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The Oldest English Newspaper in South Asia
Founded 4.2.1834
P. O. Box 1217,
35, D.R. Wijewardene Mawatha,
Colombo 10, Sri Lanka.
Telephone: Editor - 94-1-429226; Fax: 94-1-429230

Acts of War

America, and the world community, must mourn the injury and death of all the people affected by the multiple hijacking of aircraft and the deliberate crashing of these planes into the centres of American economic and military power. The economic, social and political costs of this horrific attack are more long term and will take time to be realised.

Let this shocking, terrifying moment in human history be a moment for intense reflection. Let this event of destruction be the harbinger for creative action in the future. The horrific bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were also very much 'acts of war', as Tuesday's attacks were described by US President George Bush and other American leaders. The only two nuclear bombings in human history, which killed nearly a quarter of a million people, prompted an immense soul-searching by some of the perpetrators of that mass terror: those scientists who conceived of and built The Bomb. And so was born the anti-nuclear war movement, at the very inception of nuclear warfare.

Thanks to the one-time global balance of power, nuclear war has so far remained only a threat. With the danger of a mutually assured destruction neither superpower bloc dared to initiate hostilities.

Today, the global balance of power has changed drastically. There is no longer the insurance of a mutually assured destruction. Rather, there is one dominant superpower whose flexing of muscles or whose failure to respond to global need, has time and again raised global concerns about the future of global security, social well-being and environmental survival. Is the strike on New York and Washington the biggest assault yet in an undeclared war that is now slowly breaking out - free of the constraints of a balance of power?

Will justice redress the balance or will vengeance fan the flames?

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