On the Mumbai Attacks

You've read the news: Muslim extremist militants have attacked Mumbai, India with small arms. Well over 100 dead, and multiple days of carnage in some of India's wealthiest hotels.

The attack was clearly directed at Americans, Israelis, and Britons--gunmen took tourists (in multiple locations, including the Taj Mahal Hotel) hostage and started demanding the turnover of civilians with US and UK passports, and started executing them. They also attacked a Jewish house. But these terrorists were ruthless, and carelessly gunned down anyone that didn't strictly follow rules, or appeared to be a threat. They were undisciplined, highly outnumbered, and hope to instill fear into the group to behave. What happened was well over 100 deaths, mostly Indian.

The attack was clearly designed to terrify Americans and Britons. But the attack has brought little in the United States or Britain but sympathy for Indians. The terrorists largely failed to hit the large number of US and UK citizens that they were hoping, and created such lasting carnage in India that the Indians took the vast majority of the impact. Now--nutjob fundamentalist Islamists have no problems with terrifying Indians and assorted Hindus.

But Pakistani fundamentalists have now incurred the wrath of their neighbors. India and Pakistan have gone to war 3 times since 1947, and almost went to war in 2001 over a bombing then. A nasty 2006 train bombing in Mumbai was blamed on Pakistani militants, and this attack already has been blamed on them as well.

The Indians are outraged--they are calling this "India's 9/11"--but their response is not obviously clear. They are angry at the US and UK--I remember seeing a live report interrupted by a hysterical man running by and asking why Indians had to die, why it wasn't the US getting bombed. But the Indians also hate the Pakistanis, and are very used to placing blame on them.

Pakistan's Intelligence was very involved in Indian terror networks before 9/11, but those relations have strained (in part due to US pressure and in part due to Pakistan's own Islamist problems). But if this attack was coordinate in a Pakistan "safe haven," then the Indians may start sharing the same attitude the US has about Pakistan's ability to police its own territory. There is some International Law precedent that a government unable to administer and police its own territory has forfeited its sovereignty. But this will require many months of UN deliberations to happen, if it happens at all.

On the other hand, the US and India could just go ahead and drive in. But even if they were ready to take the political beating for such an attack, they would have to make it quick and decisive--a prolonged war with Pakistan would only strengthen the Islamists. But it's ultimately unlikely to happen.

Pakistan's Intelligence chief is visiting Mumbai, likely to try and keep relations from going sour. But the Indian government, which barely has a stable majority, can't afford to do nothing. If they don't blame Pakistan, then they take the blame themselves. They're unlikely to blame the US and UK for bringing the heat into India--they're so used to anti-Indian attacks that the specific target of these terrorists is mostly immaterial. The Indians will need a target to blame, and decisive action to take, probably targeting Pakistan in some way. How they'll manage their domestic politics and neighborly relations is a tough question that New Dehli will have to be quite clever to figure out.

Future Me

The future is looking up. And the engineering title's got to go-- at this point, it's a masquerade. I'm a political scientist. More accurately, I'm working on being a defence analyst.

There's a few ways I could take it. But it's almost certainly going to start with grad school. And if I play my cards right, MIT has a program that would let me become a grad student in my senior year, and work on my master's thesis for two years. But I have to apply this fall. That means GREs and letters of rec. The latter is mostly taken care of, the former will happen in fall. Admission probability is pretty good at this point.

Prof. Fravel and I are almost done with his book, and I'm hoping to get an acknowledgment out of it. He seems to like me, and has been happy to help jump-start my career. I think I may be getting some second-authorships on papers in the fall. He's going to work on getting me to China next summer.

And that means next summer this might turn into a sentimental travel blog, but that's okay. I've been studying Chinese all summer, and am close to ready for Chinese III in the fall. If all goes to plan, I'll get an internship at a Think Tank the Professor knows, and MIT will cover travel and board.

After grad school, I'm still looking at doing a stint with the CIA for a few years, then moving either to independent contracting, a think tank, or policy-making. But I've got plenty of time to make my mind up.

From here, I'm thinking about what presidential candidate I'll be voting for in the primaries. I'd like to say someone has a good foreign policy and grand strategy... but I really don't know myself where we go from here. We're in a pickle, it's true, and I'm wondering what Congress is going to do about this pull-out business... whether they'll jump on it, or wait until the September surge report.

The surge _has_ reduced civilian and American soldier deaths/day. Does that mean we've dealt a big blow to anti-Iraqi/American insurgents, or does it mean the bad guys are in hiding? The majority of insurgent attacks are still on American soldiers, which leads some to think that a pull-out will make Iraq more peaceful. But that's probably a bit naive--an American pull-out is not going to cause Iraqi sects to get along, and it's not going to stop Al-Qaeda in Iraq from trying to overthrow the secular government and establish an oppressive Islamic Republic. Iran--or at least Ahemenijad--is likely to feel emboldened about trying to create a Shiite-dominated neighbor if we pull out, but Ahemenijad is losing a lot of ground in popularity, and having enough forces to keep the Iranians under some sort of control (until Ahemenijad is voted out in 2009) may save us a lot of headaches in the future.

It's not that Iran is going to become the next Soviet Union, but until we achieve energy independence, we're going to have to continue to give a damn about the Middle East. Frankly, I'd like to stop caring about the whole region altogether, but until we start drilling in Alaska, building some nuclear power plants, driving electric cars, or developing atomic teleportation technology, we're going to have to keep putting up with it.

What about the Terrorists? They're really not the kind of problem the administration makes them out to be. If it's that important to preserve the lives of innocent Americans, we'd be pouring a lot more effort into public safety at home. At 2 million violent crimes per year, even sustained terror attacks would account for a small fraction of the violations of our Right to Life.

That said, we've had some pretty impressive crime reductions in the 90's:



Whether it was the Republicans or Clinton or Governors or some voodoo magic that caused the drop is beyond me, and frankly I don't care (what I do care about is my mother telling me that it's more dangerous now than it was when she was a kid. Now _that's_ media mayhem). But we should still work on it.

Heck, I'm not even convinced pulling out of the region completely would cause an increase in terror attacks in the US. How many times has Al-Qaeda attacked Sweden? But if anyone tells you they really know whether attacks on American soil are likely to increase or decrease if we pull out of the region, they're smoking something illegal.

But again, before I give you a "Middle East and World Foreign Policy '09" rant, I'm going to get a better idea of what we're doing with this Iraq thing. It seems to be the crux of such a future policy.

But really, I think the future's looking up.