A lesson in restraint

Shafey Danish With power comes responsibility, says an old adage. Those who had framed it must have been aware how necessary it was to put it down just like that, because actually, with power comes irresponsibility. Power makes it easier to shed the restraint that its lack places on us. It makes it possible to bring alive the kind of action that could otherwise only be expressed in rhetoric. Yet, when power is indeed responsible, the benefits could be great. America demonstrated, during the second World War something of that responsibility. The attack on Pearl harbour, its prequel and sequel are all instructive. On the morning of Dec 7 1941, a flotilla of six Japanese aircraft carriers travelled 3,000 miles across the ocean to attack the American base, Pearl Harbour, in Hawaii. More than 300 dive bombers participated in the operation. When it was over, America`s Pacific fleet had been virtually neutralised. Looking at that attack, one wonders if it was inevitable. Certainly the US could not have hoped for Imperial Japan to swallow down an oil embargo which would have soon rendered its military operations inoperative. The US-Japan conflict had escalated on other diplomatic fronts too. America insisted on complete Japanese withdrawal from the Chinese mainland and had committed itself to protecting the Indo-China, which the Japanese wanted to capture for oil. The Hawaii was as vulnerable to a Japanese attack as the Philippines or the Malay islands. America had received advanced warning from intelligence sources that Japan was preparing for an all out war with the US. Later, more concrete reports indicated that Japanese special forces were being ordered into war. Yet the US adopted a policy of wait and watch. Even though the attack itself, and the losses which were inflicted on the US were a result of negligence, there was the additional reason of US reluctance to enter into the World War. The US could have been more proactive, but it seemed that the leadership was determined to wait until the attack actually came. Historians say there are several reasons for this: American public opinion was still decisively against the war. Also because as Secretary Stimson explained, "so that there should remain no doubt in anyone`s mind as to who were the aggressors." The attack left the US Pacific fleet disabled and killed around 2,400 people. But when the President, Fredrick D Roosevelt, went to seek Congress` approval for the declaration of war on Japan, he got it with 388 against 1. The Senate voted unanimously in favour of war. There are lessons to be learnt from this. America`s leadership was reluctant to enter into the World War, even though it had become clear that America`s own interests were at stake, its public opinion was decisively against it, with people staging protest marches with "No War" placards. Therefore, despite all evidence pointing to the contrary, America may still have not gone to war had not Pearl Harbour happened. Pearl Harbour was that decisive moment which put to rest the internal debate raging in America. The dithering and the caution did not go in vain. It gave a halo of legitimacy to America`s role not only in that war but also in the post war world. This legitimacy endured for half a century, till rash interventions in localised conflicts and brazen aggression eroded it away. War an option? War is a catastrophic event. The nature of modern warfare is such that it solves nothing, serves no purpose and leads to only such gashes in the conscience of humanity that even time cannot heal. It renders us less human. Even a cursory glance at recent history should convince us of this. What has the war in Iraq and Afghanistan given to the world? Have they ended the menace of terror? And this, when one of the powers engaged in the war is the US, the sole superpower, and its enemies are a ragtag bunch of people who cannot even be called an army. Israel has been trying for decades to bring peace to the Middle East at gunpoint without success. American intervention in Vietnam and Korea were futile. We are forced instead to live with the memory of bombed villages in Vietnam, with burning children fleeing from the scene. We are forced to live with the reality of Abu Gharaib, of the daily deaths through suicide bombs on the streets of Iraq. We will see, and remember, a man walking beside the American President on prosthetic legs, his own having been blown away in the war in Iraq. These are the images and memories that warfare has given us. This is all, that ultimately, we will be left with. No, war is not a solution. It is to be avoided even in the face of dire provocation. Thankfully, modern system has potent alternatives of diplomatic and economic pressure to make a country`s leadership see sense. Yes, one sometimes needs to go to war. When all else fails, and a country’s very survival is threatened, and threats of war do not work, then indeed one must go to war. But then, such a point will have been reached when the rights and the wrongs of the matter could be unequivocally established without the help of the media. War then, one can hope, would be followed by peace and not by more war by other means, which is what terrorism is.