"Go to the Four Seasons and look down from the top floor at the slums around you. Do you know what flags you will see? Not the Congress', not the BJP's, not the Shiv Sena's. Pakistan! Pakistani flags fly high! ... You know what I think? We should carpet-bomb Pakistan. That's the only way we can give a clear message. ... Look at America. Not one attack after 9/11. Do you know why? It's because they gave a clear message to the world that they cannot be messed with."The comment on the flag comes off sounding really shallow and flawed. First of all, watching the slums from "Four Seasons" is a dead giveaway that Simi Garewal is part of the privileged elite. Secondly, as many have pointed out, green flags and the presence of 'star and crescent' does not automatically imply Pakistani flag.
Secondly, US Intelligence Reports have indicated that the Campaign in Iraq has increased terrorism threat (for example, see http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/25/usa.iraq and http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/world/middleeast/24terror.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss). So her very basic premise for justifying Carpet Bombing is wrong.
Finally, the most egregious of her statements is regarding Carpet Bombing itself. Maybe she's into the obviously and thoroughly discredited "Fight Fire With Fire" strategy. I doubt if she knows what Carpet Bombing means because she just implicated herself as a war criminal/terrorist by advocating the use of terror to subdue civilian populations. That makes her NO DIFFERENT from the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks except she recommends using the mighty power of the State to do so. Wonder if she's heard of Dresden and Guernica. Probably not. She probably doesn't even understand what she's saying, mired in her own prejudices and confusion. Another self-righteous self-proclaimed, murderous intellectual spouting off nonsense in her impeccable English accent. Also, I guess she's already performed her own private investigation into who planned and executed the Mumbai attacks. Maybe she should make the results of her investigation public. "It's obvious who did it!", she might yell and scold us for being so naive. However, a look at history suggests that there have been several cases where the Indian government initially accused Pakistan (or Lashkar-e-Taiba), but turns out they had nothing to do with the violence (these incidents include the Malagaon blasts, the Samjhota Express incident and possibly others as well). In any case, even if LeT were responsible, how does that translate into bombing civilians ? That's like saying if Hindu extremist groups were involved in terrorist acts against Muslims (and they have indeed done so), then India should be carpet bombed by Pakistan. That's totally ridiculous.
One could draw a parallel with the words of former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright on CBS's 60 Minutes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright)When asked by Stahl with regards to effect of sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than die in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it."
Albright expressed regret (still somewhat evasive) for this remark in her 2003 autobiography, where she wrote,
I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it. […] As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong. […] I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one’s fault but my own.
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