In times of crisis, a person's identity keeps him in one piece, it gives him faith and courage, or that's the way it should be. Yet, at other times, how people regard themselves becomes so overpowering that it shadows their perception of things around them. In these days, where it is hard to stick to reason and logic, people divide themselves into two camps, 'us and the others', or as President George Bush put it, "either you're with us or against us". Now this situation is remarkably disastrous, two choices are there and you have to be on one side. But if you refuse to choose because maybe you have another idea or understanding of the situation, you're counted as one of the 'others' which eventually means enemy.
The recent situation made even normal people everywhere start this division, and discussions acquired the same tone of intolerance demonstrated by the American president, if you are not with me, then you are my enemy.'
This two-sided world is going to produce a miserable scene, for how can you be on a side that you don't want, why is the freedom of choice and decision denied reasonable voices. Some countries would like to see the situation as it really is; a complex one that has many sides and at the same time explosive in nature. Why aren't these reasonable voices given a chance? Why the unfair simplification of this entangled web of whys and hows, why is the situation rendered into a childish dichotomy of good and evil, or more strangely as freedom and democracy against fanaticism?
If the super power of the world cannot spend some time understanding the effects and reasons of any situation, and instead pull the guns straight away to answer back, then why does it expect others to behave differently?
The situation at hand was triggered. We have to state that it is tragic and painful one, for no human being accepts mass murder and destruction in any shape or form. Those terrorists have been a tool of destruction, but they learned their lesson from the same super power that threatens to annihilate them now. For years people's feelings and sufferings were ignored. This backlashed, and the inevitable happened. But instead of trying to understand why did it happen, guns and warships seem the only language of the "new world order".
The world must try to understand one simple fact; innocent people are dying on all sides in this game of politics. The people who died in New York and Washington did not have anything to do with politics and yet they paid with their lives for it. The ordinary people of Afghanistan have nothing to do with politics and yet their lives are going to be the price of some game they don't understand.
In an analysis from the German news Agency DPA, Jim Anderson notes that " If revenge for the more than 6,000 deaths in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania is the goal, then the United States will be treading down the path it has warned others against, especially the Middle East, where revenge is followed by counter-revenge in a perpetual killing machine."
Demonstrations took place in many parts of the world last week called for "justice and not revenge" as every reasonable human being will ask and we only hope that the United States take that route and get the world body of the United Nations unified on this case and act within the powers of this body.
