peace? NEVER!

(this post is in the wake of a recent attack on my city. )

there was this cafe in my city.

see how i said was? it got bombed last week. or so they say, they blame it on terrorist attacks, some say its a faulty gas line. 9 dead, 50 injured, 13 critical. the opposition blames the government. the government blames the terrorist we blame the police, the police blames the people and the cycle continues.

here are the things presented to us as facts.

1. its a local chapter of a national extremist group.
2. its a part of a series of attacks.
3. its related to an issue that has little or nothing to do with the city.

and the solution to these issues seem to be, invade the country harboring these terrorists, show no mercy, cut all diplomatic ties with them, no business, no exchange of entertainment, suspend all peace talks until these attacks are stopped and these attackers are brought to justice. do what the world did to south africa at the peak of the apartheid movement and get them to stop this and talk, or we just go all afghanistan on them, poison their rivers, kill their cattle. fight back with raping and killing everything that moves thru the land. run them over with tanks bombs grenades and mines. we bleed them dry to take back what is rightfully ours.
but would it solve anything. what about escalation? we hit them with guns they bring tanks, we bring tanks, they bring planes, we bring planes they bring missiles and the circle continues, until one of us brings a nuke to the table. what about them doing the same things to us as we would want to do to them. plus we got a faceless, shapeless demon to blame this on, their government blames it on independent extremist groups. these groups dont show formal links to the government. the army does its share of things. we cant really negotiate, talk to any one of them, since they all point their fingers in someone else's direction.

the politics of conflict. we dont realize that we dont want peace. we benifit from the conflict too much. our politicos use it as an agenda for elections. the opposition blames the govt for negligence, the govt blames the opposition for lack of support. the local govt blames the center for lack of support, the police blames the city, we blame the police, the police blame the people. we use this as an excuse to not focus on our problems. we use it as a way of getting away from the problems we really need to solve. it allows us a leverage in international dialogue, and it affords them access to funds from other extremist groups to fund their cause. defense contracts, funds that can be embezzled, the coffin scams, all these cannot happen in peace times. so then what? well, let us assume:

A. there will be no peace. ever
B. we wont give them what they want, and they wont stop trying to get it.

i think its crucial we see the facts presented to us in new light. we are dealing with an extremist group here. there will never be an end to this. we can bomb our neighbors to oblivion if we like, but that will solve nothing. it would be like killing the mother of criminally insane children. (i know there is nothing called criminally insane tendencies, but i think it would be nice to have such tendencies bunched up and treated on a therapists couch with handcuffs, a very clockwork orange type thing). we could go exterminating these terrorists, but then we only get seen in worse light than what they show us in, giving rise to more extremists.

so how do we solve this? there are two choices we have:

one, is reduce the impact they have on our lives. we just continue on the path we choose, strengthen our borders, make arrangements to strengthen our states. airport security, security on entry into state and city limits needs to be tightened. damage control. eliminate what you can, and minimize where you cant.

two. we take the war to them, we go as low as they did, show them what it is to have an extremist attack your world repeatedly. drop a bunch of the criminally insane into their land, and let them lose. no cause mentioned, no group sited. murder death kill until there is no more. show them the pain until they would just stop it all to go back and put out the fires back home.

we may not have the peace we wanted. but we will have the peace we fought for.