime having the good sense to
realize that violence begets violence, as that sage figure
Mahathma Gandhi, who incidentally was never awarded the Nobel
Prize, once said.
Unfortunately, the recent record of the U.S government does
not give cause or reason to hope for such a sanguine outcome.
U.S Presidents have generally displayed a proclivity to go
berserk after terror attacks, and sometimes to go berserk when
there are no terror attacks at all, as was evidenced by the U.S
invasion of Iraq to take one example.
The U.S government's response to terrorist attacks on home
soil has been to slash and burn foreign terrain, attack
indiscriminately certain perceived enemies, and launch an
overall indiscriminate assault which is often largely a
disproportionately revengeful and chaotic response considering
the original onslaught.
There is also the other consideration of unprovoked U.S
attacks such as the utterly unlawful invasion of Iraq, which of
course probably precipitates attacks on U.S home soil resulting
in a vicious circle of violence that sees the enrichment of TNT
manufacturers and little else in terms of positives, but causes
untold grief, human suffering and general misery by the
container-load.
In overall terms the U.S as an exporter of misery to the
world is a sad picture. U.S policy seems to also cause misery at
home - just ask the father of the eight year old boy who was
killed in the Boston blast, and his little six year old sister
who lost one leg and may yet lose the other.
One more important thing this attack proves is that the
Unites States government has much to do in putting its own home
front in order before attempting to reinvent the world in Uncle
Sam's own image, by being a busybody at U.N forums passing
resolutions on countries such as ours. This country and her
people would no doubt provide the U.S with maximum support in
dealing with her own considerable security problems, as long as
our own people are given the assurance that they could get on
with their lives without having to think about what the
literally insecure alleged super-power would do next to sunder
the atmosphere of calm here in Sri Lanka, after our own hard
fight against the terrorists.
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