At moments of national peril or national exaltation, patriotic emotions rise and people enthusiastically subscribe to any cause put forth to them. But these moments pass, the process of disengagement begins, and it usually does not take long for disengagement to eventuate in alienation. Another lunar cycle of thirty days has completed it's course (US bombing on Afghanistan started on Oct 8) and the might is yet to prove itself. The process of frustration and demands of disengagement has begun.

British ministers privately expressed frustration yesterday with the US prosecution of the war against terrorism, the first sign of serious differences between London and Washington since the attacks on September 11. (Guardian, Nov 9)

The German government came to the brink of collapse yesterday when Joschka Fischer, the Foreign Minister, threatened to resign over his Green party's reluctance to support the country's first combat mission since the Second World War. (Independent, Nov 9)

The United Nations is warning of a "disaster of tremendous proportions" after US planes bombed a hydro-electric power station close to a vast dam in southern Afghanistan. (Independent, Nov 8)

It seems to be our privilege today to prove ourselves right in the thesis that the world is our enemy; for if we reiterate this frequently enough and makes it the background of our conduct we are bound eventually to be right. Each one of us may have a different answer to the questions "who is whose enemy" and "who is waging a war against whom and why"?

We wage a war to save civilization itself. (President Bush - Nov 8 Address to the nation)

'Brutality smeared in peanut butter' America must stop the war now. (Arundhati Roy, Oct 20, MSNBC)

Hidden Agenda Behind War on Terror (John Pilger, Former Mirror chief foreign correspondent)

What creates a community of people who believe in 'reason', as against a mere aggregate of individuals, is the fact that they think objectively. This faculty permits them to interpret the past, make sense of the present and outline a shape for the future. Many believe that the political personality of US, as is known today, is the product of "imperial mentality", because what it does not do is just as significant, and just as consequential, as what it does. New set of rules are being laid out for the world to subscribe to. "Murder of values and universally accepted fundamental human principles is taking place on such a wide scale that if the world leaders still choose not to remove the blindfold of American influence from their eyes the whole world will turn into a perpetual inferno of violence and chaos." (Mufti Taqi Usmani, Nov 4)

Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee warned that the US should avoid giving the perception to the Muslim world that it is a "high tech bully". Senator Biden's assessment needs to be given due consideration, because through just and moral actions can the US create a positive image in the World.

Behind the general fog that the ideology of dissent generates, the outlines of a very material sociological and political problem are emerging. This is not a popular war, indeed. It is among the people of reason that extreme dissatisfaction is rife. It is among them that the isolationist ideal is experiencing its final convulsive agony.

Conscientious people must offer alternate policies relevant to the reality that can sustain a system based on justice and address the harsh and nasty imperatives of imperial powers. Until that happens, mothers will continue their silent cries and children will not stop to sob and the world will remain restless and explode!