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Osama bites bullet, pacifist dust (what does the title mean?)

The Abbottobad operation and the killing of Osama bin Laden could be seen as a blow (shock) to pacifism.

The US was exacting vengeance, not administering justice. Seemingly (as it looks), they had every right to, of course. No other man had succeeded like Osama did (for clarity "succeed" has been omitted otherwise it would be "did succeed") to inflict humiliating and mind altering (affecting the mind or behavior) trauma on the US and its people in full view of (in front of) the world. Not even Hitler could bomb New York or the Pentagon. Osama did more. He turned Afghanistan into an interminable nightmare for the West, and trapped the US clueless (Is "clueless" an adverb here modifying "trapped"?) within its hills. Perhaps, most damaging of all, he created a fear psychosis (derangement of mind) in the ordinary US citizen, arguably (which can be shown by argument) the most freedom loving individual in the world, who now willingly strips (to take off one's clothes) in most public spaces in the name of security. Osama changed the idea of privacy as the US was given to believe, he changed the way people traveled, behaved. He altered a famed (popular) life style. In short, Osama had done enough to invite vengeance.

Forget the fact that the operation was tantamount (equivalent) to declaring a unilateral war: the virtual (near enough) annexation of Abbottabad. You wouldn’t like it if China carried out a similar operation in Dharmasala and cleaned out the Tibetan chiefs. You could of course say Osama was a terrorist. But nowhere is it written that a terrorist be deprived of his human rights; that he has a right to stand trial and defend himself.

This writer is not defending Osama or his actions. But he is certainly saying that the US has set a precedent in South Asia, and from now on, the concept of national sovereignty, a suspect concept in the best of times (when everything is going fine), is emphatically subservient to the national security of the US. Or China. Or Pakistan. Or, for that matter, India. It all depends on how successfully you can carry out a strike.

Indeed, if India carried out a similar attack on Karachi to ferret out (to force out of hiding) or kill Dawood Ibrahim or the LeT chief Haafiz Saeed – people figuring (to be or appear important or conspicuous) prominently on India’s wanted list—what can a self styled (as claimed by and for yourself often without justification) peace-arbiter (judge) like the US say? That the two countries are nuclear neighbors and therefore must not fight? That only the US knows when to strike and what to strike? Barak Obama may have bought himself a second lease to his presidency, but that country’s moral stature—such as it is-- (what does this mean "moral stature such as it is"?) has taken a blow with this rather expedient, war-like act.

The pacifist must also worry that if indeed the extermination of a top- of- the mind recall brand (what does this phrase mean?) in terrorism justifies beastly concepts like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. The personal courier of Osama who the CIA tracked to the doorstep of the Abbottobad residence of the al-Qaida chief was identified on the basis of the Guantanamo interrogations.

When these dark houses of US vengeance were set up and were in full cry (in hot and furious pursuit), peaceniks across the world assailed the then US president George W. Bush, whose administration had sanctioned torture practices including water boarding, sleep deprivation, white noise and stress positions to elicit information from detainees. Obama, wearing a more civilized veneer, shut down the prisons. A naïve world celebrated that too, just as it is celebrating the invasive Abbottobad operation.

Equally ironically, it is Bush’s practices that paved for Obama’s triumph. Should we then conclude that prison houses that practise primitive methods of interrogation are justified? More specifically, was Bush correct in saying that Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo helped save innocent lives? If he is, then the pacifist comes across as (to appear or seem like) a bit of a fool.

The philosophical question that Abbattobad raises is precisely one of justice. Justice in terms of fair trial to the accused, justice in terms of the methods adopted to elicit information, justice in terms of respect for the sovereignty of space and soil of another country. We cannot make rules of war and peace and break them at will, because the man in question bombed New York. Or crashed a jet into the Pentagon. By the same token (a phrase indicating that the speaker is introducing parallel or closely contrasting information), what was the need for the Nuremberg trials? Or closer home, why give the 26/11 accused Ajmal Kasab a fair hearing? Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war (to release one's troops to plunder the enemy camp or town). Vengeance is its own justice (what does this mean?). Or, so Obama tells us. And he is a democrat.




URL: http://able2know.org/topic/32397-1


Source: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-Circus/entry/osama-bites-bullet-pacifist-dust