Today we have a war being fought by arrogance battling with ignorance in order to eliminate terrorism. But how can terrorism be eliminated as long as ignorance predominates?

The US uses in its fight the knowledge and the means it possesses, and its arrogance; Osama and his like retaliate with the means they can muster up. If the causes of terrorism are to be eliminated, or even rectified, it is education that can help - but education of the profound type as opposed to mere literacy - which brings with it understanding and tolerance and empathy.

In the world of today, the Americans are amongst the well-meaning peoples and they make as good an ally as did the British as colonial masters. They kill and feed at the same time. They drop bombs as well as food parcels. The contents of these parcels were designed by the US defence department for use in emergencies to feed and sustain moderately well-nourished people as opposed to the hungry or starving. Cowboy Bush tells us, "This is our way of saying that while we firmly and strongly oppose the Taliban regime, we are friends of the Afghan people. We will make sure that not only the folks in Afghanistan who need help get help but we will help those who have fled to neighbouring countries to get help as well." Well-meaning words, no doubt.

Each food parcel contains two main vegetarian meals based heavily on lentils, beans and rice, and also complimentary items like bread, a fruit bar, a fortified biscuit, peanut butter, and spices. Beans with tomatoes, beans and rice, and bean salad, are entrees among the five available menus. Each of these packets cost around $ 4 and have a shelf life of 18 to 24 months. Could the US not buy wheat and rice, better suited to the Afghan diet, from Pakistan? A packet containing a kilo of rice and a kilo of wheat flour would cost $ 1 and would help offload our stocks and aid our economy. This is where our men should come in. But are they capable of conveying the message?

When the Americans talk of enduring commitment and durable peace, they do so with the full knowledge that the two adjectives actually mean permanent, unchanging, perpetual, continual, firm, steadfast, persisting, constant, changeless. But they also know that they are saying what they do not and cannot mean. They have learnt and absorbed the wise words of their first president, the great statesman and general, George Washington, who in his farewell address to his nation in 1796 laid down its future policy: " Tis our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maximum no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But in my opinion, it is unnecessary, and would be unwise, to extend them.

"Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, in a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust no temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

"Harmony, and a liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favours or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying, by gentle means, the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing, with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be, from time to time, abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstance shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favours from another; that it must pay, with a portion of its independence, for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalent for nominal favours, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect to calculate upon real favours from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard."

The Labour prime minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, inspires little confidence despite his attempts to talk forcefully. There was an interesting column in The Times last week, written by Anthony Howard, a supporter of the Labour Party. His thoughts on war and its outcome are pertinent.

In 1939 Britain declared war on Germany. The reason: to protect the independence and integrity of Poland. By 1945, after the Germans had surrendered, Poland was delivered into the hands of the Red Army and into a harsher bondage than had threatened it at the outbreak of the war. The outcome of any war more often than not differs radically from the intentions of the victors when they first set out to fight. War is treacherous; it is not a precision instrument. It can achieve quite the opposite of the original aim. World War II was fought to guarantee the rights of free people to self-determination. What many of those people got at the end of the bloodshed was "an Iron Curtain from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," as Winston Churchill put it after the curtain had been firmly drawn by the Soviets.

Now, as the British commentator has it, George W. Bush, the all-powerful leader of the democratic world, has marched into battle to save that world from terrorism, all in the name of democracy and freedom. By his side he has, amongst the many, the support of a military dictatorship, Pakistan, the fiefdoms of the Gulf States, and the police state of Egypt. "My enemy's enemy is my friend," is the present-day adage. The limited objective of this war - the capture and bringing to justice of bin Laden - is achievable. It is the grander aspirations which are in doubt.

The western leadership waxes eloquent on such things as ethics, ideals, democracy, freedoms, values - things they believe in - their way of life, but does it not all really boil down to the limited doctrine as enunciated so succinctly by Lord Palmerston, the British foreign secretary, to the House of Commons in 1848: "We have no eternal allies and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual and those interests it is our duty to follow."

This week's Time magazine, over a photograph of Musharraf, has a distinctive headline: 'The world's toughest job'. This is supported by a secondary line reading, 'Musharraf risks his life and his country by siding with the West against extremism. Can he survive?'.

Who are Musharraf's enemies? His own home-bred bigots and obscurantists. Yesterday's Dawn tells us that the city of Karachi's government has placed 17 large open areas at the disposal of these disruptionists where they can shout and shriek to their hearts' content and burn as many effigies as they like. Within these areas they can bring down the world, bring their enemies to their knees. But out of these areas they have no right to burn, destroy, or force those who wish to work to strike and down tools. No sane loyal man with his nation's well-being at heart can wish to further batter our dying economy.