My observations on the attacks in Mumbai have been posted at Outside the Beltway. A snippet:
That’s what baffled me about the attacks. This wasn’t the same as a suicide bomber blowing him- or herself up in a crowded marketplace. That could have been achieved at a fraction of the cost of this particular set of attacks.
It’s possible they lacked the skills or materials to make suicide vests.
Or there may be an ideological/religious problem with suicide per se as opposed to a suicidal mission.
There may have been a sort of romantic self-image at play, one of the planners perhaps preferring a sort of dashing Che Guevarra gunman image.
Al Qaeda in Iraq has been using women to carry suicide bombs. Maybe they felt that method had become insufficiently masculine.
There may have been, as you suggest, a Part 2 that somehow failed to materialize.
They may have wanted to ensure the specific deaths of one or more individuals within the context of the overall mission — in other words, it may have had an element of targeted assassination.
Or they may have wanted to create a new identity for themselves, something to differentiate themselves from Al Qaeda.
You’re probably right on most of those. The trouble is it doesn’t really matter, because the truth is they were a bunch of lunatics whipped up by the CIA to perpetrate some “terrorism.” We’ve not had a “terrorist attack” for a while, and now that a new US president is on the scene, we need to be reminded that being afraid of unknown scary things and spending billions on war and weapons is all wonderfully necessary.
Ask yourself this question: has anything you have read or heard about the people that have perpetrated the Mumbai attacks been explanatory of really WHY they did it? I’m not talking about vague fluff like they wish to undermine democracy – I mean actual REASONS based on detailed rationale? The people who did this are real people like you and me. They wouldn’t have been any more likely to do what they did because of some vague irritation.
Jonathon:
Uh huh. And rapists do what they do because women wear short skirts.
Jonathan, it’s really very simple. You have a world view. I have a world view. Jihadis have a world view. I don’t know exactly what your world view is. My world view is that the ultimate expression of humanity is that each of us, as individuals, should be free to do as we please, so long as we do not harm others or limit their ability to do as they please, and that we form governments to handle the overlap conditions; that is, to protect us from force and fraud. The jihadi world view is that the ultimate expression of humanity is submission (the literal meaning of “Islam”) to their god (Allah), and its earthly expression as a Muslim theocracy under Shari’a (Islamic law as laid out in the Koran and the Hadiths, as interpreted by Q’tab and others of similar mind).
I would kill and die, in the end, to protect my liberty, if I had no other choice. The jihadis kill and die daily for their vision. It’s not that complicated, to anyone whose vision is more than “survive, even as a slave.”