LATELY there has been an increasing clatter in the media and social circles about how to face terrorism and Indian adventurism on the Line of Control. The diversity and division of opinion is mindboggling.

While peace is dear to everyone, war has been integral to humanity.

Being overly apprehensive of hazards of war and adopting a course of appeasement orunilateralinsistence on peaceful co-existence are signs of weakness.

Whether threatened from out or from within, the best defence of a nation lies in the display of a superior will -the will to deter, the will to fight and the will to endure until the aggression or threat dissipates.

A discrepancy of national will on any of these accounts will render the nation susceptible to grave dangers.

To overcome these challenges, it is vital that political and military leadership and the people should gel together to come out victorious, irrespective of the cost.

War is synonymous with death and destruction. However, human resource is the real asset of a nation which is hard to obliterate. Economy, industry, infrastructure, etc., are all re-doables. But a nation can ill-afford to let its people suffer at the hands of an internal or external hegemon.

Throughout history wars wrought destruction, and millions were killed, but determined nations never wavered from that collective will to survive.

Everything material lost during the process was then rebuilt, reconstructed and regained by the real asset -the human resource.

S. Imran Ali Lahore