Essential defense concerns, a priori, of a country that has looked at others, including violators of her security, for justification of her concerns, a legacy of colonial past that needs to be thrown over to begin a true independent existence and to protect the nation. But this book is about is far more.
Rare is the courage to go to the root cause of various ideologies that aim to take over the whole world by any means possible, and won't rest until the domination is total. For this totality is never achieved - even within nations and societies adhering to those ideologies and aims, again and again various independent minds or streams of thought must be wiped out by the dominant ones, as witnessed in various such societies and nations through history until now, as explained by Zbiegniew Brezinski in his Permanent Purge, whether inquisition and persecution of other sects and their adherents by Rome, or Soviet purges and murder of Trotsky, or SA massacre by SS, or today various zealots of different names of ideologies including but not limited to fanatic Islam, attempting to do the same in various parts of the world.
The point is their justification in their own eyes is deep rooted in the very "book" they adhere to, with no other options allowed as a possibility. Hence a tolerance or a democracy or a secular setup where "other" possibilities are allowed, is by the very tenets of their creed to be converted or wiped out, both actions being of equal merit in their creed. Taking over the world is part of the aim, death no deterrent.
And the three explicitly named enemies are US, Israel and India. Today UK is probably added to the list as well, or west Europe too. There have been more events orchestrated since the book was published.
As everyone is aware by now, the irony is that the democracies and the law abiding societies with freedom are being attacked by copious and precise use of the very freedom that success of these fanatics will finish from the world. The secular is twisted to feel guilty about identification of an ideology that leads to terror as a means and an end, the free media are manipulated into lines or bytes to suit them by propaganda that is eventually discovered as such but long after the damage is done (and no headlines about the discovery of falsehood then, unlike the baying packs shouting about the terror agenda) and the courts of law are all too easy to manipulate too one way or another.
The three nations so identified in the terror agenda deal with it very differently and the most in danger is India, by far. But as an Israeli woman put it succinctly, "Israel is the canary in the mine"; and offering someone else's children to the rottweiler won't stop it from one day taking yours, it merely whets the appetite and the moral certitude of the rottweiler to its rights to yours.
These are some of the books I read during last half a century or so, and some of the thoughts, questions, reactions and insights, emotions - and so forth -, evoked on reading them, either then or later sometime during the interim years and decades, or even thinking over now, that are summed up here while trying to record my impressions about what I read.
Serene, Reflecting
Life Recedes