There’s a lot of talk about the recent attacks in Bombay being India’s 9/11. But there was another such attack by Islamic militants in July 2006, it killed over 200 people, and I wrote about it here. In 1993, a series of bombings killed 250 Indians in the same city. Neither event is exactly ancient history.
I am struck, however, about the massive death toll the modest number of terrorists–10 by the latest reports–were able to inflict. Any open society, whether in Europe or North America risks these kinds of attacks. What would stop a similar group with similar goals from shooting up shopping malls, sporting events, or country fairs here at home.
Coupled with the attackers’ unappeasable demands and the high cost of stringent security measures, they appear inevitable and likely to be repeated barring what has for some years become unspeakable. The most cost effective and least draconian solution for societies like ours still appears to be (a) not let people from the world’s aggrieved and militant populations within our borders and (2) make life difficult and laden with suspicion with an ultimate goal of self-deportation or assimilation for those whom we improvidently have allowed in. Yet this approach is treated as unspeakable, while strip searching 80 year old grandmothers at airports is A-OK. The values of equality and diversity trump all others, including genuine security and our historic liberties.
We are not India. Pakistan is not on our border, nor is there any source of organized militancy to be found at home. While there are aggrieved groups among America’s poor, various ethnic minorities, and home-grown losers in the trends of globalization, their organization is lacking and their grievances dispersed in all directions against what may loosely be called “The Man.” In other words, these are problems of our own making; the root cause is easily identified, but we are too scared of not living up to our au courant value of open borders. I should think if the body count of these types of attacks climbs high enough in Europe and America, the current order will be exposed as a fraud, and both regions will be ready for what is now considered radical political change. For now, we have meaningless gestures of condemnation by the Bushes and Obamas of the world, neither of whom has shown any insight or moral courage on the big picture issues.
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Do you notice though, how the number of such attacks seems to have decreased in Arabic countries? You have to give Iraq some credit for dispatching a whole lot of terrorists who would have found other ways to keep themselves occupied.
I think, though, it’s a bit of both. It has created a shit magnet for existing would-be terrorists in the Middle East. It has also likely aggrieved certain people who never would have become terrorists. I’m not sure how that nets out.
I also think the timelines we’re using are funny, as is the analysis. I mean there was Madrid and the London Train Bombers and a number of thwarted attacks of varying profiles and threat levels. Plus we’ve been in Iraq fives years. That’s a blink of the eye for large scale terrorist attack timelines.
I do believe we’ll see other low-tech, high concept attacks on soft targets so long as we continue to play with fire domestically and internationally. So long as we “Invade the World, Invite the World,” to use Steve Sailer’s phrase, we’ll direct the attention and resentments of strange peoples whose aggrieved young men we allow in through the front door.
Iraq probably did result in some new recruits, but for the most part I think they were already plenty aggrieved before Iraq. In both Britain and Spain’s case, they were homegrown terrorists, so again I would say Iraq has pretty effectively sucked in terrorists from the Arab countries. I have read that they are now heading towards Afghanistan.
Of course the fact that those attacks in Europe were homegrown is further evidence that “invade the world, invite the world” is a losing strategy in the long run.
Despite the high drama of the Mumbai attacks, I’ve thought for a while now that a steady rain of smaller, but lethal attacks would be the most effective method of terrorism. Look for instance, at the effect of the DC Sniper. Now multiply that across the country and over a prolonged period of time.
“Iraq probably did result in some new recruits,…”
The great irony re: our Iraq invasion was that it was supposed to give birth to 1000 bin Ladens.
We heard that noise day in, day out.
Oops. Never happened. Indeed, it had the exact opposite effect. Once the hard-core jihadists showed up, like Zarqawi, and tried to impose their al Qaeda delights upon the locals, suddenly the great Jihad no longer had quite the zest and zeal.
It certainly found disdain quicker than did democracy. Now one can say Iraq’s being historically secular accounts for that happening, but al Qaeada seemed to have seriously overthought their appeal.
If we look closely at these Islamic extremists, it appears that their agenda always looks more inviting from a distance. For example, the Taliban wasn’t so sexy, up close and personal. And how many in Iran are screaming for more shariah and theocracy? Those days are short.
And whatever happened to the Muslim Brotherhood? Has the demand for a Caliphate gone the way of communism?
I’ll concede that, say, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia seem to subsume extremist worlds, but one wonders if that’s because of some intrinsic appeal of the cause or because an otherwise repressive state and regime is fostering that false appeal.
From my angle, I’d say we might tread carefully in places like Pakistan and S.A., where our assistance and de facto occupations are viewed as maintaining the (unpopular) status quo. Someone please tell Obama and HRC.
I think we got lucky in Iraq, ultimately, inasmuch as the locals came to see our occupation as an improvement, much as it may have temporarily disrupted their lives. Call it one step back to go two forward.
But the larger point, really, is how little these Jihadist movements take root, once their zealots spit the bit and after the self-advertising bombs explode.
Maybe we’re misidentifying this extremism. Maybe it’s nothing more than some episodic angst, something that is just going to happen every 50 years or so, regardless of what we do.
“Any open society, whether in Europe or North America risks these kinds of attacks. What would stop a similar group with similar goals from shooting up shopping malls, sporting events, or country fairs here at home.”
People exercising their Second Amendment rights, for one. See http://www.ignatius-piazza-front-sight.com/2008/12/01/why-mumbai-india/
I gather the Indian police and security personnel on the scene were poorly armed and poorly trained, just like the civilians.
Obviously, cities with strict gun control policies are more vulnerable to Mumbai-style attacks than others.
I hear Chicago cops lament the expulsion of gun stores from their city. In the event a well-armed attacker runs riot, the cops don’t have private armories to draw upon.
I would say its been going on in one form or another for about 1400 years, and doesn’t show signs of letting up.
You make a good point that Muslim fundamentalism is pretty ugly once put into practice, the problem is that whatever corrupt kleptocracy replaces it is generally pretty ugly as well, which tends to put some of the sheen back on sharia.
It may actually be that sharia rule has the most romantic appeal among the Muslim populations it is furthest removed from, such as in the Muslim populations of Europe.