Mumbai, India, and Kashmir

The Christian Science Monitor and the Hindustan Times point to the same group as responsible for the commuter rail bombings in Mumbai.  From the HT:

India strongly suspects Pakistani hand in Tuesday's serial blasts in Mumbai suburban trains with all leads pointing to involvement of ISI-backed terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, highly placed sources said on Thursday night.

"The involvement of Pakistani hand is obvious...There is no doubt that LeT, which is backed by Pakistan's ISI, is involved," the sources said.

Various agencies investigating the serial blasts are also probing whether other terror groups were involved along with LeT, they said.

"Other terror groups may have been involved in the blasts along with LeT...This angle is being investigated," the sources said.

Background on the LeT is available at the FAS, the BBC, and the Council of Foreign Relations.

Comments

[Florence Schmieg]

Off topic. The Wilsons have just filed suit againt Cheney, Libby, Rove and unnamed others. With the world on the brink of WWIII, these narcissists see only themselves. Couldn't get the prosecutions they tried to engineer so now this pathetic attempt at revenge. My disgust for these people cannot be described in words.

[Pete]

So would India be justified in invading Pakistan?

[verner]

I'm feeling sick today. It's as if a rock is rolling down the hill and about to start an avalanche.

I was in India last year. One of the most fascinating places on earth. I loved it.

India, as most people are not aware, is the second largest Muslim country on earth. Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, was born in Delhi. For the most part, Hindu and Muslim get along rather well. I spent a whole day walking through the narrow streets of Old Delhi (80% Muslim) without any problems at all. I even visited Old Delhi's famous, and beautiful Friday mosque without covering my head.

For the most part, the people of India love America, and are very polite to Americans. The only complaint I heard was that it was too hard to get a visa after 911.

It's also exciting to see the current economic boom that's taking place.

But the filthy extremists are about to ruin everything. In the last year, the Friday Mosque, and the train Station at Varanasi (another place I visited) have both been hit by terrorists. And now Mumbai.

Add it to what's happening in the Middle East. They are not going to stop until the entire world is at war.

I just hope we're up to the task.

[Pete]

verner - Given that India says that Pakistan's govt is aiding and abetting the terrorists, what should the solution be? Should the US get involved and ally with India in invading Pakistan? Should India invade Pakistan on its own? Or should the solution not involve a war?

If you look at the Bush doctrine that a country cannot let another country harbor or support terrorists, what is the solution?

I am asking this very seriously, and hope that there can be some constructive replies.

[Bob]

Pete,

This has been the same problem Bush has faced with getting OBL. Musharraf has his hands tied. He wants to help the US, however Pakistan is loaded with terrorists, and any support for the West or India could start more terror attacks or civil war.

This is why we get so mad at the left for crying about Bush never getting OBL... it's counter productive.

There is no easy answer.

[Bob]

Pete,

This has been the same problem Bush has faced with getting OBL. Musharraf has his hands tied. He wants to help the US, however Pakistan is loaded with terrorists, and any support for the West or India could start more terror attacks or civil war.

This is why we get so mad at the left for crying about Bush never getting OBL... it's counter productive.

There is no easy answer.

[Bob]

Pete,

This has been the same problem Bush has faced with getting OBL. Musharraf has his hands tied. He wants to help the US, however Pakistan is loaded with terrorists, and any support for the West or India could start more terror attacks or civil war.

This is why we get so mad at the left for crying about Bush never getting OBL... it's counter productive.

There is no easy answer.

[Barney Frank]

Pete,

If some part of Pakistan's government participated in the attack it would probably constitute an act of war. If Pakistan's government when apprised of this did not seek to bring to justice those elements that participated then it almost certainly would be. India may very well be legally justified in retribution. That legal justification however is tempered by political realities such as the disasterous wars these two have already participated in but even more so by, yes, the presence of Pakistani nuclear weapons.

The lesson for us is that we can expect a great deal more of this kind of stuff on our own, Iraqi and Israeli soil if we do not prevent the Iranians from acquiring their own bomb.

[SteveMG]

If you look at the Bush doctrine that a country cannot let another country harbor or support terrorists, what is the solution?

Well, that's not the Bush Doctrine, but we'll let it slide.

