Mumbai Attacks Will Be Used by the West to Rejustify "War on Terror"
Source: Not only is there an actual "war on terror" but a propaganda war too.The amount of coverage given to the Mumbai attacks by Western-dominated international news networks [BBC World, CNN International, France 24] has been astonishing.
Truly, the medium is the message. In this case, "the terrible threat from Islamic extremism."
Whoever were the authors of this week’s guerrilla attack in Mumbai, it was a will be used by reactionary forces in India and internationally.
The White House will invoke the Mumbai events to justify the “war on terror”—the predatory policy the Bush administration has pursued around the world, but which found its supreme expression in the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The incoming Democratic administration of Barack Obama shares the same basic imperialist goals as its predecessor and has given every indication that it will employ much of the same rhetoric, first and foremost the claim that the US is locked in an open-ended war on terror.
A spokesman for president-elect Obama, Brooke Anderson, said the “co-ordinated attacks on innocent civilians” in Mumbai “demonstrate the grave and urgent threat of terrorism."
He then added, “the United States must continue to strengthen our partnerships with India and nations around the world to root out and destroy terrorist networks.”
Obama has been advocating a major intensification of the US-NATO war in Afghanistan, including extending it into the border regions of neighboring Pakistan, in the name of destroying al-Qaeda and the terrorist threat to America.
The attacks in Mumbai remind the Western world, still euphoric at the electoral triumph of Obama, that the legacy of George W Bush and his criminally inept ‘war on terror’ lives on.
Indeed, we may even be at greater risk today, with Islamic radicals threatening to revive the ‘clash of civilisations’ at a time when the election of the son of a Kenyan Muslim to the White House has muddied the waters of the simplistic bipolar world they seek to project.
Today, we are paying the price of the brutally disproportioned policy of responding to terrorism with war, a policy disastrously pioneered by Israel whose only result has been to breed an endless stream of volunteers for martyrdom.
The United States and Britain unleashed the armies of the Cold War to find a needle in a haystack, burning down the haystack only to find the needle was not there.
Not only is there an actual "war on terror" but a propaganda war too. The amount of coverage given to the Mumbai attacks by Western-dominated international news networks [BBC World, CNN International, France 24] has been astonishing. Truly, the medium is the message. In this case, "the terrible threat from Islamic extremism."
Source: A CNN journalist interviewed Deepak Chopra last night about his take on the Mumbai attacks and how to prevent similar attacks in the future, but it looked like producers cut Chopra off when he started to get too controversial.
Chopra: What we have seen in Mumbai has been brewing for a long time, and the war on terrorism and the attack on Iraq compounded the situation.
What we call "collateral damage" and going after the wrong people actually turns moderates into extremists, and that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay.
Now the worst thing that could happen is there's a backlash on the Muslims from the fundamental Hindus in India, which then will perpetuate the problem. Inflammation will create more inflammation.
CNN: Let me jump in on that because you're presuming something very important, which is that it's Muslims who have carried out these attacks and, in some cases, with Washington in their sights.
Chopra: Ultimately the message is always toward Washington because it's also the perception that Washington, in their way, directly or indirectly funds both sides of the war on terror.
They fund our side, then our petrol dollars going to Saudi Arabia through Pakistan and ultimately these terrorist groups, which are very organized. You know Jonathan, it takes a lot of money to do this. It takes a lot of organization to do this.
Where's the money coming from, you know? The money is coming from the vested interests. I'm not talking about conspiracy theories, but what happens is, our policies, our foreign policies, actually perpetuate this problem.
Because, you know, 25% of the world's population is Muslim and they're the fastest growing segment of the population of the world. The more we alienate the Muslim population, the more the moderates are likely to become extremists.
CNN: I hope you're - you've - (CNN edits out the rest and inserts him concluding the interview saying "Indian physician and philosopher Deepak Chopra.")