“Why was India — a nation that has suffered enormously from terrorism in the past seven years — unprepared for the Mumbai attacks? And why are America, Britain and most of the rest of the civilized world equally unprepared even now, so many years after 9-11?
London’s Telegraph reported Monday that “the former head of Britain’s SAS has revealed that Britain is not adequately prepared for a Mumbai-style terror attack. He said hundreds of civilians would have been massacred if such an assault was carried out in this country.”
The movie the “Final Option” was about the 1980s SAS raid at the (London Embassy?) it was successful and the star in it was an actual reserve unit SAS member or trainee or something.
The US and Britain may not be “prepared” for something that no country is “prepared” for but they can sure react quickly. India did not do that.
Sadly, I don’t think that free government can exist in a nation where a sizable chunk of the population are willing to murder their fellow countryman in the name of ideology or religion.
You can prepare all you want, but if India houses a ten million strong religious minority that encourages and justifies these kind of attacks, there isn’t much you can do.
Israel has alot of experience with this; you can imprison terrorists, kill their leaders, dry their finances, but as long as the population supports them they will always come back.
He was TA SAS, or ‘Territorial Army’- the equivalent of our Army Reserve. I think I have a copy of that somewhere. I remember the two MPs (Ministers of Parliament) at the end talking about how there were ‘many more’ such incidents (of terrorism) planned. It was a pretty strong indictment of the New Left, especially for it’s time.
I have to wonder exactly what one would do to ‘fully prepare’ a republic for a major incident of terrorism. You have to strike a balance with liberty. As such- we’ll always be primarily reactive- which puts us at a disadvantage. You can use your Intelligence capabilities to proactively break up plots as you discover them, and you can respond rapidly when something does go down, but you can’t shake down everybody that you see in the street. The enemy will always be able to exploit their ability to move freely among us.
I would be surprised if the absence of major, successful terrorist strikes in this country since 9/11 was the result of lack of trying on international terror’s part. Perhaps we have struck that balance.