Mindsets

The mess in the middle-east is getting worse with every passing day. I must say, whatever sympathy I had for Israel, has in the last few days, with their incessant attacks on civilian targets, completely disappeared. Strategically, Israel's stance has been one of obstinate stupidity. In their unrestrained bombing of Lebanon they have actually managed to raise the popularity of insane groups like H' to an unprecedented high in a matter of 15 days. In addition, their bombing is achieving nothing more than destroying lives and livelihoods of civilians. Clearly, H' is not going to be disarmed, not to mention, given the nature of current insurgency based politics, the worst attacks including 9/11, have little or nothing to do with military might. So really, this Rumsfieldian 'shock and awe' approach is only reducing Israel to shockingly low moral standards and leaving absolutely nobody in awe.

Which brings me to my thesis: For a long while, peaceniks like me have advocated that war indeed never solves problems, excepting for the very small set of instances in which force is necessary to stop an atrocious situation and when 'victory' will mark a clear end to such situations. Other than that, violence only begets more violence and clearly if that were not true we would not be fighting over land after all these centuries, that too in the name of God! (Absolutely nothing has changed!) Surely the mighty, would have conquered and ruled. But instead, we have seen that in the recent past the most interesting victories in have been those of conscience, not of military might. The Civil Rights movement in America, the Indian Independence movement, the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa ... the rare instance when violence was acceptable: World War II. Instead, the sun has indeed set on the might of the British Empire and Hitler was vanquished and their atrocities have been condemned by the whole world. Unfortunately, these lessons are lost on our leaders who, disappoint me with their complete lack of judgement. They seem to have inherited the age-old mindset of a powerful nation being one of great military prowess and might.

Such a mindset is at the very root of many of the problems in the middle-east today (not enough space, but consider the history of how many of these extremist militias and authoriatarian governments were created by covert military support). And as Einstien said, it is not possible to solve a problem with the same mindset that created it. That war mongering has lead to more war mongering and is projecting no 'sustainable solutions' in the future is a clear example of that. Instead the sustainable solutions (or at least approximations to such) have come from countering the very mindsets that embodied the problems. (Consider, once again, each of the movements I mentioned above).

If only these people in charge would realize the stupidity of their actions and the massacres that they are unleashing on innocent civilians and children. Alas!