In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Gallup International did a poll in 37 countries--including the US--asking how America should respond to the attacks. Should they/we respond with a military attack, or should they/we take a criminal justice approach--tracking down those responsible, extradicting them, and putting them on trial. Of the 35 nations, landslide majorities in 32 of them said that a criminal justice approach was best. The three others? Israel, the US, and... India.
This alone should have warned us not to take the path of war. Israel and India have both spent decades responding to Islamic terrorist threats with war. Hasn't worked. But the more it doesn't work, the more determined their people have become. Of course, they've also employed a criminal justice approach as well. But they've had their own Guantanamos come out of that, as well.
Everywhere else, landslide majorities favored a non-military response, ranging from 67% to 88% among NATO/Western European nations, from 64% to 83% among Eastern European nations, and from 83% to 94% in Latin America.
This held true even in countries with the highest levels of support for military action. In Western Europe, France and the Netherlands showed the strongest support for a military approach, but this position was outnumbered by 2-to-1. In Eastern Europe, the 64-22% breakdown in the Czech Republic was nearly 3-1 against a military response. In Latin America, Ecuador's 83-19% breakdown was over 4-1 against military action. In short, aside from the US, Israel and India, the overwhelming majority of people around the world favored treating this terrorist act as the crime it was, rather than the act of war the terrorists wanted it to be.
India and Pakistan have gone so far as to turn themselves into nuclear threats to one another. And still the terrorism hasn't been stopped.
It's worth noting that while India and Isreal's support for a military response was overwhelming (72% and 77%, respectively), Americans joined with them only barely: just 54% supported a military response, while 30% favored a criminal justice response, and 16% were unsure. Weeks later, when we attacked Afghanistan, 92% of Americans supported it. But at that point, the sane alternative had been taken off the table. So, even after 9/11, there was a tiny window of sanity. The kind of murderous madness we saw on 9/11 cannot be stopped--it can only be fueled--by more murderous madness on a massively larger scale.
The same is true for the attacks on Mumbai. Killing innocents in revenge for the death of innocents only kills more innocents. What's more, when done by a democracy, it makes all would-be innocents guilty as well. It puts blood on all our hands.
The hope may be dim. The hope may be foolish in the immediate aftermath of the Mumbai attacks. But the hope is all we have, that these attacks may play some role, at some point, in convincing the Indian people that blind vengeance is no answer to blind vengeance. There must be a better way, however painful it may be.
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