Sunday, February 14, 2010

Bombing the innocent

A year and a half ago, when bomb blasts occurred in Ahmedabad and Bangalore, I wrote here: "Protecting public, open places is impossible.... unless one puts up entry barriers for the entire city and vets each one of the several million residents of the city. The cost of that -- and I don't mean monetary -- would be unacceptable. This is true not just in India... Terrorism is always a cowardly thing, but I suspect the reason this sort of thing isn't more common is that, even to the terrorists, targetting civilians in public places is too easy, too cowardly."

The news of today's restaurant bombing in Pune makes me stand by that statement. If -- as it appears -- it was a terrorist attack and not an accident, it was a craven and cowardly thing to do. My condolences to the victims. But, paradoxically, this only shows the desperation of the terrorists. If they are reduced to this sort of action, which requires no sort of bravery and earns them only opprobrium from all quarters, it shows how little their support -- whether local or foreign is; and how effective India's anti-terrorism strategy has been, that in this enormous and crowded country this has been the first terrorist attack since the Mumbai attacks over 14 months ago.

In other welcome news, Maharashtra's moviegoers gave an overwhelming thumbs-down to their own home-grown terrorists.

8 comments:

Casi said...

What else did you expect? They are going to go after the "non-innocent" people? Jeez! Indians and their neighbors - Indians are guilty (not really, but its a democracy!) for what their armies do to other people, what their socio-economic policies do to their minorities and the same thing applies to their neighbors. That is why democracy is an evil system.
And if you are an Indian, and don't know any other political and non-political system other than democracy and "dictatorship" - go read some political theory before responding to this comment.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Casi: as I said, this sort of attack is really easy. So the fact that it is so rare means that even the terrorists are largely not quite as depraved as you.

Also, at least some of those killed were not Indians. But of course you will say they were evil for visiting India.

Actually, of course, I should say that such attacks are rare in India: they are common in some places, like Iraq, and of course they were common in Europe a century ago, perpetrated by the anarchists -- no doubt you are one, too. Occasionally an anarchist philosophy does attract substantial local support, for some reason. It seems that has not happened in India. That is the important thing.

Casi said...

Rahul.. Do you know anything about anarchism? Let me guess, you think anarchists are terrorists.."depraved", *smirks*

From what you wrote, its quite clear that you should have taken the later part of my comment as an advice. It would have saved some embarrassment, for a person of sufficient curiousity.

The last time 200 people lost lives for absolutely no good reason, you Indians did not do anything about it, did you?
Heck, if you were inclined to do anything you would not have the faintest idea what to do and how to do it and would end up doing something stupid like starting a war.

Even wild beast stand up to danger and fight back, Indians apparently prefer to adopt behavior suitable for domestic sheep. Thats not a slam against Indians, that is only an observation on the behavior of Indians. If you think that is bad, you have a problem with reality.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

Casi - from looking at your own blog, your idea of political philosophy is Lew Rockwell / Murray Rothbard. Enough said.

Casi said...

Hmm.. So you do know who Lew Rockwell and Murray Rothbard is! Yes, they are a good starting point - quite relevant and contemporary, but there is more to it than just them. Say, what is your idea of a political philosophy? Gandhi?

I like Gandhi.. even with all his personal failings and leftism, he was still pretty smart.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

I'm sure Gandhi would have been honoured. As I am. I didn't expect to see real Rockwellites on my blog. (Next up: LaRouchies?)

Some of the things I have learned from Rockwell's site are: HIV doesn't cause AIDS; global climate change is a conspiracy theory; evolution is bogus and the earth was created 6000 years ago. I look forward to your exposition of all these discoveries, in addition to political philosophy.

km said...

Rahul: You've Got Troll.

Rahul Siddharthan said...

km: I know, don't feed. But what does one do with a real (apparently), live Rockwellite? Wouldn't want the poor creature to starve.