Last week's tragic and deadly terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, serve, sadly, as just the most recent reminder of the impact global terrorism has had on every continent and nation around the world. While the face of terror often carries a different banner and agenda, the symbolic, emotional and fatal impact it can have on a civilian population is undeniable.
Over seven years removed from the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the incident in Mumbai increasingly resembles a bookend of sorts in the chronology of global terrorism. Much like the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai, New York City represented not only a logistically ideal, civilian-dense target right on America's coastline, but a symbolic strike against American capitalism and finance. Much like New York City, Mumbai stands as a symbol of diversity and freedom in a country often plagued by sectarian divisions and strife. Crown jewels in two of the world's largest and most prosperous democracies.
There have been far too many terrorist attacks since 9/11, and to limit such a list to only five was no easy task. Many lives have been lost; relics, buildings and temples of worship left in rubble. Our goal at RealClearWorld was to avoid a list exclusively based on casualties, and instead accounted for other important factors in these attacks: Symbolism, strategic significance and domestic political impact were also considered alongside the carnage and bloodshed produced by these attacks.
Those selected:
No. 5 Mumbai 2006 (previous attack on India's financial capital), No. 4 Bali 2002, No. 3 Moscow 2002, No. 2 London 2005, No. 1 Madrid 2004.
Arthur Hermanmakes the case that the terrorists won't be stopped until governments go after them, root them out, and defeat them:
It’s been fascinating, but also disheartening, to watch the mainstream media completely miss the real story about the 60-hour terrorist rampage in Mumbai, India — which may have killed as many as 300 people, and has certainly injured hundreds more. What died in Mumbai — besides scores of innocent people in their hotel rooms and at the Mumbai Jewish Cultural Center and on the blood-drenched platform at Chatrapathi Sivaji railway terminal — were certain illusions about the war on terror, and how to deal with terrorists.
One of those illusions is about who is fighting whom in the war on terror.
Many put the blame for the attack on years of Indian-Pakistani hostility and tension. In fact, relations between the two countries have never been warmer. This past month, Pakistan’s new president stunned and delighted Indians by publicly renouncing any first use of nuclear weapons. Violence in Kashmir, the principal bone of contention between India and Pakistan since 1947, is on the decline. Before the Mumbai attacks, politicians were scheduled to start talks on permitting trade across the region’s Line of Control, so that Hindu farmers in Indian Kashmir can sell their wheat or a used tractor to Muslim farmers in Pakistani Kashmir.
This is precisely what the terrorists don’t want, of course. It’s the fact that tensions over Kashmir are diminishing that prompted them to attack on the November 28 — just as al-Qaeda blew up Samarra’s Golden Mosque in Iraq back in 2006 in order to keep Shias and Sunnis hating and killing each other. The illusion that formal agreements between peoples and governments — whether between India and Pakistan or Israel and the Palestinian Authority — can somehow defuse the terrorist problem was the among the first casualties in Mumbai. Terrorists see it the other way around: the relaxation of tensions is a problem requiring bloodshed.
Islamic terrorists don’t want justice or respect for their beliefs, or restoration of some imaginary homeland. They want violence and death. The duty of every government is to make sure that terrorists get them before they can deal them out. Pakistanis will never know peace, or peace with their neighbors in Afghanistan and India, until they finally and ruthlessly root out the terrorists in their midst.
Thisis good: Muslims standing up to evil in their midst:
A Muslim graveyard in the heart of Mumbai has broken with Islamic tradition and refused to bury the bodies of nine terrorists who were killed during the attack on India's financial capital.
The influential Muslim Jama Masjid Trust, which runs the 7.5-acre Badakabrastan graveyard, said it would not bury the gunmen because they were not true followers of Islam.
Hanif Nalkhande, a spokesman for the trust, said: "People who committed this heinous crime cannot be called Muslim. Islam does not permit this sort of barbaric crime."
This gesture is well short of Geert Wilders' demand that Muslims repudiate the Koran itself.
But it's a start in the right direction, although don't forget Mark Steyn's words earlier:
The Islamic imperialist project is a totalitarian ideology: It is at war with Hindus, Jews, Americans, Britons, everything that is other.
