The Necessary Moral Retaliation

Bush’s promises of “total retaliation” for terrorists echoes the response of Punjab’s Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel O’Dwyer to the massacre and the rising tide of unrest in the Punjab when he declared martial law, saying that the British “police action” in Amritsar was justified.

It was The least amount of firing which would produce the necessary moral and widespread effect it was my duty to produce … from a military point of view, not only on those who were present, but more specially throughout the Punjab.

And as for the cycle of violence? In 1939, Uddham Singh (aka Mohammad Singh Azad), a Sikh nationalist murdered the Punjab’s former Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel O’Dwyer, in retaliation for the massacre O’Dwyer sanctioned twenty years earlier.

Said Azad at his trial: He was the real culprit. He deserved it. He wanted to crush the spirit of my people, so I [had to] crush him.