Writes Pat Buchanan:
“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.”
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