India-Pakistan War Would Be Victory For Terrorism—Like The Iraq-Afghanistan Quagmire

Arguably the most successful act of

revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination
of the

Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

Believing his mission to murder the
heir to the Austrian throne had failed, Gavrilo Princip
suddenly found himself standing a few feet away from the
royal car. He fired twice, mortally wounding the
archduke and his wife.

Tactically, that act of terror
eliminated the reformist Ferdinand, who meant to address
the grievances of his Slav subjects by granting them
greater autonomy and equality with Austrians and
Hungarians inside the empire.

Strategically, the assassination
succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its Black Hand
plotters.

Hard-liners in Austria demanded an ultimatum to Serbia. When her
demands were not met in full,
Vienna
declared war. Czar Nicholas mobilized in support of Russia`s little Slav brothers. The
Kaiser ordered mobilization. When the French refused to
declare neutrality, Germany
declared war. In hours, the British Cabinet had reversed
itself to back war with
Germany
on behalf of
Belgium
and
France.

Princip had lit the fuse that set
off in six weeks the greatest war in history. While
Serbia suffered per capita losses as great as any other
nation, she ended the Great War as the lead nation in a
Kingdom of the South Slavs embracing Slovenes, Croats,
Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Macedonians and
Hungarians. The Habsburg Empire at which Princip had
struck had vanished.

Last week`s Mumbai massacre seems a
similar triumph of terror.

Tactically, by sending a platoon of
suicide warriors into
India`s financial capital, terrorizing a train
station, two five-star hotels and a Jewish center, and

killing nearly 200 in over 60 hours, the plotters
assured themselves of round-the-clock worldwide
television coverage.

In so riveting the world`s
attention for four days, this terrorist atrocity was a
success.

And by using Pakistanis to
perpetrate the massacres and Karachi as port of
embarkation, the plotters focused India`s rage exactly where they want
it, against
Pakistan. By this
slaughter in
India`s commercial
capital, the Islamists have destroyed the detente Pakistan was
seeking with
India and pushed both
toward war. Out to murder moderation and stoke
militancy, the terrorists succeeded.

Years ago,

this writer observed:

"Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators
and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as
Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by
other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by
other means."

Yet terrorism—the killing of
innocents for political ends—can only triumph if the
aggrieved play the role the terror masters have scripted
for them in their bloody drama. What, then, may we
surmise are the tactical and strategic goals of the
terror masters of Mumbai?

To humiliate, wound and outrage India in her pride as a great new
democratic and economic power in
Asia. To imperil Mumbai`s future as a safe
and secure financial capital in which to live, work and
invest. To awe the world and inspire Islam`s young by
their audacity. To attain immortality.

But the strategic target of the
militants is the Pakistani government.

Pakistan`s offenses?
Cooperating with
America
in
Afghanistan
and the border region, battling al-Qaida and the
Taliban, withdrawing from the fight for
Kashmir, seeking peace with a

Hindu nation where 170 million Muslims are denied
their place in the sun.

President Bush should pray New Delhi does not adopt his Bush Doctrine of
preventive war or the Cheney Doctrine:


"Even if there`s just a 1 percent chance of the
unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty."
For war in the subcontinent between
India
and
Pakistan would be a
calamity and a triumph for the terrorists across what

Zbigniew Brzezinski has called the
"Global Balkans."

War would pit two nuclear powers
against each other for the first time since the
Sino-Soviet border clash of 1969. It would spawn
bloodshed between Muslim and Hindu in
India. It would see the
collapse of
Pakistan, its possible
dissolution and a military dictator in a nation already
divided against itself over whether to continue
resisting al-Qaida and the Taliban, or cut ties to the
unpopular Americans.

Wounded and enraged by the
atrocities of 9-11, America lashed
out, first at
Afghanistan
and the al-Qaida source of the conspiracy, then at Iraq, which had nothing to do with
the attacks. Thus did the Bush administration disunite
its nation and forfeit its mandate.

For
India
to lash out at a
Pakistan that was not
complicit in the Mumbai crimes against humanity, but
harbors elements within that are guilty and are
celebrating, would be as great a mistake.

India
and
Pakistan both have a
vital interest in no new war.

But a new war is exactly what the
terrorists killed for and died for.

Should it come, they win—and enter
history as revolutionary terrorists alongside Princip
and the perpetrators of 9-11.

COPYRIGHT

CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Patrick J. Buchanan
needs

no introduction to VDARE.COM readers;
his book State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America, can be ordered from Amazon.com. His latest book
is Churchill,
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its
Empire and the West Lost the World,
reviewed

here by

Paul Craig Roberts.