The Mumbai terror attacks
Wednesday November 26, 2008
Categories: Islamic terrorism
Breaking now: mass terror attacks underway in Mumbai, at hotels and other locations. Government says 78 people dead now, hundreds injured. The attacks are apparently coordinated, and taking place simultaneously all over the city. One Indian terrorism analyst on CNN...
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Advertisement
Advertisement
Search This Blog
Recent Posts
About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
Subscribe
Archives
Blogs Worth Reading
- Front Porch Republic
- The American Conservative
- Patrick Deneen
- Conventional Folly
- The American Scene
- First Things
- Andrew Sullivan
- The Plank
- Eunomia
- Get Religion
- Postmodern Conservative
- Alex Massie
- The Corner
- Contentions
- Sharon Astyk
- Barry Ritholtz
- The Oil Drum
- Mere Comments
- First Principles (ISI)
- Brian Kaller
How can you be so sure that this is the work of Muslim terrorists? How can we know that this isn't the work of anti-gay Mormons, for whom no culture is sufficiently conservative or hateful.
This sounds similar to the Abu Nidal shootings at the Rome and Vienna airports in December, 1985.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Nidal
The M.O. is somewhat different from the usual for Al Qaeda, but certainly both Islamic and Sikh groups have done the mass shooting type attacks in the past. The high degree of coordination may point to an AQ allied/funded/inspired group. I am not certain that this sort of thing can be pulled off so readily here, since the transfer of money and likelihood of communications interception make large, coordinated attacks here far more difficult. Also, the Muslim community is proportionally much smaller then in many other countries, and is under a great deal of suspicion. I would entertain the idea of small, self motivated jihadism such as the July 4 attack on the El Al ticket counter at LAX a few years back, and other half baked efforts. AQ will continue to seek out targets of opportunity in Europe, SW and Central Asia, Africa, the Pacific Rim and possibly South America.
As for the possibility of a Beslan type hostage/massacre scenario...
It is interesting that so many gunman seek out areas where they know the victims will be unarmed, isn't it?
AQ isn't interested in hostages, however. Any place with a high number of people in a confined area will do for generating a massacre, and we have seen attacks on shopping malls at least twice in recent years by gunmen. AQ particularly likes mass transit corridors as well as commercial areas for attacks. Even under their twisted theology there are rules, however, and I am not sure the Zawahiri would authorize an attack on a school as such. Not that there was any such restraint on the Chechens...
Re: I was told this week by a source that law enforcement is expecting the next terror attack in the US to be less like 9/11 and more like the Beslan massacre
I tend to doubt that, because the Breslan masacre was met with almost universal revulsion in the Muslim world and even the radicals did not rush to claim solidarity with the Chechen perpetrators.
Moreover terrorists love to pull off spectacular stunts, with big things going "boom!" and high body counts. One reason I think they have largely eschewed chermical or biological weapons is because there's a real shortage of broken glass and twisted steel with such attacks.
"How can we know that this isn't the work of anti-gay Mormons, for whom no culture is sufficiently conservative or hateful."
I am not aware of any anti-gay violence by Mormons. The violence over the past few weeks seems to have come from militant homosexuals.
Yes, obviously gay Al-Qaeda terrorists are holding Mumbai in lockdown, at the Mormon missions near major hotels.
Just like to second Patrick Henry Reardon's remark, and to say it doesn't seem especially unhateful to me to use a report on the death of 80 people as an opportunity to express an aversion for Mormons.
This hits me a little close to home. I've stayed at the Taj hotel and eaten at the Oberoi many times. Back in September when the Marriott in Islamabad was bombed, I noticed that a lot of Western businesses started talking about keeping their people out of Pakistan and maybe pulling business out. I told my wife that I expected attacks on Westerners to start in India, and hopefully I wouldn't be there when they did. A lot of the radical groups, both Islamic and Naxalite, really want Western businesses out. Nobody from my team is there now, but I'm not sure about our company.
