Posted on 12/02/2008 4:54:32 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Arguably the most successful act of revolutionary terror was the June 1914 assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo.
Believing his mission to murder the heir to the Austrian throne had failed, Gavrilo Princip suddenly found himself standing a few feet away from the royal car. He fired twice, mortally wounding the archduke and his wife.
Tactically, that act of terror eliminated the reformist Ferdinand, who meant to address the grievances of his Slav subjects by granting them greater autonomy and equality with Austrians and Hungarians inside the empire.
Strategically, the assassination succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of its Black Hand plotters.
Hard-liners in Austria demanded an ultimatum to Serbia. When her demands were not met in full, Vienna declared war. Czar Nicholas mobilized in support of Russia's little Slav brothers. The Kaiser ordered mobilization. When the French refused to declare neutrality, Germany declared war. In hours, the British Cabinet had reversed itself to back war with Germany on behalf of Belgium and France.
Princip had lit the fuse that set off in six weeks the greatest war in history. While Serbia suffered per capita losses as great as any other nation, she ended the Great War as the lead nation in a Kingdom of the South Slavs embracing Slovenes, Croats, Bosnians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Macedonians and Hungarians. The Habsburg Empire at which Princip had struck had vanished.
Last week's Mumbai massacre seems a similar triumph of terror.
Tactically, by sending a platoon of suicide warriors into India's financial capital, terrorizing a train station, two five-star hotels and a Jewish center, and killing nearly 200 in over 60 hours, the plotters assured themselves of round-the-clock worldwide television coverage.
In so riveting the world's attention for four days, this terrorist atrocity was a success.
And by using Pakistanis to perpetrate the massacres and Karachi as port of embarkation, the plotters focused India's rage exactly where they want it, against Pakistan. By this slaughter in India's commercial capital, the Islamists have destroyed the detente Pakistan was seeking with India and pushed both toward war. Out to murder moderation and stoke militancy, the terrorists succeeded.
Years ago, this writer observed:
"Terrorism is a tactic, a technique, a weapon that fanatics, dictators and warriors have resorted to through history. If, as Clausewitz wrote, war is the continuation of politics by other means, terrorism is the continuation of war by other means."
Yet terrorism -- the killing of innocents for political ends -- can only triumph if the aggrieved play the role the terror masters have scripted for them in their bloody drama. What, then, may we surmise are the tactical and strategic goals of the terror masters of Mumbai?
To humiliate, wound and outrage India in her pride as a great new democratic and economic power in Asia. To imperil Mumbai's future as a safe and secure financial capital in which to live, work and invest. To awe the world and inspire Islam's young by their audacity. To attain immortality.
But the strategic target of the militants is the Pakistani government.
Pakistan's offenses? Cooperating with America in Afghanistan and the border region, battling al-Qaida and the Taliban, withdrawing from the fight for Kashmir, seeking peace with a Hindu nation where 170 million Muslims are denied their place in the sun.
President Bush should pray New Delhi does not adopt his Bush Doctrine of preventive war or the Cheney Doctrine: "Even if there's just a 1 percent chance of the unimaginable coming due, act as if it is a certainty." For war in the subcontinent between India and Pakistan would be a calamity and a triumph for the terrorists across what Zbigniew Brzezinski has called the "Global Balkans."
War would pit two nuclear powers against each other for the first time since the Sino-Soviet border clash of 1969. It would spawn bloodshed between Muslim and Hindu in India. It would see the collapse of Pakistan, its possible dissolution and a military dictator in a nation already divided against itself over whether to continue resisting al-Qaida and the Taliban, or cut ties to the unpopular Americans.
Wounded and enraged by the atrocities of 9-11, America lashed out, first at Afghanistan and the al-Qaida source of the conspiracy, then at Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attacks. Thus did the Bush administration disunite its nation and forfeit its mandate.
For India to lash out at a Pakistan that was not complicit in the Mumbai crimes against humanity, but harbors elements within that are guilty and are celebrating, would be as great a mistake.
India and Pakistan both have a vital interest in no new war.
But a new war is exactly what the terrorists killed for and died for.
Should it come, they win -- and enter history as revolutionary terrorists alongside Princip and the perpetrators of 9-11.
more like squat if you ask me...I hear that armed police failed to fire upon and pin down and/or kill the suicidists...cople that with ignoring the warnings from US intel and you have a big heap of squat...
Yeah --- the airliner at Salmon Pak was just a display for the children attending school.
There are a lot of sources which have translated Hussein's documents showing that he was up to his eyeballs in the attack.
> More like a squad than a platoon, Pat.
Imagine if the mungrels had sent a platoon instead. Doesn’t bear thinking about much...
“War would pit two nuclear powers against each other for the first time since the Sino-Soviet border clash of 1969. It would spawn bloodshed between Muslim and Hindu in India. It would see the collapse of Pakistan, its possible dissolution and a military dictator in a nation already divided against itself over whether to continue resisting al-Qaida and the Taliban, or cut ties to the unpopular Americans.”
While India needs to maintain a rational perspective on this situation, Pakistanis are the ones who need to work very closely with India, even if it means swallowing some crow. They need to bring a jointly inspired massaccre to the areas and individuals supporting terrorism. The term “Wipe em out!” comes to mind.
India and the Pakistanis need to cooperate and allow Special Forces to run these tangos down and kill them.
Lets hope that Seal Team 6 has been deployed.
To humiliate, wound and outrage India in her pride as a great new democratic and economic power in Asia. To imperil Mumbai's future as a safe and secure financial capital in which to live, work and invest. To awe the world and inspire Islam's young by their audacity. To attain immortality.
