By Denis Campbell
60-hours of madness ended with Indian officials claiming they shot the last gunman holed up in the Taj hotel. Dawn broke this morning and officials try to sort through the mess. 10-sites including train stations, community centres, hospitals, restaurants and luxury hotels were targeted. Jewish, American and British citizens were targeted, 195 killed, scores injured and we all are left asking is why?
The pundit blame game is easy, so it begins. Indian authorities now face questions about controlling madness. How could a boat loaded with heavily armed young men simply arrive unmolested in the harbour? How could they move unmolested through the streets of the heavily protected financial centre? Why were the police not more prepared? It will not be pretty and give them credit, they reacted as best they could in a situation of madness.
No matter how hard you try, madness cannot be stopped. And we need to get our arms around that idea quickly.
The reaction was swift, focused and brutal. No negotiation, limit loss of life by striking back with raw force against an unseen and hidden enemy. They were chasing shadows who had only one plan of engagement – spread out, use all your weapons and ammo, kill as many as you can and expect – indeed be willing to die.
Madness.
There are enough possible sources that could incite such an action, abject poverty, disaffected youth unable to find work, people already dying in the streets daily of hunger, tension with Pakistan, the Kashmir situation, US involvement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a possible link to Al Qaeda training the disaffected… are but a few. It is a land known for terrorist attacks at all levels.
This new face of brazen terrorism caught everyone by surprise. Aim for multiple kills, use young zealots trained, brainwashed and prepared to die and inflict mass hysteria where perhaps as many people were caught in the crossfire as killed directly by terrorists.
And then there was the timing and the target. It is no coincidence they struck India’s financial nerve centre during a huge US holiday and global financial crisis. Folks half a world away stared in horror at telly screens and yet seemed detached unless you knew of someone in Mumbai at the time.
It was almost as if the world had no more energy to give to a conflict so far away. People on the one hand were giving thanks for what they still had in terms of health and family yet worried about home foreclosures, job losses and the disappearance of their retirement 401(k) fund in a credit crunch affecting everyone but the bankers and captains of industry that caused it.
Now, in the aftermath, the cold reality sets in as we look at the bigger picture.
Could NYC’s finest have stopped a small boatload of 20 heavily armed young men tying up on one of the many docks of the West side, fanning out across Manhattan and taking out motorists in cars, buses and taxis, the sprawling Port Authority terminal, Madison Square Garden, Grand Central Station, Macy’s Department Store, a hospital, The Plaza and Waldorf Astoria Hotels? Would the death toll only have been 195? The rumour mill was already buzzing before this event with a previously disproven plot to wreak havoc on the NYC subway system.
Every decade or so terrorist cells become more creative in their planning and make no mistake; this action was planned and rehearsed. And here is where we now must re-double efforts to ensure already fragile personal rights and freedoms are not taken away in a rush to “protect us.”
I am reminded of the scene in The West Wing where Toby Ziegler begs the lead Secret Service agent to let him take the blame off the service for a shooting attack on the fictional President.
TOBY: Ron, I don’t think it’s right that the Secret Service get blamed for what happened last night, I want the Treasury Department to hand over my memo to the Press.
RON: No, we can’t do that.
TOBY: Let me go over there and tell them it was my fault.
RON: It wasn’t your fault.
TOBY: Ron.
RON: It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t Charlie’s fault, it wasn’t anybody’s fault, Toby. It was an act of madmen. You think a tent was going to stop them? We got the President in the car. We got Zoey in the car. And at 150 yards, five stories up, the shooters were down 9.2 seconds after the first shot was fired. I would never let you not let me protect the President. You tell us you don’t like something, we figure out something else. It was an act of madmen.
Let us hope that level of professionalism rules our world’s Congresses and Parliaments as they try to do the impossible, protect everyone in it from madmen.
Classic over-reach based on media seeded fear is too high a price to pay. It was done in 2001 after 9-11 with the Patriot Act and we have paid dearly for it.
Losing our freedoms is too high a price to pay. Behaving like barbarians ourselves and arming to the teeth is too high a price to pay. Allowing fear to rule is too high a price to pay. If the terrorists get one person to alter their behaviour, they win and we all lose.
It was an act of madmen, we don’t need now to follow in kind for a political agenda or objective.