Friend of mine in Mumbai is reporting that things are calmer than being reported (at least in his neck of the woods). Not to say this isn't bad but it might be a little bit much to say "the whole city is being held hostage". Of course, his is just one experience, but media might be hyping this up a little bit.
I guess we'll just have to wait and see.
Fox News says the people claiming responsibility are moslem, the Deccan Mujahideen. So you were right Rod. Phew. I pray for my friends over there in Mumbai. I wonder what's next.
I am not aware of any anti-gay violence by Mormons. The violence over the past few weeks seems to have come from militant homosexuals.
Hatemonger!
Mumbai is in my prayers.
Sometimes it's fun to imagine what Rod's posts would be titled if he had a normal blog like everybody else:
The Brushing of the Teeth Affair
The Photographing of Whiskers the Cat
The What I Ate For Lunch Incident
My Dad left there to to fly to another part of india 2 hours before the attacks started, they hit the hotel he had stayed in so thank got he wasnt there anymore,
there isnt much cahnce they would hit other parts of india is there :S?
I have a business associate in Mumbai. I'm certain he is ok, after all it is a very large place and the odds of his being at that hotel are very small. But I'm waiting to hear from him to make sure.
Liberals and conservatives, progressivists and traditionalists, country folk and city folk -- people of the Western world -- can we all agree that Muslim terrorists are the biggest fucking assholes we've seen in our lifetime?
"I am not sure the Zawahiri would authorize an attack on a school as such. Not that there was any such restraint on the Chechens..."
Al Qaeda has no problem with targeting and killing children. I'm aware that Al Qaeda in Iraq is a particularly nasty instance of the AQ franchise, but in Iraq have targeted and IEDed elementary school girls walking to school, killing several, left dead children on their parents' doorstep in a mutilated state I will not describe here, and have also recruited and used young teenage girls as suicide bombers. And all this was just during my last tour to the sunny Middle East. In Afghanistan, Taliban types will stop at nothing, including throwing acid at little girls' faces to prevent them from going to school.
The thinkers in Islamic legal tradition may not condone these things, and indeed, they may be largely rejected by the Muslim public as immoral and illegal from an Islamic Sharia standpoint. But it doesn't prevent these things from going on in some very dark places.
The Mumbai attacks were not only well-coordinated, which doesn't take much but good planning and reliable comms (and comms are ubiquitous in the 21st century), and maybe a rehearsal or two in a mock-up of the setting of the attacks. The attacks were also numerous, which suggests a lot of manpower. That worries me more. Behind that kind of manpower there is money, and influence. On the plus side, with that many people involved, it shouldn't take too long to uncover the responsible parties and deal with them. Their army's already securing several of the hotels. But the fact that such a series of attacks could be carried out will scare the crap out of people, which is generally one of the points of terrorism.
I do wonder if these attacks are at all related to the ones in Islamabad a little while ago?
To "Your Name"(the first one) and "Iqbal":
Is there anything that will cure you of the Mormon Derangement Syndrome? Congratulations on hijacking a post documenting horrific terrorist violence to further your political obsessions! Surely this is the way to gain new friends for the gay "cause".
Our cousin is in Mumbai now. Poor dear, she was so afraid to go, and now I cannot imagine how scared she is! She is with relatives and hopefully they will keep her calm. Our prayers go out to all of Mumbai!
One of the terrorists was on Indian TV claiming to be part of the Decca Mujahadeen and saying the attack was to avenge what he called India's persecution of Muslims.
I mean ... could there ever have been serious doubt who did this, broadly speaking?
Bloggers from Mumbai speak out against the attacks.
Victor, that the group responsible was one of literally dozens of Muslim-associated terrorist groups was never really in question. And almost besides the point. The real question is, who provided the funding, expertise, training, weaponry, and manpower for such a complex and large scale operation?? A nation-state? A trans-national organization? An unholy mix of the two, with large off-shore accounts somewhere? Regardless of the answer to that question, it's rather worrying.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.