PrintNovember 29, 2008
Dancing around the obvious in Mumbai
The mainstream media's goto guy (a mental midget) on the attacks in Mumbai, is dancing around the obvious nature of the effort.
Fareed Zakaria assures us that the attacks were aimed at Indians, not foreigners -- the nouveau riche Indians who frequent the fancy hotels that were attacked. Zakaria says simmering Hindu-Muslim tensions over the status of Muslims in India may be the root cause. Ah, root causes: discrimination, poverty . Sound familiar?
It just couldn't be, I guess, that these were jihadist monsters in the service of some nation or committed to murder in the service of Allah. There are problems with Zakaria's theory: why did the killers seek out American and British tourists in the hotels? Why did they murder all the Jewish hostages they took in the Chabad House? How in a city of 18 million, where maybe a 1,000 Jews reside or are visitors at any one time, did they come to seize the Chabad House?
And then there is Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, the new queen of smirking liberal condescension, showing a skill for really bad timing (think Bill Ayers' New York Times op ed on 9/11/01), joking the other night that it would be great if there were no Department of Homeland Security. Wouldn't it be great if we had no one trying to prevent the kind of attacks that just occurred in India? I guess the fact that we have not had any such attacks here in 7 years is just good luck.
Andrew Bostom offers an explanation penned in 2005.
Here is the analysis of a friend with an intelligence background:
I've been following the Mumbai story for two days now. A few conclusions:
- This is not your run of the mill terror attack. It does bear some resemblance to the Savoy incident and to the Ocean Road bus incident, but it was much larger and far more complex.
- The level of performance of the attackers appears to be that of well-trained commandos.
- The coordination, intelligence requirements, and logistics needed suggest governments, not terror organizations.
- The choice of targets appear to be strategic more than propagandistic.
My conclusion: this is a rogue intelligence operation (think the Lavon Affair), most likely by the Pakistani ISI. If so, it could have been intended to serve a number of purposes:
- wrecking the rapprochement between India and Pakistan; forcing the army to bring down the civilian government in Pakistan, highlighting the Israeli-India connection.
- Israel assists the Indian military to find and root out these sickos. for this, they hate Israel even more.
- Harming the Indian economy and status would be an additional benefit. Bringing Hindi extremists to power would be a side effect, but it would heighten India-Pakistan enmity and enhance the power of the army in Pakistan.
- There is too much evidence pointing to Pakistan for it to be accidental. The fact that some of the attackers allowed themselves to be captured is very suspect. If this is an ISI rogue operation, and if they intended for it to be discovered, then they are playing it very close to the edge.
- It looks like the Indian government is calling Pakistan to task (they don't see they have much choice with a general election coming up). The civilian Pakistani government is trying to calm things down by agreeing to send the head of ISI to India "to help with the investigation," but the latest reports (CNN) say that the ISI sees this as "an insult to the Pakistan army."
