A few young men out on a spree
It’s hard to read it without feeling sick – sick with loathing and disgust. With hatred of what people can be at their most horrible – and of what makes them be like that.
[T]he Chhatrapati Shivaji terminus, previously known as the Victoria terminus, a world heritage site and one of India’s busiest stations, was the scene of mayhem, with blood spattered across the station forecourt and platforms. Gunmen shot up the reservation counter of the station, randomly sprayed passengers, believed to be entirely composed of Indian travellers and commuters, and fled. “They just fired randomly at people and then ran away. In seconds, people fell to the ground,” said Nasim Inam, a witness. Cafe worker Pappu Mishra said two men dressed in black walked into the station pulling guns from their bags and shooting commuters. “Their audaciousness was breathtaking,” he said. “One man loaded the magazine into the gun, the other kept shooting. They appeared calm and composed. They were not in the slightest hurry. They didn’t seem to be afraid at all.” At least 10 people were killed.
Just calmly, tranquilly, cheerfully strolling around killing and maiming people, as one might stroll around a big city taking in the sights.
While guests in both hotels spoke of some gunmen asking for Americans and Britons, the death toll made it clear that, by a vast majority, the main victims were Indians and that any foreigner was regarded as a suitable target. Among the dead are Japanese, Italians, Germans and Australians and among the guests rounded up were Yemenis, Spaniards, New Zealanders, Turks and Israelis.
Whatever. Whoever. It doesn’t matter. It never has. Anybody, everybody – everybody is the enemy. They’re all either infidels, or consumers, or Westerners, or Indians, or foreign, or in the way, or not pure enough, or not waging jihad, or something – they all have something about them that makes it quite all right to kill them or maim them. Why not? Al Qaeda tells us it appeals ‘to the “weak and oppressed” around the world so why not shoot up train stations and hospitals?
Gunmen also attacked Cama and Albless hospital and GT hospital, causing fresh panic. The hospital is known as a place where women and the children of the poor are treated and there was puzzlement as to why it had been added to the target list of the attackers.
Because they’re horrible horrible horrible people who like hurting and killing people, that’s why! They blew up the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania all those years ago, killing mostly Africans! And women aren’t supposed to go to hospitals, remember? And children are just future women or infidels or consumers…so why spare them? Why spare anyone? No reason.
Allah the Merciful. You have got to be kidding.
People who like hurting and killing people are mentally ill. It doesn’t matter what sick justifications they spout or who they think they are freeing from oppression. They are sociopaths.
No, they are not simply sociopaths. They are useful sociopaths. They are sociopaths aimed at their targets by ideologues who wish to advance a particular political agenda. That is what terrorism is, after all – politically motivated violence. Even if the actual persons carrying out the violence are mentally ill by any reasonable definition, their actions cannot be dismissed as mere madness – incomprehensible, random, sourceless. To see it as such is to ignore the actual causes.
Everyday sociopaths are created by social circumstance: You can go read the psychological research about sociopathology and its origins, however, and find nothing that matches the background of most terrorists. Terrorists don’t just happen, they are recruited, trained, and indoctrinated. It may even turn out that these terrorists, like the London bombers, did not start out as sociopaths at all, but as mere disaffected middle-class youth indoctrinated into a sociopathic ideology by religious fundamentalists. Or maybe the Mumbai terrorists come from considerably less comfortable, more desperate backgrounds – but desperate backgrounds produce criminals, not specifically terrorists. These “sociopaths” are manufactured to order by those seeking to spread Islamist theocracy: Their violence is intended to galvanize their theocratic fellow travelers and to terrorize those who would oppose the spread of Islamist theocracy into inaction.
An isolated beating or rape or murder might be understandable only as the random act of a sociopath. But the mental health of the individuals who carry out acts of political violence such as the organized terrorist attack in Mumbai (and the systematic brutality against women in Afghanistan, and more additional examples than I have the stomach to list) seems rather beside the point.
Noteworthy is that the initial reports talk about co-operation between Islam-terrorists and the local underworld.
Just goes to show – talk about God and wind up with the devil!
William Fucking Dalrymple has an answer as to why the murderous bastards targetted hospitals.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-india1
The Al-guardian has pulled off a long list of atrocious articles on the mumbai terror killings the last few days but this is the one of the worst. Every writer who links ‘legitimate muslim grievances’ to this atrocity as an ‘explanation’ makes legitimate targets of millions of innocent muslims.
It’s good to see that the Guardian’s sister paper highlights the paranoid notion that there is a Western (read US/UK) worldwide crusade against Muslims. From an editorial in today’s Observer:
“Established facts about who organised and carried out the atrocities are few. In one crucial respect, the Mumbai attacks are distinct from previous terrorist episodes in India: the apparent targeting of foreigners – principally US and UK citizens – and Jews. That suggests the attacks were guided by al-Qaeda ideology, if not directed by al-Qaeda affiliates. This was not the pursuit of political objectives by military means, it was the opening of a front in the war against ‘Zionist-imperialist crusaders’ – the root of all evil in the warped and paranoid world view of Islamist jihadi doctrine.
“India’s terrible misfortune is to have been singled out as a collaborator in the imagined Western conspiracy against Muslims. Mumbai is a symbol of India’s rapid development and rising affluence and so an emblem of moral depravity for those who despise open societies, political freedom and economic progress.”
And, unlike the Guardian, the editorial writer does not shy away from calling the perpetrators “terrorists”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/30/mumbai-terror-attacks-comment
“We still don’t know why they did this”
‘When several attackers seized a Jewish outreach center, Nariman House, on Wednesday, neighbors mistook the initial shots for firecrackers in celebration of India’s imminent cricket victory over England. But then two attackers stepped out on a balcony of Nariman House and opened fire on passers-by in an alley nearby. They killed a 22-year-old call center worker who was the sole financial supporter of his widowed mother.
‘When a tailor locked up his store for the night, half a block from the Taj Hotel, a gunman spotted him and killed him instantly, said Rony Dass, a cable television installer. “We still don’t know why they did this,” he said, mourning his lifelong friend.’
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/01/world/asia/01mumbai.html?_r=1&hp
Grim times. I predict more cross-polonistation between terror groups and the international criminal organisations increasingly operating out of – and potentially even running -failing states. We ain’t seen nothing yet.