But the strategic target of the militants is the Pakistani government.
Pat's right on this part...
The US, India and Afghanistan ought to read the Pakistan government the riot act. Since the terrorists are targeting the government of Pakistan, the government of Pakistan ought to hit at the terrorists. The US ought to attack every terrorist training camp in Pakistan with Pakistan’s cooperation. The government of Pakistan is the one at greatest threat here, so they ought to want to ensure their own survival.
He’s right and wrong. I think the weakness of the Pakistani government is sort of a foregone conclusion with the terrorists, and they are asserting their power because they honestly don’t care what happens to the Paki government and they know it’s nearly powerless to interfere with them.
If Pakistan is serious about rejecting terrorism and rejecting Islamism, it must join together with India in hunting down every one of the supporters and instigators of these people, even if this requires help from the outside. Let’s see if that happens...
You need to give your sources to Dubya since he no longer makes that case and dismisses prewar intel linking Iraq to al Qaeda as flawed.
This article is idiotic. Everyone knows that Pakistan is chock full of murderous Muzzie scumbags, literally teeming with them. Everyone also knows that the military and government is riven with their sympathizers. Everyone also knows that AQ runs off to Pakistan as soon as our forces get too close to the border.
The best possible outcome, obviously, would be total war against Pakistan—there’s no way you’re ever going to hunt down and pick off just the “really bad” guys...the whole rotten infrastructure needs to be obliterated. The most convenient way to do this would be to let someone else do the heavy lifting. Someone else, here, being India who now has a perfect excuse.
Has Pat always been a simpering isolationist pacifist?
His use of the start of WWI as an analogy is flawed. Franz Ferdinand had no real power to institute reforms. The Emperor, Franz Joseph, had all the power. Austria was looking for an excuse to “punish” the Serbs and the Germans were urging them to get on with the job.
Pat should stick to the situation at hand, and leave out the false analogies.
Agree. We have been pretending for years that the Government of Pakistan is our “ally” in the GWOT. All this has really done is create a veneer of control around a nation that is a hotbed of terror and extremism. Their Oxford-educated leadership pulls the wool over our eyes every time. Its way past time for the masks to come off.
Pat is so freaking smart and dumb at the same time.
If that bunch of murdering thugs Pak laughingly calls a 'government' had a brain in their heads they'd invite quite publicly both American and Indian Special Forces into their squat hole country and give them a fre and clear hunting license.
But they won't. And they won't because they AGREE with the monsters who committed this crime.
What is in the interest of India AND the rest of the civilized world is for Pakistan to cease to exist as a political entity.
The Pak 'government' was trying to blackmail both India and the US with this strike. Well they miscalculated, badly.
India should demand the head of the Pak ISI all trussed up on a platter, along with that thug he employed to do his dirty work. Either the Paks give them up, or they face war.
Simultaneously Bush should announce that he has 'lost confidence' in the Pak governments ability to control the terrorists on the Afghan side of their county, so he's ordering full scale military strikes into the 'autonomous tribal areas' in order to destroy the remnants of the Taleban and AQ.
Squeeze Pakistan like a zit until it pops.
Warn the Pak government loudly, publicly and often that ANY use of it's nuclear weapons will result in the utter destruction of the entire nation.
The civilized world needs to slap these murdering scumbags down HARD.
This time it was 15 or 20 a**holes with rifles and grenades. Next time it will be a pirated fishing boat with a Pak nuclear warhead detonating next to a hotel on Bombay.
Think about that.
L
I have come around to your way of thinking on this subject.
It is a shame that Pakistan are being such pr!cks because they play a fantastic, exciting game of Cricket. Tho’ come to think of it, quite a few of their bowlers are dreadful cheats. They throw the ball rather than bowling it.
Nope. On second thought, if they are capable of cheating at the Cricket, they are capable of anything. Nobody will miss them except their fellow terrorists.
The Lurker Solution seems just fine to me.
*DieHard*
Franz Ferdinand was the heir apparent and could have instituted reform after succeeding Franz Joseph.
The AQ sympathizers in the Pak government thought they could get some relief for AQ by doing this. Strategically, we've GOT to boomerang (pardon the Aussie reference please) on them.
They've GOT to learn that every act of barbarity they sponsor costs them 10 times as much pain as any possible benefit.
Otherwise they'll repeat the tactic somewhere else on some other ally.
Hit them HARD. Destroy the Pak government the way we destroyed the Taleban in Afghanistan. We HAVE to do it.
There's no other choice.
L
Bush didn’t mention a link to Iraq in his interview with Gibson:
http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/Politics/Story?id=6356046&page=5
GIBSON: You’ve always said there’s no do-overs as President. If you had one?
BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.
GIBSON: If the intelligence had been right, would there have been an Iraq war?
BUSH: Yes, because Saddam Hussein was unwilling to let the inspectors go in to determine whether or not the U.N. resolutions were being upheld. In other words, if he had had weapons of mass destruction, would there have been a war? Absolutely.
GIBSON: No, if you had known he didn’t.
BUSH: Oh, I see what you’re saying. You know, that’s an interesting question. That is a do-over that I can’t do. It’s hard for me to speculate.
To me, it seems like the Pakistani gummint has been “running with the hares and hunting with the hounds” since 9/11.
If they *really* wanted to catch Osama bin Laden, they could have. Or they could have made it dead-easy for the Allies to catch him. Heck, the Allies even had the NZ-SAS in Afghanistan — arguably the world’s finest elite fighting force — it should have been dead-simple to get them across the border to Pakistan to hunt down and capture that sumb!tch.
Nope, the Lurker Solution should apply for a whole lot of really good reasons.
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