Racial profiling

COLLATERAL damage refers to more than just life and property. It refers to the numbness of sensitivity, the lack of outrage over the disclosure by UNICEF that about 100,000 children are likely to die in Afghanistan in the coming winter due to diarrhoea, pneumonia and other diseases.

This is not due to a natural calamity. It is man-made. Shouldn’t someone, some persons, some groups, some governments be held responsible? At that 100,000 is a conservative figure for it doe snot take into account the on-going war in Afghanistan nor the war that will follow after the present bombing raids have spent their fury. The entire world grieved the terror strikes of September 11 because the world considered those that had died as human beings. Can we not extend the same moral courtesy to Afghan children?

How long can the tumult and the shouting, the strident rhetoric be sustained? There is no quick-fix solution to terrorism and certainly not a military one, particularly if military action is going to be prolonged. The law of diminishing returns will set in. Three of my brothers lived through the blitz on London. On two successive nights, the house where they lived, in Earl’s Court, took direct hits. They were safely in air raid shelters.

But they would tell us, it did not take long for them to get used to the nightly bombing. It became something of a routine,the initial fear had gone, the raids were simply a nuisance. The Battle of Britain was won, as much by the Royal Air Force, as by the Londoner who shook his fist at the German bombers as he made his way to the shelter.

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