If one of the countries has nuclear weapons, the response has to be quite judicious. Obviously, if Afghanistan under the Taliban had nuclear weapons, we wouldn't have invaded after 9/11 unless we could be 100% sure that we could take them out before being used.

This is, among a myriad of reasons, we want to prevent unstable regimes from acquiring nuclear weapons.

SMG

[verner]

Musharraf made a very productive visit to India last year. As I mentioned, he was born in India. While there is much bitter history between the two (see Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's Children" for a great literary insight), there are also many ties that bind.

What the left in this country does not seem to understand is that we are in a global war against islamofascism. Stabalizing Iraq will help stabalize governments throughout the region--including Musharraf's--by giving us another government that is an ally in the war against terror, instead of having a jihad friendly Saddam who would be there to supply weapons and shelter.

Musharraf has the same problem GWB has. A bunch of rogue intelligence officers who are trying to usurp his government. There are reports that the terrorists were given money from the Saudis, and we might find Iran in the mix as well.

And no, I think that the government in India knows exactly what's going on, and will not invade Pakistan. There would be a nuclear exchange before that happened anyway.

[Warmongering Lunatic]

Pete --

In theory, India has a great case; Pakistan clearly harbors anti-Indian terrorists. Insofar as they are not sponsored by certain elements of the government, they are sponsored by others which the non-sponsoring parts of the government cannot control.

But India wouldn't be able to decisively defeat Pakistan if both sides were stripped of nukes, and the nukes make it that much more devastating and that much more likely to be inconclusive at the costs of hundreds of thousands of lives.

So, overall, it amounts to "Yes, you may swim in the Pacific Ocean. In principle, yes, this means you may try to swim from New Zealand to California without any form of assistance. However, you're a seventy-year-old double amputee with emphysema, so take a while and consider what kind of memorial ceremony you want before you try to swim it and die at sea."

[Pete]

Bob - I liked your reply.

The irony here may be that it is the same reasoning that many of the posters here have expressed (regarding nukes) that may be accelerating efforts of some nations to get nukes, and I think that Iran is a classic case. BTW - the population of Iran supports becoming nuclear, so democracy is not the panacea it is sometimes said to be (don't get me wrong - democracy is the best form of govt).

India has long accused the ISI of training terrorists and of supporting terrorists who infilitrate into India. Furthermore most Indians view Musharraf with suspicion because of his role in starting the Kargil attack against India. General Musharraf is starting to look like another of those third world dictator who hangs on to power for as long as he can. He said that he would step aside after X years, but keeps hitting the snooze button.

Incidentally the Indian forces did defeat and push back the Pakistan forces in 1971 from what then became Bangladesh. India and Bangladesh had excellent relations for a couple of years until Bangladesh's Prime Minister was killed and overthrown in a coup. After that India and Bangladesh have gone their separate ways. I think that this is also likely to happen between the US and Iraq, and that Iraq will find more commonality with its own neighbors especially the Shiite Iran.

If we have "stabilized" Iraq I see no signs of that.

[Pofarmer]

"instead of having a jihad friendly Saddam who would be there to supply weapons and shelter."

Which is why Iraq, stabilized or not, was, and still is, a lynchpin in the GWOT. Operations in the greater ME could hardly be undertaken with Saddam & CO still in power.

[Pete]

Which operation could we have not undertaken then that we can take now? We controlled two thirds of Saddam's airspace then and his army was in tatters.

I would argue the other way around. With the way Bush has conducted the Iraq war, it is actually harder for us to conduct other operations. Public opinion has soured on the Iraq war. War with Iran is not going to happen, and Bush and Condi are now pushing the diplomatic route there.

In terms of "jihad friendly" states, Pakistan is Bush's ally, yet Pakistan is a major haven for the jihadis. The Indians are alleging it. OBL is presumed to be holed somewhere in Paksitan.

Meanwhile Iraqis are arming themselves and militias rule there. If we think that post invasion Iraq is not going to harbor terrorists, then we are deluding ourself.

[verner]

"Meanwhile Iraqis are arming themselves and militias rule there. If we think that post invasion Iraq is not going to harbor terrorists, then we are deluding ourself."

And who is to blame for that?

The peaceniks need to pat themselves on the back. If the west had shown a united front is the face of the islamofascists, and in support of a democratic Iraq, it would have sucked the oxygen right out of the so called insurgency. But that didn't happen.

