It was an early morning in March in the city of Manchester. Vegetative life had woken up from its stupor of long wintry nights and was drunk in the fresh sparkling dew of spring. Sprightly branches and singing leaves with their bright colors bespoke of their ecstatic joy at the close of winter, though unaware of the Ides of March.

We sat together on our desktops entering data for a team of credit evaluator in the Royal Bank of Scotland offices at Deansgate. In between data entry, we also talked about everything under the sun: current affairs, our lives at present and future plans. We were all temps, part-timers and from different parts of the worlds. I was from Pakistan, Sanana from Zambia and Iker, a man from Basque country, filled with rustic sentimentalism and simplicity. Iker and I also used to discuss Andalusia and Moorish part of the Spanish history. In the current affairs, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Palestine figured prominently. Iraq was not on the cards till then. US had not invaded and occupied the country and had not so far lost the post 9/11 sympathetic fervor. War on Terror was confined to hunting for Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan and its porous borders with Pakistan.

Palestine was also one of the many topics debated amongst coffee sips: unarmed Palestinian boys toying with rubber slings and aiming at the machine gun and their keepers, the Israeli soldiers. One day, a young Palestinian boy was killed in the lap of his father by an Israeli bullet. CNN, BBC and Skynews, the champions of international electronic media, though usually sympathetic with the Israeli cause and normally portraying the events as if the Israelis are reacting in self-defense, could not ignore this blatant and brazen breach of international laws and human norms and reported and condemned the incident widely.

Iker was in his usual Basque mood the next morning and with his characteristic honesty and candor said “had I been the father of the child, I would like to kill all those who are responsible for the death of my baby. I would be looking for those who train suicide bomber to blow myself up and kill everyone around me.” Though everyone knew he would never do such a thing, we could feel how he felt. All of us could empathize with the father of the young Palestinian boy who lost his life due to the “War of Errors”.

What is happening in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan is something, I would call the “Wars of Errors” rather than the War on Terror. Men and women are maimed and killed by the occupying forces, and this creates a new generation of fighters whose hatred has no bounds. They see groups of soldiers smashing doors of their homes at night; shouting, beating and hitting everyone with boots and rifle butts; handcuffing every male member of their family and taking them away in army trucks. No questions asked. A young boy trying to hide behind his father/elder brother while the latter are hit and struck everywhere can never understand the logic behind the War on Terror. For him, aggressors are the soldiers who are responsible for the disappearance of his family members and they need to be eliminated. Friendly fire on marriage parties in Afghanistan has happened more than once. Hospitals have been hit by precision bombs in Iraq. Calling them “collateral damage” simply adds fuel to the fire and cannot be forgiven by vindictive Afghans or turbulent Iraqi tribals. It is said: “An Afghan took revenge after hundred years and still he was in a hurry”.

You kill a few and scores are brainwashed by your actions to take their place. You don't need a mullah to incite you or a madressah to imbibe you with a certain ideology. It is not by detaining “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo bay indefinitely and without trial that you can win a war, rather it can only be through justice, fair play and forgiveness that you win the hearts and minds of others. Vindictiveness and greed of the winners of World War I led to the rise of Hitler and a more deadly and longer World War II. Winners of the 2nd Great War did not impose any sanctions on the losing parties, they rather helped them rebuild and start a new life. It was only through justice and compassion that the rise of a second Hitler was avoided and the World saw a relatively longer period of peace and stability.

Evil is self-destructive, you will find if you read Shakespeare; and patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, said an Englishmen more than two centuries before. Unfortunately, evil has to be paid a heavy price before it exhausts itself and this price is being paid by innocent Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis. Cordelia paid this by her life in King Lear. As for patriotism, these Wars of Errors are being fought on the pretext of patriotism – saving Israel, US and the western civilization as a whole. These are not much dissimilar to the ones fought by Hilter to restore the pride of German nation. Here patriotism and fascism have become synonymous.