As Osama forces Clinton to swallow the Indian pill ..

"We will defend our people, our interests, and values" declared Bill Clinton as he defended the US cruise missile attack on the suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.

The provocation for the US attack was the suspected Islamic terrorist involvement in the bomb attack at American Embassies at Nairobi and Dar es salaam killing 250 people and injuring 5000 more.

The terrorists struck on August 7. And Bill Clinton�s navy fired 75 cruise missiles on the suspected terrorists on August 20-exactly 13 days later. The targets were a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and the terrorist training camps at Afghanistan.

No one could perhaps doubt that Islamic terrorists were behind the bomb strike on the US embassies. But, there was no evidence that the Islamist ultras either in Sudan or in Afghanistan were involved in the attack. In fact, the Sudanese factory later turned out to be a civilian target.

And yet Bill Clinton ordered the US navy to fire its missiles. The justification for the attack on Sudan and Afghanistan was that �the US had warned both for years to stop harbouring and supporting terrorist groups� It is obvious that Clinton had ordered what was purely a punitive attack.

The US President would not stop at that. He warned: "There may be more such attacks. We will act unilaterally when we must in order to protect our citizens".

The US suspects that Osama Bin Laden, a billionaire from Saudi Arabia, is leading a Jihad (holy war) against the Americans. This was precisely the man whom the CIA had hailed till the other day as a freedom fighter. But that was when the US found the Islamic terrorists dependable to fight the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan. Now the US is even planning to confiscate the very Osama�s huge assets which supports terrorism.

Osama was supposed to have called a meeting of Islamic terrorist leaders on August 20 near Kabul. This `underscored the urgency of our operations�, Clinton said: " with compelling evidence that Bin Laden�s group was planning to mount further attacks against the Americans and the other freedom loving people, I decided America must act first."

And America acted, not across its borders with any Islamic neighbour fortunately it has none- but across three Continents. The US missiles left over 20 dead 50 wounded and hundreds missing.

But it meant not just only death and injury; but far more. It signalled, as Clinton himself had said, �a long haul� against Islamic terrorism. Even though Clinton sought to assuage the feelings of those of the Islamic faith promising his actions �were not aimed against Islam� the fall out of the US action is obvious. That Clinton had to assure it was not against Islam itself is significant.

The US had originally differentiated between Sunni Islam and Shia Islam and targetted the latter; this was in the context of the US versus the Ayotullah Khomeini syndrome where the Arabic dislike for the Persian facilitated the division of the Islamic faith into two. But the Arabic world-view has changed after the Gulf war. All that is left as the friends of US in the Islamic diaspora are the oil Sheikhs; the popular Arabic mind has already identified the US as unfriendly, if not as an enemy.

The US action against the Islamic terrorists is a tacit admission of this critical truth. That the US knew who the culprit was amounts to an implicit admission that what has come out in the open today is what the US did not want to be known outside-- that it is war between fundementalist Islam and the US. George Bush, Clinton�s predecessor, had virtually admitted this during the Gulf war; but Clinton tried his best to conceal this for long and has finally failed. This is what the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam bombings and the US retaliation have confirmed.

That is why the US could and did act without evidence of the involvement of the Sudanese or the Afghan ultras based on its own belief and conviction that Islamic terrorism targets the US in particular.

Yes, Bill Clinton perhaps did the right thing. It is indeed wrong to ask for probative evidence in an area of proxy-war like terrorism; once the US openly admits that Islamic terrorism targets the US and Bin Laden openly labels the US as an evil, the US attack becomes justifiable. Clinton has rested his response through the missile attack on his duty to protect the US subjects and on the apprehension that his subjects faced risk from Bin Ladens of the Islamic world.

This is unexceptionable. The right of a ruler to protect his subjects, which flows from his duty to his subjects, overrides all other obligations. This was true in the ancient times. "Protection of the subjects", said Bhishma in Shanti Parva in Mahabharata," is the very essence of kingly duties." And it is equally true in modern times too.

So all that Clinton did was part of his first duty towards US citizens. In this, the ideas of sovereignity of Sudan or of Afghanistan hardly mattered; neither did the possibility of civilian deaths became an impediment; nor was the idea of human rights which Clinton holds dear except of course where it does not help trade with China material. Yes, Bill Clinton followed the dicta of all authorities on statecraft, when he hit at the terrorists in far off lands.

But , did Mr.Clinton ever realise in the past that what India had been pleading for in Kashmir was precisely this - the right to protect its own citizens ? Terrorism in Kashmir is not a local affair; it is a cross-border proxy-war; in fact, a transnational Islamic jihad in which besides Pakistanis, Afghans, Sudanese and other mercenaries participate. The very fact that, after Clinton�s missile attack, UN observers from Kashmir have run away fearing retaliation by the followers of Bin Laden in Kashmir proves that India is a victim of Islamic terrorism supplied from across the borders. This also has established that the very terrorist, Bin Laden whom the US is pursuing hard today, has his forces in Kashmir.; and at all times the US must have been aware of it . And yet the US had always feigned as if it was unaware of it.

Just two massacres and loss of 12 US nationals the USA has been shaken. But, in Kashmir, hundreds of such massacres have taken place and over 20000 have perished so far. Most of those killed in Kashmir, unlike in the case of the US embassy officials, had nothing to do with the Indian government. They were ordinary people poor farmers or workers who were massacred while at work, in sleep or in marriage functions. Three such massacres of innocent persons took place in the last two months. Far from sympathising with the victims of terrorism, the officials of the Clinton administration were pleading the cause of the terrorists in Kashmir in the name of human rights � notwithstanding that Bill Clinton had long back cremated the soul of human rights with the firewood supplied by China.

In fact Madeline Albright , Clinton�s Secretary of State, hysterically responded to the warning of India�s Home Minister Advani that India would be pro-active in dealing with terrorism in Kashmir ; she howled that Advani was promoting tension in the sub-continent. She even found support , not surprisingly, from some Indian intellectuals for whom whatever India did in Kashmir was unacceptable. But, if Bill Clinton could justifiably lose his cool over the loss of 12 lives could Advani not warn of pro-active action when India had lost over 20000 lives in the last two decades.

But never mind. Bill Clinton is doing today precisely what the other day Advani had said: be pro-active against terrorism. Badly stung by Bin Ladens Clinton is a changed man now -- an unadmitted follower of Advani , not his critic. Will Mrs Albright have the moral right now to scream at a pro-active India ?

 Yes, Clintons of the world are becoming familiar with the barbaric forces that India has been fighting for long. They seem to be learning fast quicker than do some of our own intellectuals. Yet they are just LKG students learning the first lessons on the kind of terrorism India has been confronting for long.

But one thing is certain: what our suffering for decades could not convince the Americans about, a Bin Laden has accomplished in the few minutes between the Nairobi and Dar es Salaam blasts.