Sunday, September 11, 2011

Battered and Bruised


Tribute in Light in remembrance of 9/11


On the 10th anniversary of the gory attack on Twin Towers, one can’t help but regret the lost innocence our daily lives had. This dastardly attack brought terrorism and its dangers into public conscience. Sadly, the war against terrorism has acquired the colour of war against Islam or the next Crusades – which is very unfortunate. I don’t agree with the argument put forth by the proponents of this theory that had America not launched an all-out offense against Jihadists, radicalisation wouldn’t have occurred. To me, the offense put by USA in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan didn’t seem as an over-reaction. Perhaps, it saved its people of many of such catastrophic attacks.

Talking in context of India and the recent Delhi blasts, I find it extremely harsh to put the blame on the forces. Let us accept the fact that any kind of fortifying of public places cannot stop a determined terrorist. Also, we can’t put snipers on every chowk or on all public modes of transport or on all places of public significance. And India cannot be an Israel or USA (for whatever inherent characteristics it has). Ironically, the answer to the threat we face is more vigilance which is in contradiction to the reality mentioned above.

Means of deterrence are an immediate response but in long-term more easily accessible opportunities for the common man to grow economically might help dissuade many future “Kasabs”. The prosperity that terrorism tends to destroy is in itself the anti-dote to this disease.


2 comments:

Sunpreet said...

RG, I more or less agree with you, however there is a slight disagreement on the argument about the prevention of terrorist attacks. Even though, there can't be adequate amount of security at every chowk and public place as you rightly mention, there should have been some deterring measures such as cctv's etc. for constant tracking at such places. Besides, the information dissemination system on spotting a suspicious element should be rapid. The biggest force against the prevention of such attacks according to me are the people itself. A little more vigilance from us can help, provided there are split second response units in the Indian Defence Forces, which I think should definitely be looked into especially in the aftermath of another such incident.

RG said...

Yes, thats a valid point.
Having quick response teams and vigilance from the people themselves will help to a great extent.