Bombs away
--Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAEHe has the power to cloud men's minds
--The Shadow (1937)
_______________
We have no need to fear the Shadow any longer -- we live in a perpetual state of willing suspension of disbelief, ushered along by our news outlets.
In all the words Ranger has read about Mumbai, no one has bothered to mention that Mumbai was significant because it showed that "soft targets" can always be exploited. The significance is that although the death count was 172 this event was very much less significant than others, such as the 1972 in Lod, Tel Aviv, Vienna ('85) and Rome ('73 and '85) airports by terrorist hit teams.
The Mumbai gunmen did not have to penetrate outer levels of security to get to their designated objectives. This was a simple raid on soft targets.
This sort of attack is extremely unlikely to occur in the Continental U.S. It would be a meaningless gesture if one understands that the government can not cover every possible target. All it would accomplish is deaths, and that in itself is meaningless (except to the victims.)
Coverage focuses on the ineptitude and faulty reaction of the responders, but this is the wrong way to view the events in Mumbai. Look at the ineptitude of the attackers.
If they were professional, they would have had prepositioned supplies of ammunition and weapons, and they would have maximized their time-on-target. This, however, was not the case.
Contrary to fearmongers like Gerson (In Mumbai This Time) et. al who exploit Mumbai as justification for the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), this episode is not a grand gesture. It is a small, discrete incident of terrorism, crime of the sort which is a fact of life in modern times. Because we have seen it before, there are laws and procedures in place to deal with it.
Petrification and confusion are not helpful responses, if you are not on the perpetrator's side of things.
Labels: mumbai, phony war on terror, PWOT, terrorism overreaction, tying mumbai to PWOT
posted by Lisa at 5:03 PM
7 Comments:
My reaction this was blow to tourism by all those unclean non-Muslims. And in that respect, it worked. The tourists have quit coming. For a while.
OTOH, if that was their objective, why were they still they when the cops showed up? The whole thing reeked of incompetence.
Ranger, Get a load of this steaming pile of crap that Shrub was feeding the cadets today...
Shrub gives shout out to Rummy...
"Finally, we are transforming our military for a new kind of war that we’re fighting now, and for wars of tomorrow. This transformation was a top priority for the enterprising leader who served as my first Secretary of Defense — Donald Rumsfeld. Today, because of his leadership and the leadership of Secretary Bob Gates, we have made our military better trained, better equipped, and better prepared to meet the threats facing America today, and tomorrow, and long in the future."
i am looking with more and more alarm at the situation in afghanistan. the taliban is estimated to control 72% of the country. the roads (which were the downfalls of cyrus, darius, alexander, tamburlane, kublai khan, gordon, cardigan, and all them rooshins) are deemed to be insecure, which is current military speak for if you drive there they will blow your shit up.
supply lines in afghanistan have always been the bugaboo. the country barely supports subsistence farming for a sparse population. there is zero option for living off the land. (unless, of course, you wish to take over the poppy and hash crops and trade them for wheat in karachi, that is, if you can get your shit through the khyber)
the road between kandahar and kabul is dangerous enough to require air cover for safe transit. the khyber is unstable to the point of being effectively closed to traffic a couple months before winter does that anyway. (also, the pushtun tribes in waziri are blowing the shit up before they even roll)
NATO forces all over there are trying to fort up for the winter. forting up is a bad idea in the afghan terrain. stationary targets bring to mind the simile of shooting fish in a barrel.
when you're wounded and left
on afghanistan's plains
and the women come out to cut up what remains
jes' roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
an' go to your gawd like a soljer
rudyard kipling
Bogus,
I believe the press is overbowing this event. It was effective BUT it wasn't super sophisticated.
I'd bet Minstrel Boy could do better with a squad of Boy Scouts. And he'd effect a clear E&E plan.
I believe they stayed on target b/c this causes increasd fear in the western mind.
jim
C Tuttle,
Well this is after all his great legacy.NOT!? jim
MB,
I know you are concerned for your friend in AFGH. but I cannot wrap my mind around the concept that this war is relevent to US security.
We should just pull a retrograde.Why not when it's obvious who the indig support-either actively or passively.Why would any reasonable person keep betting with a losing hand? jim
i agree that afghanistan was never, ever, even a tiny blip on the radar of national security. not only was the way it was done counterproductive to the point of destroying any hope of a special ops or interpol, or small strike force going in and getting the motherfuckers who perpetrated 9/11. they've gone to ground deep in a briar patch that nobody in their right mind would try to penetrate.
the taliban were vile sons of bitches, but that was no concern of ours. they actually would have been happy to see the "arabs" go. they were having some residual gratitude for the help they rendered against the russians but they were very ready to bid them adieu.
i would say, get out of there. get the fuck out right now. if all hell breaks loose behind tough shit.
every life spent there is wasted as surely and certainly as those lives in vietnam that were wasted in the defense of bases abandoned mere weeks after the fight, or the hills that were taken to prove a fucking point to somebody i've never been able to figure out, then abandoned even before the defensive emplacements were destroyed.
fuck fuck fuck. obama is talking surge afghanistan will eat a surge raw.
MB, we're on the same sheet of music. And it's a sad song. jim
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