HOGWASH QUOTE OF THE DAY:
"Our country is so big that even if we have the information that something is planned we do not know where or when "- Shivraj Patil, speaking after the Hyderabad bombings.
Yes, just like when I was a kid, I used to complain during a treasure hunt that I could not find the treasure because the garden was just so big.
Let's see George Bush/Condoleeza Rice say something juvenile like that and get away with it; after all, the US is five times as large as India and it should be even more difficult to predict where terrorists will strike. Yet Bush has kept the country free from terrorist attacks for six years (although he has probably sown the seeds for more in the future).
Even if our administration had put in good intelligence efforts and then made this infantile excuse, our leaders should have been blamed for their incompetence. But the fact that our government has done almost nothing to clamp down objectively on terrorism and still says this is a true outrage.
The other important fact is that they are more concerned with appeasing minorities and not hurting their sentiments, in addition to making such excuses. For them, not hurting minority sentiments is much more important than saving the lives of citizens. Now let's just wait for Manmohan Singh to spew trite boilerplate with a stone face and say things like "terrorism knows no nationality and no religion". Meanwhile, both majorities and minorties will continue to die.
posted by Wavefunction at 7:37 AM
11 Comments:
Correct. And while we wallow in political correctness, tough anti-terrorist measures and investigations will always be hindered and thwarted, because everyone will be worried about hurting the sentiments of Muslims. This in spite of the fact that these attacks claim the lives of as many Muslims as any one else.
So what anti-terrorism steps do you recommend?
There are few terror attacks in the US purely by the accident of geography. The US doesn't have a Kashmir or Chechnya, nor does it have Pakistan or Saudi Arabia for a neighbour.
The community responsible for these activities - the Islamists / Jihadists are a minority to the point of being non-existent in the US. The day some substantial minority in the US turns to terror, we will see a different picture.
And Shivraj Patil is right - we are a huge country. Over a billion of us. Terrorism is searched for not in the land of a country but in its people.
RYC: Bah. Echo.
Patil's wailings would have been more acceptable if he had done more to stop being politically correct and prevent terrorrism, along with his pseudosecular colleague Manmohan. Let me point you to an article by B. Raman, a retired intelligence official. Let me know what you think about it:
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070712&fname=raman&sid=1
RYC: Exactly what I asked in my previous comment. How do you think Patil should go about stopping terrorism. I will read Raman's recommendations later. But don't YOU have any thoughts on this?
RYC: ". . . .round up all the politicians and shoot them . . ."
Nice sort of libertarian you are! BTW, in the Sikh insurgency in Punjab, the pro-Khalistan militants were doing just that - but targetting them one by one instead of 'rounding up'.
Cameras and surveillance in public spaces? Which public spaces? How many of them? How would a camera stop someone from placing a bag-full of explosives in a crowded place?
In a country of 1 billion people, every village has 'public places' where sizeable number of people gather. How many sniffer dogs and cameras do you think will be needed to monitor ALL of India's public places effectively?
Easy to say "take leads to logical point" - in practice the way these work, the actual planters don't KNOW who is directing or paying them.
If it was so simple, tell me, why hasn't your paragon of democratic virtues - the US - arrested Bin Laden or any of the Iraqi terrorists yet by taking the leads of 9/11 and the daily bombings in Iraq to their logical conclusions?
RYC 2: "Gay cowboy" is a factual description of the movie.
I don't think it was ground-breaking. I don't think it was beautifully acted. I do insist that "Wild America" photographed much of rural America including Wyoming much better. I have come to believe that the critical and popular acclaim was because it is politically correct / liberal to do so and not entirely because of the merits of the movie.
As I have said before, not Bush, but the accident of geography has kept America safe. if Mexico and Canada were to spawn terror the same way Pakistan and Palestine do, America would be littered with corpses - Bush or no Bush.
But then America doesn't need terrorists; gun totting school and uni kids do the job well-enough.
RYC: " . . . major railway stations including local train stations in big cities, hospitals, scientific institutes, big stores, parks, restaurant areas, theaters, and administrative centers . . "
Even if you just consider all the above types of places in ONLY the 4 metros you will have a few hundred buildings. Add to that the upcoming cities like Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Gurgaon, and the places to monitor could go in the thousands. But even that wouldn't be enough because blasts also happen in places like Varanasi and Malegaon.
RYC 1: Do you think it is Bush's 'Global War on Terror' or anything that Bush has done that has kept America free of terrorism?
No, America is free from terrorism because it has a minuscule Muslim population (unlike say Britain which HAS suffered) and does not border any state where terrorists are harboured and trained.
Don't quote book names as argument. Spell out how the 'total border' of the US is more susceptible.
RYC2: But the movie IS about gay cowboys. What's there to pretend about it!
If I wanted to denigrate, I'd have said something like "fags".
RYC3: It would be politically suicidal to protect only the metros. Actually, they did try to increase security at railway stations - including Churchgate after the train blasts of July last year. They simply could not handle the crowds.
BTW, going forward, I will reply to your comments on LJ as threads on LJ itself - its too painful to go through this word verification everytime.
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