A week has gone by, but according to all indications, the American nation continues to be in a daze. It has reasons to be. That thousands of helpless people have lost their lives is of course a tragedy of immense proportions. For the United States citizens though, the trauma has far deeper sources. Suddenly the world's only superpower has discovered that its might is of no avail. In one fell blow, it has been reduced to the level of ordinariness and this amazing feat has conceivedly been performed by a mere dozen or two dozens of desperadoes. The haughty triumphant towers of American capitalism have been demolished in a jiffy; the Pentagon, symbol of American military prowess, has also been razed to the ground. Equally galling, the much vaunted Yankee intelligence apparatus has been exposed as an emperor without clothes. The Americans deserve the world's sympathy, and they have received it in generous magnitude from all over the world. Fidel Castro, the leader of the Cuban people, whom the American establishment has tried to starve to death for over 40 years now, was one of the earliest to offer his condolences in most graceful terms; he has offered whatever modest help his small country is capable of offering. Other erstwhile and current adversaries too have come forth with identical gestures of commiseration. This is the time for introspection and understanding. The world comprehends the depth of the American agony. It is as if god's own country has been deserted by god himself. The US has lost its omnipotence. It finds itself vulnerable, to an extent which could not have been imagined ever before. The calamity nonetheless does not permit either the Americans or their close allies to slur over the other facets of reality. Never mind the discomfiture it has suffered, the US still remains the wealthiest and mightiest land on earth. It has the largest nuclear capability. It has, on its own volition, donned the mantle of global policeman. The assumption of such responsibility however implies a corresponding load of obligation; the exercise of power has to be combined with the exercise of mature judgment. Whatever the impact of the shock that has shaken the nation, it does not behove Americans to lapse into hysteria. Unfortunately, this is precisely what the American establishment has chosen to opt for. It has, really and truly, gone berserk. The killing of thousands of innocent citizens is painful beyond words. But hyperboles such as bestial inhumanity should better be shoved aside. Trampling the value and sanctity of human lives is another sanctimonious cliché which does not deserve to be made too much of. To claim that the nadir of civilization was reached on September 11, 2001, is equally fatuous. Would the good Americans kindly take the trouble of remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where 55 years ago, they put to death hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese people? Besides, hundreds of thousands were either deformed or grew up with embedded cancerous cells. Would the American nation have the humility to remember the thousands of Vietnam villages they napalmed out in the Sixties, thereby killing thousands of brave patriotic Asians? Would they also please refresh their minds with annals from almost contemporary history, for instance, how the bevy of American fighter planes unloaded crates of lethal bombs on the civil population of Iraq, including women and children? Or, given the datum that this piece is being composed on Indian soil, would the noble-hearted Americans care to spare one or two tears for the many thousands of poor innocent Indian citizens who were gassed to death in Bhopal in 1984 by a multinational company with headquarters in the US? This is, in fact, the nitty-gritty issue. Reprisal and resentment cannot be a one-way street. Americans themselves have perpetrated great evils for which neither the US government nor the majority of that nation have had the courtesy to beg forgiveness from the rest of the world. They have gone their way as if nothing was the matter: only a number of people in some doggone countries have met with cruel death; so what, and it has been taken for granted that that was their assigned fate. Let us be blunt, with the exception of a handful of honourable individuals, Americans as a nation have yet to perceive the quantum of anger and hatred that has welled up in the hearts and minds of millions and millions of men and women across the continents. Some amongst the latter have now struck back and with a ferocity that has stunned the constituents of the American establishment. They, these distinguished leaders of American society, appear to be unhinged. Their boiling indignation, they will, of course, assert, is of the righteous kind. Many will differ. There is, it will be said, such a thing as a symmetry in human affairs. The purpose certainly is not to rub it in, but a quote from the greatest figure in English literature is particularly relevant at this moment. It is a well known passage, but is yet to lose its thrust: 'Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example? Why, revenge. The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction.' Substitute the sobriquet, 'Jew', by 'Vietnamese' or 'Indian' or 'Arab', and it could be a state-of-the-art morality lesson. If indeed the Septempber 11 atrocities were committed by the Arabs, they have only accomplished a better execution of the education imparted by the Americans all around the world. But this is hardly the occasion for polemics. What is of priority concern is to plead with the great American nation that insensate anger needs to be dropped from the agenda. Blind reprisal, they should appreciate, will only invite a far worse and more perilous counter-reprisal. Leave out other considerations, because of the more globalized system the Americans have created in the course of the past two decades, even the manufacture of not just biological and chemical weapons, but of nuclear bombs too, it is possible to speculate, has by now been turned into a cottage industry. In the white heat of their current mood, the American establishment is of course totally capable of obliterating from the face of the earth a number of countries they regard as their enemies. But are they prepared to take a wager that the response from the other side to such a measure would not take the form of the launching of a holocaust which could render into pulp the entire north American continent, including Canada? If the US administration on its own is incapable of grasping the essence of this crude reality, it is for leaders of other nations such as China, the Russian federation, Germany and France to take the Americans aside and inform them of the facts of nuclear existence. Britain can be rutted out from this list of pacifiers. It is a burnt-out case, much in the manner of the government of India. Faithful lackeys are in this season the worst counsellors. The most appropriate appeal to beam at this juncture to the inhabitants of the northern half of the western hemisphere will seem to be: America, please pipe down, otherwise you might truly usher in the surcease of the human discourse. Finally, for politeness's sake, may one enquire: in this medley of confusion, what has happened to the United Nations? Is it simply hibernating or is it plain dead?