And so the carnage continues. Yesterday bombers struck once more in Pakistan and Iraq. Several people were slain in Multan and scores more in five coordinated blasts in Baghdad. Besides the dead, hundreds more were maimed, some with terrible injuries which they will carry to their graves.
But here is a question for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes. What do they imagine they are really going to achieve with all their deadly explosions? If these people are capable of any introspection, perhaps they should consider the following. In 1939, the world lived in terror of the new weapon of aerial bombing. In the early days of the World War II, Nazi German war machine gave substance to the general fear with the banshee whine that was designed into the Stuka diver bomber. But the terrifying noise of these planes was not matched with their destructive power. In a war that cost 27 million lives, Stukas killed only a few thousand.
Then the Nazis unleashed their aerial bombardment against the British, dropping thousands of tons of bombs on London and other major cities. Hitler’s air commander Herman Goering promised he would bomb the British into submission. He did not. Then, as the tide of war turned against the Germans, the British in their turn, together with the Americans, mounted massive carpet-bombing raids on Germany. However, these too failed to break the German fighting spirit. It was the Allied armies, not the bombs that finally destroyed Hitler.
Then came Vietnam, when the Americans dropped over seven million tons of bombs on North Vietnam, three and a half times the weight of bombs that American planes had rained down in Germany. Put another way, US warplanes dropped a thousand pounds of bombs on Vietnam for every man, woman and child in the country, both North and South. And who won that war?
Indeed, far from breaking the spirit of the British, the Germans or the Vietnamese, these millions of tons of high explosive actually had the opposite effect. For sure there was dismay at the destruction of life and property. But there was also deep anger. And that anger fed the spirit of resistance.
Iraqis and Pakistanis are rightly now fearful of the bomb that can detonate without warning. They are also angry at what would seem to be repeated failures by their police and army to mount effective security cordons, not simply around sensitive government buildings but at vulnerable locations such as markets.
But there is a wider anger. Al-Qaeda and its satraps claim to be waging a war against the foreigners. But more than ever it is the locals who are paying the price in blood. Because of this shameful truth, it is becoming harder for the bigots to recruit new dupes. And the mathematics are stacked against them. Suicide bombers can only throw away their lives once. Iraq and Pakistan both have millions of decent people who want only peace and stability. The terrorists simply cannot slaughter them all. Their ruthless bloodletting is therefore ultimately useless.
