India suffers horrible terrorist attack.
Indian security forces have been exchanging fire with gunmen holding dozens of hostages in two luxury hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay).
Troops surrounded the premises shortly after armed men carried out a series of co-ordinated attacks across the city, killing 101 people and injuring 287.
The hotels were among at least seven sites in the main tourist and business district targeted late on Wednesday.
Not totally clear who is behind the attack, but Islamic extremists seem to top everyone’s list. The coordination of the attacks with multiple targets would seem to suggest a high degree of organization and financing. Whatever the case, it certainly qualifies as a “Madrid” or “London” or in some ways even a “New York City,” given Mumbai’s importance in India’s economic life.
A sad day for India and the world.
Mahatma Gandhi once slept here.
A world of madness.
The good news?
Maybe with an adult USA President, this time the world will join otgether and reject Islamofanatacism once and for all.
It would be esp wonderful if Iran and Indonesia would now join in an effort, perhaps very different from the current effort led by
Christendomthe west to bring peace to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and and and …Can the new USA help this happen?
SJ, only if we recognize that all religious fanaticism is akin to self immolation.
Labelling something “Islamofanaticism” is in this case not helpful. This is the latest in a long string of terrorist attacks and bombings in Mumbai, and they’re directly connected to local grievances of Muslims in India and the conflict with Kashmir and Pakistan. In other words, the political context is quite specific, and very different from the attacks on Europe and the US.
That doesn’t make the tactic any more defensible, but lumping everyone who targets civilians together simply because the perpetrators are (ostensibly) Muslim is no more helpful than saying, for example, that because Bush and Obama are both Christian presidents wed to the tactics of US foreign policy, they’re identical. There are commonalities, to be sure, but the differences are important in considering how best to respond.
Conflating every terrorist who happens to be Islamic is a favorite Bush tactic. Let’s move beyond that.
Geov, you talking about the religion of peace?
Geov @ 4
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Islamist groups are most certainly behind this, but after spending long nights listening to the BBC World Service, I’ve found that the fingers don’t point at al-Qaeda in regards India’s Islamist terrorist problems, but to (if I have the name right) Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency, which has been bankrolling Kashmiri insurgents implicated in terror attacks in India over the last few decades, as well as propping up the Taliban.
But the wild card in all of this is the intentional targeting of hotels catering to tourists, and reports that the terrorists were singling out British and American citizens. AFAIK, this is a first.
@7:
The attacks on hotels, targeting their visible foreign presence in particular, isn’t exactly new.
What concerns me more is that, while gunmen were left behind at key locations to cause maximum fear, carnage and disruption, there was also a focus towards hitting specific targets, then dispersing when and where necessary, to re-form and attack again at another place, using the city itself as their camouflage.
That is a very troubling development on many levels.
4, Geov
I have the highest respect for you but you and I differ in one fundamental way. I do not see religion as different from any other human association.
As for referring to Islamofanatacism .. how is that term any different from criticizing fundamentalists Christians or Palinistas or devout communists or Wall street executives or plastic surgeons?
Is it wrong to criticize the current Pope for returning the antisemitic latin mass?
Is it wrong to see the the tie between fundamentalism and the Bush screw up?
Why are Islamofanatics not equivalent to lawyers who rip us off in the name of a fiar court system?
With all respect, may I recommend a great book? Reza Aslan’s “No God but God” is a muslim self critique that deals with these issues in a very good way. You may be esp. interested by his discussion of the roots of Hamas and the Muslim Bortherhood in .. of all things .. democracy! Aslan does a great job, IMHO, of arguing for the need to combine the ebst of Islam, the ideals of the Medina Constitution, with modernity.
Surely, you must find fault Islamonationalism .. the imposition of Islamic law on a nation? I hope and assume you would join me in objecting if the cheredi took similar control of Israel. Some of that sort of thing is obviusly a problem here in Christendom too!
When a religion has a major problem, as Islam obviously does, we do it a disservice by not saying the truth.
ps
The Mumbai affair, was NOT aimed at the Kashmiri issue. It was aimed at Jews (a Chabad and an Israeli group were targetted) and the “west.”
As for Kashmjir, that itself is an effin religous issue. Elections and polls seem to clearly say the Kashmir would be pleased to be part of India or independent. It is Islamonationalism that motivates Pakistan to block this.,
Got the laptop going in the kitchen. Lending a hand here and there to the wife assembling the feast.
Request: Thanksgiving Day open thread. Despite the darkness of the times, there’s something to be thankful for.
On topic: I thought all those billions on a Global war on terra was supposed to stop stuff like this.
Or was it all just to line the well-connected’s pockets?
I’m just sayin..
