Blast in Gotham
20 September 2016
The US has been doing its damnedest to protect itself against
terrorism. All its institutions have been geared to meet that threat.
The judiciary has refused to be moved against the state agencies
responsible for abductions and torture on the grounds that legal action
against the perpetrators will jeopardise national security. The
victims of such acts of cruelty are without anyone to turn to while the
US politicians and diplomats are pontificating to the rest of the
world on the virtues of human rights. But, not even such draconian
measures and tough laws have enabled the US to minimise its
vulnerability to terrorism discernibly.
New York Mayor Bill
de Blasio has sought to downplay Sunday’s crude bomb blast, which left
29 people injured; he has called it an ‘internal act’, insisting that
there is no credible evidence of a terrorist threat to Gotham. No
international terrorist outfit fighting against the US and its allies
will be so stupid as to antagonise the entire world by targeting the
city where the UN is in session with heads of state and eminent persons
from the four corners of the earth in attendance. Terrorists are
savages, no doubt. But, they are no fools!
However, the
mayoral assertion that Sunday’s blast was an ‘internal act’ may be of
little consolation to the discerning Americans. For, an internal threat
is far more worrisome and intractable than an external one. It takes
months, if not years, of planning for foreign terrorists to carry out an
attack on American soil at an enormous cost and they run the risk of
being caught in the process. They usually go for large scale,
spectacular strikes like the obliteration of iconic buildings or
massacres. But, internal enemies can resort to what may be described as
micro terrorism, which requires only improvised explosive devices like
the one used in New York the other day or a fully loaded assault
rifle. There is also the danger of such elements graduating from
pressure cooker bombs to small planes and drones or even flying toys
laden with explosives.
Race relations are not as rosy as
they are made out to be in the US and terrorism thrives in the medium
of ethno-religious hatred which abounds in that country as evident
from, inter alia, the not-so-infrequent incidents where white cops
shoot coloured youth and kids unflinchingly. Terrorists may enlist the
support of the resentful elements among the marginalised groups such as
those who staged the Occupy Wall Street protest a few years ago.
Interestingly,
Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton lost no time in condemning what she called "the
apparent terrorist attacks in Minnesota, New Jersey, and New York". She
declared that the Islamic State's claim of responsibility for the St
Cloud attack should "steel our resolve to protect our country and
defeat Isis [also known as Islamic State and Isil] and other terrorist
groups." She has spoken as a patriotic American, but the question is
why the US leaders do not recognise other countries’ right to battle
terrorism with might and main. Donald Trump, the Republican
presidential nominee also thundered: "It's a terrible thing what's
going on in our world, what's going on in our country, but we are going
to get tough and smart and vigilant and we are going to end it." This,
no doubt, is how terrorism has to be tackled. It is hoped that the US
will not stand in the way of the same modus operandi being adopted
elsewhere in dealing with terror.
Meanwhile, the government
of Sri Lanka has called for an international summit on terrorism.
Before worrying about how to tackle international terrorism, which
means different things to different world powers, it had better take
precautions to prevent a possible revival of terror at home without
being lulled into a false sense of complacency.
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