My object all sublime I shall achieve in time – To let the punishment fit the crime – The punishment fit the crime. - The Mikado

Twelve days after the Pulwama terror attack, the Indian Air Force (IAF) carried out major strikes at terror camps of Jaish-e-Mohammed in Balakot town of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Pakistani security forces and JeM terrorists were caught unaware when 12 Mirage fighter jets stormed in their territory and dropped around 1,000kg bombs, which killed up to 350 terrorists.

After the entire operation was over, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said he would not let his country down, and that the country was in the "safe hands". While Pakistan has acknowledged the strikes carried out in the region, it has warned India of an appropriate response at the "time and place of its choosing".

The above is an example of retribution for the acts of violence that have terrorized both nations for a long time. The attacks were carried out in keeping with the thinking that a fitting punishment will keep the offender from repeating the crime. The moral foundation of punishment is a problematic issue which has prompted several competing views.

A biblical perspective is anchored in the principle of retribution: punishment is deserved in proportion to the seriousness of an offense. However, is the biblical endorsement of retribution is qualified and carefully nuanced? The fundamental aim should not be to inflict suffering on offenders but to reassert the existence of the moral order that governs human life. That moral order emphasizes the connections between justice, right relationships and seeking after community well-being. Punishment should normally aim both at making reparation to victims and at restoring offenders into the community. Taken together these priorities highlight shortcomings in our justice system and suggest directions for reform.

Thousands, millions, of us believe that war doesn't work; that war cannot end terrorism because war is terrorism; that our war-making is breeding a new generation of terrorists around the world. Millions want the killing to stop, beginning with our own killing sprees. We don't want to keep on inspiring millions of oppressed people to join ISIS or Al Qaeda, which is the unwanted outcome of the current warfare. We want to stop the killing, make reparations, and start the healing. We even want nonviolence here at home—toward everyone.

What is needed instead is a new global nonviolent response to violence. We should start a massive reparations program to lands we have bombed. We should cut off all funding to ISIS from all quarters, and fund nonviolent peacemakers throughout the Middle East. Creative nonviolence should become our new foreign policy, and the policy of every nation everywhere if we are going to have a more nonviolent world. We need to have the courage to stop the cycle of violence and use the methodology of creative nonviolence to end this madness and pursue a more nonviolent world.

This is doable and achievable, but it requires that everyone gets involved in building a global grassroots movement of nonviolence. We need to stop the war makers on all sides who are intent on furthering the cycle of violence and war and become peacemakers. active nonviolence actually works, that unlike war and violence, it brings lasting, peaceful results.

Erica Chenoweth's ground-breaking book, "Why Civil Resistance Works," proves through scientific data that wherever nonviolence was used in response to state-sanctioned violence or violent rebellion over the last one hundred years, it led to lasting nonviolent transformation. She demonstrates that violence in response to violence only increases violence, but that nonviolent conflict resolution brings a more peaceful, just solution.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence, you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence, you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate.

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that", Martin Luther King taught. "Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that".