There Will Be No PeaceW.F. AudenThough mild clear weatherSmile again on the shire of your esteem And its colours come back, the storm has changed you: You will not forget, ever, The darkness blotting out hope, the gale Prophesying your downfall. You must live with your knowledge. Way back, beyond, outside of you are others, In moonless absences you never heard of, Who have certainly heard of you, Beings of unknown number and gender: And they do not like you. What have you done to them? Nothing? Nothing is not an answer: You will come to believe -- how can you help it? -- That you did, you did do something; You will find yourself wishing you could make them laugh, You will long for their friendship. There will be no peace. Fight back, then, with such courage as you have And every unchivalrous dodge you know of, Clear in your conscience on this: Their cause, if they had one, is nothing to them now; They hate for hate's sake. |
My heartfelt sympathies to you and the Indian people for the Bombay unrest this week.
But we must really speak about how to deal with these atrocities and protests, including the attacks on India, by these misunderstood Islamic activists. Mister Prime Minister, I have a great deal of experience in dealing successfully with terrorism and this is why I wish to come to your rescue.
The first thing you must realize is that one can only make peace with one's enemies. With one's friends there is no need to make peace. There is no military solution to the problems of terrorism, and this is why you must seek a diplomatic solution. No Justice, No Peace, as they say. You must invite the leaders of this Islamic organization to Delhi to meet with you and perhaps tour the Taj Mahal. You must learn to feel their pain and understand their needs. You must offer to turn a third of your territory over to them so that these stateless Mos-lems can have their own state. I have no doubt Pakistan will applaud your efforts.
You must meet their demands nearly in full. In addition, you must offer them internet web services and five-star tourist hotels in exchange for their promising to abandon violence. That is how we turned Yasser Arafat into a peace partner. You see, military force serves no role any more.
It is passe. It is archaic. Today, economic interests dominate the world and the Islamist activists of the earth will surely make peace in exchange for some profits from participating in global trade.
The attacks on Bombay came because you have been insufficiently sensitive in understanding the needs of Moslem fundamentalists. You took their rhetoric at face value, whereas we in Israel know that all this rhetoric is empty and in fact these people simply want peace. Sure they praise Hitler and celebrate atrocities, but what is it that they really want?
You must negotiate even while under attack; conditioning negotiations on an end to violence is a no-win situation. It will simply extend the bloodshed!
You have been trying to rule over others and failed to be sensitive to The Other. You have illegal settlements that you have yet to remove from Kashmir and Hyderabad and Punjab and Gujarat. You must put your own house in order and eliminate inequality and injustice inside India, and then the terrorists will no longer target you.
The key is to build a New Middle Asia, one in which everyone is so busy with the important matter of development, tourism, and investments and hi-technology that they have no time to pursue violence. The era of war is fin-
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Outpost - 6 - October 2003