CNN is calling it India's 7/11. There is no need for designating numerical symmetry to terror and horror for the sake of catchy news headlines. This is despicable any where, any day, against anyone. Some pictures of the Mumbai devastation here.
An Update: Here is an interesting aside on the American right wing's naive and self serving take on the Mumbai blast with commentary from Curious Gawker.
"Many right wing bloggers in the US are somehow trying to link these bomb blasts with their own selfish pro-Bush agenda... The rest are engaging in highly clueless analysis of the events. For example Captain Ed of the prominent right wing "Captain's Quarters" blog. Here is his erudite commentary :
It looks like al-Qaeda or an Islamofascist offshoot has decided to add another nation to its blood enemies.
What motivated AQ to go after India? It's hardly the first country one associates with the West, and many Muslims live within the majority-Hindu nation.
It's almost as if Captain Ed woke up today, discovered the existence of a country called India through CNN and decided it was time he graced us with his expert opinion on Indian politics. Dear Captain Ed, India has been afflicted by Pakistan and Al Qaida sponsored terrorism long before the US stopped supplying Al Qaida (and Pakistan) with arms and weaponry. Then, the learned Captain opines :
But mostly AQ and other Islamist terrorists have targeted tourists, and India is in the middle of its tourist season.
Uh what? Tourist season in mid-monsoon? Can't get any more clueless than that. Furthermore,
AQ wants to destroy India's economy, fragile enough as it is, by keeping tourists away from the country.
It looks like India will have a 7/11 to match Madrid's 3/11 and our 9/11.
No more special dates for us, thank you. We've already had too many of those."
The right wing jumping on the Indian band wagon is pretty infuriating and sadly ironic. India is an "ally now with an economy fueled by western tourism?" Should I laugh or cry? Hasn't the idiot read the great Indologist, Sir Thomas Friedman?
Is there any use in reminding these numbskulls how misdirected and corrupt their war on global terrorism has been? If in 2001, the US had indeed allied with India in putting a two pronged pressure on Al Qaida (and its alphabet soup of satellite terrorist outfits) in Pakistan (yes, the granddaddy of all terrorist sponsors), Afghanistan and Kashmir, we may not have had Madrid, London and Mumbai. Heck, had they gone after the true miscreants, we wouldn't have had Iraq!
I think the current attacks may have had something to do with the opportunity provided by the police's attention having been distracted with the ruckus raised by the Shiv Sena over the vandalism to the late Meenatai ( Bal Thackeray's wife) statue. The miscreants took it as a prime opportunity to cause trouble of a different kind.
Of course, it still begs the question as to why the American press plays it up as an AQ plot, while the Lashkar-e-Taiba is issuing denials of its involvement in the blasts. Just who benefits from all this chaos and death?
As usual, the people affected are the ones who have the least say in how these investigations are handled.
Posted by: Sujatha | July 12, 2006 at 03:11 AM
As little as most Americans (and I include myself here) know about what is going on in the rest of the world, it is very annoying to hear that some right-wingers are using such a tragedy to "support" their arguments in favor of our incompetent "leader".
Sometimes I really have to wonder how the rest of the world can stand the U.S. under its current administration.
Posted by: Snave | July 17, 2006 at 03:13 AM