Once again, a major terrorist attack happens – but not on American soil. I wonder why that is? Obviously, Americans were targets in last night’s attack. So why attack in India, and not here?
For all of you who think Bush has caused irreparable harm on our country, maybe you should be giving thanks today for what he has accomplished.
Maybe you should be watching the team that Obama is putting together. He seems to have dropped the Netroots craziness talk. Don’t expect Gitmo to be closing any time soon, or for the Patriot Act to be repealed, or for an immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
Flooding third world countries with arms tends to cause this sort of thing, not prevent it. We’ve spent the last 30 years pumping arms into Afghanistan. We didn’t secure any of the arms depots in Iraq when we invaded, a couple million tons of stuff (or some crazy huge number like that) went missing.
Sorry Janet, your favorite concentration camp is going to be closed by a President who believes our Constitution is our greatest strength, not our glaring weakness, like Junior did.
Maybe because Kashmiri militants are pissed at India?
The best thing to do is remove ourselves from the religious wars of the Middle East. Israel can take care of itself, and, if we’re out of the way, the locals will start killing themselves again like they have been doing for the past gazillion years.
All we need to do is stay out of other countries’ religious and social conflicts and mind our own business – for a change!
@16
I thought this was the main reason we elected Obama?
Your remarks are iffy?
@17
Yeah, those remarks are more or less “pipe dreams!” We can’t seem to stay out of foreign (mis)adventures! Maybe Obama will shut down the show in Iraq and let the inhabitatns settle their affairs without US citizens getting killed and maimed.
Minding one’s own business works pretty well on the international stage. We can’t be the world’s cops.
9 SJ, you’ve laid out a few questions there that don’t lend themselves to simple “yes” or “no” answers. It might in fact be said that a lot of the world’s current problems have to do with too many people seeking simple answers where there aren’t any.
Oh, and Janet…I’m just into giving thanks today that we’re all still here to talk about all this.
The execrable fear-mongering Janet Silly is back.
I DO NOT thank that chimpanzee war-monger for letting 9/11 happen on his watch.
Okay, let me say again what I was getting at:
What I said was that Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Agency is behind this to a certain extent, as they’ve long been behind other insurgent/terrorist groups destabilizing Pakistan’s neighbors. This includes Kashmiri separatists, the Indian Mujaheddin, and the Taliban.
@20
“I DO NOT thank that chimpanzee war-monger for letting 9/11 happen on his watch.”
Short memory you have the first ever attack on USA soil was NY during Clinton who did nothing except treat it as a crime. Then we had our embassy blown apart then we had another act of war against us the USS Cole and we did nothing.
@22
Bill Clinton wasn’t president on 9/11. George Bush was. He and his administration had months of warnings, utterly failed to do their jobs, and 3000 people were murdered.
As for why we haven’t been attacked on US soil since then.. why should they? Bush immediately did -everything- that Osama Bin Laden wanted him to. Our army is overstretched, we are bankrupt, and everyone hates us. Sadly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there was an attack on US soil within a month of Obama taking office; Osama and his ilk don’t want competent people running the US government.
9/11 was a false flag, as is this Mumbai attack. If you want to take people’s minds off the tanking economy, how better than a war between two nuclear powers? And if you want to turn the temperature up swiftly, get Massad involved. There’s no way the Pakastani ruling click would pull a stunt like this. With the US military already launching rocket attacks inside their sovereign borders? Dream on.
@12, the reactions of the Bush administration were purely a guilty reaction to its monumental criminality . Hide crime with crime.
@22: Short memory you have, moronic “truthless”. Clinton was criticized by the RIGHT WING for going after al qaida – they thought he was distracting attention from Lewinsky (THEIR big concern). Then when Richard Clark and others said al qaida was the biggest threat to the US, Bush IGNORED them because that was the CLINTON priority.
Then, bush (with your neocons support) went into Iraq (unnecessarily) and FORGOT about bin laden and Afghanistan and terrorism has gotten worse.
Idiot @ 22
Clinton had to get verification from the CIA that al-Qaeda was responsible for the Cole.
The DOD balked at an invasion of Afghanistan because of supply, basing issues.
Bush did NOTHING to retaliate for the Cole before 9/11. It was completely off his radar. What passes for his mind was focused on golf and cutting brush for the cameras.
He ignored the warnings. 9/11 was on HIS WATCH.
@26
Your a piece of human waste with a pea for a brain like the rest of you libs.
“Short memory you have the first ever attack on USA soil was NY during Clinton who did nothing except treat it as a crime.”
Stick it where the sun doesn’t shine,best bet is your mouth.
The real truth is out: the organization behind the attacks was created by the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence Agency to fight as a proxy against Indian forces in Kashmir, but from what the Pakistani government is saying, it appears that they mave have gone rogue on their masters.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7757871.stm