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Comment on the Mumbai attacks

A final note: several readers have asked me to comment on the terror attack on Mumbai in November. I will do so with great caution, given the absence of accurate information. I have good reason to believe that the Indian authorities lied about the attack. India claimed that 10 shooters were involved, because nine were killed and one captured. The actual number is closer to 30, I am reliably informed, not counting support personnel in Mumbai who arranged safe houses with extra ammunition and explosives months in advance of the attack. It was not a suicide attack at all, but a new kind of urban terror assault, in which the participants had a reasonable expectation of survival, and the majority did in fact survive. That is an important wrinkle, for a better class of combatant can be recruited for missions in which survival is at least possible.

No analyst I know has answered with confidence the question, cui bono? To whose benefit was the attack? It has been suggested that al-Qaeda diverted a Pakistani military intelligence team from Kashmir to Mumbai, in a demonstration of power against India. But there may be another dimension. The Mumbai attack has been a test of a different kind of warfare, the kind that emanates from failed states: the tactics of the Somali pirates applied to random destruction of civilian lives.

The lights are going out across the Middle East; states are failing, and it is not in the power of the West to make them whole again. All the strategic calculations that busied policy analysts and diplomats are changing, and the West has a very short time to learn the rules of a new and terrible game.

Full Article is at: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JL16Ak02.html


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It seems obvious to all except the liberal leaders and politicians that an allout war is being conducted against western civilization (counting countries like India and Japan as part of this orbit of democratic, modern countries). Numerous lethal attacks on civilian targets in many countries, Somali pirate attacks on international shipping, "stealth jihad" in many forms in Europe and America, the stiffling of freedom of speech, assaults on Israel - it all adds up to "death by a thousand cuts". The obvious question to ask is "Who is attacking us and why?" The answer noboddy is willing to give is that militant Islam is doing this; Islamic extremists, the Islamic religion is behind all this. Why ? To establish sharia law and Islamic rule over the whole world. It"s too big a concept, too frightening for western politicians, lawyers, media and academics to get their round, so they bury them in the sand instead, hoping the problem will go away.

Posted by Davidjohn on 2008-12-16 11:50:03 GMT