Should India strike or not?

They took time out to worry about the war8217;s fallout in the subcontinent. Just as Arab and European newspapers have constantly linked th...

They took time out to worry about the war8217;s fallout in the subcontinent. Just as Arab and European newspapers have constantly linked the war in Iraq to the Israel-Palestine conflict, observed the GUARDIAN, newspapers in India and Pakistan are drawing parallels with their own war over Kashmir.

It said that Yashwant Sinha8217;s newspaper interview, in which he called Pakistan a 8216;8216;fit case8217;8217; for an Iraq-style invasion, had ratcheted up the rhetoric.

THE NEW YORK TIMES conceded that the argument is seductive at first glance: 8216;8216;if America can strike out at a suspected sponsor of terrorism and hugely destructive weapons thousands of miles away, why can8217;t India hit out at one next door?8217;8217; With the massacre in Nadimarg last month, and with reports of militants in Pakistan readying to cross into India, the paper said that the pressure to act is growing again.

In deadly earnest, the NYT sketched the possibilities. It discussed the perils of military action for India: airstrikes or special forces operations against militant training camps would prompt new camps to come up; a bigger thrust into Pakistan could lead to 8216;8216;a dangerous escalation8217;8217; or even a 8216;8216;humiliating defeat8217;8217;.

All about an 8216;iconic image8217;

In the western media, the fall of Baghdad will forever be framed by the image of Saddam Hussein8217;s 20-foot statue being brought down at Firdos Square. Most commentators echoed US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld8217;s enthusiasm. Who exclaimed: 8216;8216;One cannot help but think of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain8217;8217;.

But a few maintained a healthy scepticism. In 1989, as the NYT pointed out, East Germans did not need help to break down their wall. When television showed Russians yanking down the bronze statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police on August 22, 1991, there were no American T-88 tanks pulling the chains.

Also in the NYT, writer Solomon Volkov cautioned against the 8216;iconic image8217;. Big symbolic gestures rarely live up to their promise, he said. In Germany, almost 14 years after the fall of the wall, economic and psychological divisions remain.

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In Russia, amid nostalgia for the Soviet past, there is persistent talk that the toppled Dzerzhinsky should be resurrected. If this happened, wrote Volkov, one question would surely gnaw at him: is it possible that among those who restored the statue, there were also some who helped to bring it down?

On the other side of the picture

A different image captured Baghdad8217;s fall in the Arab media. This was an image of a US marine pulling an American flag over the head of Saddam Hussein8217;s statue like a gallows hood. A tableau of conquest, not liberation.

8216;8216;Should we laugh or cry today?8217;8217; asked GULF NEWS. 8216;8216;Cry on seeing an Arab capital sway and fall without resistance live on air8230; Or laugh because an Arab country is eventually getting rid of the yoke and shackles of slavery by which a tyrant of this age fettered it8230;?8217;8217; In the same paper, fears that Washington will now 8216;8216;turn the screws8217;8217; on other states it sees as a 8216;threat8217;, beginning with Iran.

Debating UN role in post-war Iraq

FOR a brief moment, treacherous questions in the US media about what exactly would constitute final victory. The capture of Saddam? The location of the still-elusive Weapons of Mass Destruction?

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But that moment has passed. Now they8217;re talking of the 8216;road map8217; for reconstructing Iraq. Bush and Blair have reportedly agreed that the UN will play a 8216;vital8217; role. How 8216;vital8217;?

The conservative WEEKLY STANDARD poured scorn on what it saw as the attempt by non-combatants to wrest control of Iraq. 8216;8216;This is an idea whose time has not come. A large post-war role for the United Nations may be the worst idea of the entire Iraq episode 8212; worse than the UN arms inspections regime doomed to failure from the start8230;8217;8217;

When newspaper scores over TV

P.S.: For William Powers in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, the most surprising media truth to emerge from war news is that having 600-plus reporters cover the war inside deployed military units, plus hundreds running around the region on their own, can make the story harder to follow.

And that while TV coverage gives the media equivalent of jet lag, 8216;8216;the simple, stodgy old newspaper format has taken on a new energy and sparkle, just for the way it organises all the war-news chaos, lending every story context, definition, and a place in the larger order of news8217;8217;.