No, things are not stable in some parts of the country, especially Baghdad. But there is still hope. Don't you want democracy to succeed? Many brave Iraqis have given their lives so that it will.

[Pete]

verner - regarding who is to blame, I would conjecture it is the very poor post war planning of Bush and Rumsfeld, and their misconception that post-war would be a cakewalk, and their feeling that they could have a war on the cheap.

Bush got everything he needed for the Iraq war. Congress gave him a blank check. He got all the money and men he asked for. If fault has to be assigned for anything related to Iraq, it goes to the desk of Bush (and not any "peacenik").

The thing that amazes me about W to this day is that he would not even talk to his dad about Iraq. Bush Sr. knew a lot more about the world than W did. But then W probably had an inkling of where his dad stood, and he just did not want to hear any dissenting viewpoint.

Incidentally someone I knew commented about how during his last trip to India, Laura Bush went to see the Taj Mahal yet W did not. It all ties into the perception of how uncurious W is about other countries and cultures.

Regardless of whose fault it is, the reality is that by simply doing a regime change you do not eliminate "weapons" and "shelter" for terrorists. Three years into the Iraq invasion I would say that there are more weapons and shelter for terrorists in Iraq now. Despite Pakistan being a strong ally of the US in the GWOT, there are plenty of weapons and shelter for terrorists in Pakistan.

Sure I want democracy to succeed in all countries (not just Iraq). The reality of third world countries is that they often experiment with democracy, only to have it replaced by dicatators. Pakistan is a prime example of that, having alternated between democracy and dictators several times, with the current ruler General Musharraf having come to power in a coup. Musharraf is about as much a democratically elected leader as Saddam ever was.

Ultimately it is the Iraqis who will have to do the heavy lifting that is needed to get their house in order.

[verner]

"Musharraf is about as much a democratically elected leader as Saddam ever was."

Maybe so. But I don't think he's ever tried to commit genocide against his own people.

And elections would be possible in Pakistan, if you could eliminate the islamo-fascists who would no doubt disrupt the process. Not to mention, do you want to take the chance at this point of allowing Mussaraf's enemies the chance of getting their hands on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal? No, didn't think so. (And at least we know now that Saddam will never have one--even one bought off the shelf from North Korea!)

As far as the war plan goes, of course there were mistakes. There are mistakes in every war. But every one of them was magnified in the press, and made a weapon for attacking the US war effort, in some sick attempt to re-live Vietnam.

Al Qaeda, and the Saddamists played it to the max, in the hopes that the American people would lose the will to fight, and we would cut and run. The only cure for that is an absolute resolve to finish the job.

[Pete]

verner - I'll agree with you that Musharraf is not in the same league as Saddam.

Musharraf has been able to conduct rigged elections, and I think that he would be able to conduct honest elections if he wanted to. If you study the 50+ year history of Pakistan you'll find that they have had periods of democracy, but for the most part they have been ruled by military dictators.

Again even if the press was the bad boy - it was Bush who was in total control of the US effort in Iraq. The press did not stop Bush from getting anything he wanted and the press did not stop Bush from doing anything he wanted to in Iraq. Infact Bush has always said that he does not care about newspaper reports, poll numbers, or foreign governments in doing what he thinks needs to be done in Iraq.

Fact is - the buck stops at the President's desk.

"Finish the job" remains as murky as ever. I have never understood what that term means. If I understand that term to mean what Cheney once referred to as "we will hunt down the last insurgent/terrorist in Iraq", I think that Bush will cut and run too. Would Iraq ending up like modern day Pakistan mean that the job is done?

[verner]

"Would Iraq ending up like modern day Pakistan mean that the job is done?"

That will ultimately be the decision of the Iraqi people, but up until now, there is every indication that that is not what they want at all.

And as far as Bush goes, if you look at it, the acomplishments up until now have been remarkable, despite the setbacks and mistakes. Can you name any military conflict of this scale in modern warfare with so few casualties? And as I've said before, many regions are relatively peaceful and are re-building. Baghdad is the real problem, and according to some Kurdish friends I have, it has always been a rough place.

By the way, 13 gun deaths in the Nation's capital this month already. Imagine that. Is there a Civil War in America?