The Meaning of Mumbai

South Asia, the new arena

By Justin Raimondo

"The Mumbai massacre comes at a time when the U.S. is about to switch battlefields in its avowedly "generational" war on terrorism, from the Middle East to South Asia. As we move our forces eastward into Afghanistan and, inevitably, Pakistan, the events in Mumbai light up the geopolitical landscape like lightning at midnight, prefiguring a new and even bigger quagmire than the one we're supposedly leaving behind in Iraq. Forget the differences between Sunnis and Shi'ites. That's so yesterday. What we're dealing with now, in the Pakistani-Indian rivalry, is a true war of civilizations, pitting Muslims against Hindus....

More parallels with 9/11 – if you'll remember the immediate reaction of the War Party was to link the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Today, the reflexive response of the same avowed "experts" is to point the finger at Pakistan. One would imagine the debunking of the Saddam-Osama connection would give them some pause, but no. A rationale for war is being constructed with stunning swiftness.....

The neat little narratives pumped out by war propagandists to rationalize acts of mass murder are an important part of any campaign to spark a conflict, so they have to be minimally convincing, or at least credible. Yet the story coming out of the Indian government is frankly incredible. The terrorists left a satellite phone conveniently placed next to the body of their ship's captain, whose throat they had slit, with the numbers of their handlers stored in memory. Very convenient. Even less convincing, however, is the assertion that even after Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the terror squad, had been captured, he continued to get messages from his handlers. That little embellishment, I believe, gives the show away. Add to this the oddly unprepared – indeed, criminally negligent – role of the Indian security apparatus, and the whole thing reeks to high heaven. "Fishy" is putting it mildly....."