GINA COBB

"Angry Mumbai Wants Answers, Changes" -- But the Blame Is Misplaced

It's good to know that an "Angry Mumbai Wants Answers, Changes," but something's missing from this news story from Time.

There is not one mention of Muslims or Islam, even though the attackers claimed to be "Deccan Mujahideen" -- Muslims engaged in jihad.

Instead, the article focuses on anger toward the current governing authorities in Mumbai and India. While Mumbai surely has room for improvement, so does every other nation on earth, and there will always be some terror attacks that slip through the defenses as long as significant numbers of Muslims are taught that it is noble to kill innocent, noncombatant men, women and children in the name of "Allah." 

The truth is that the Mumbai attack could have happened almost anywhere.

Certainly India needs to fight terrorism on all fronts, but it would be wise to avoid slipping into the counterproductive game I've described as "Blaming the Rescuers." 

The rules of the game are simple:  Whenever a terrorist incident occurs, blame those who try to prevent the incident, those who try to rescue the victims or capture the perpetrators, or those who are left to clean up the bodies and the mess.  Question everything the rescuers did, or failed to do.  Also question everything they do to try to prevent the next attack. 

. . . .  There is nothing wrong with introspection for the purpose of continuous improvement, but that is not what is happening.  What is going on now in civilized nations around the world is continuous disparagement for no apparent purpose other than temporary political advantage or temporary psychological comfort in a terrifying world (it's less frightening to focus blame our own "authorities" than on the terrorists, as Neo-Neocon has noted in one of many thoughtful essays).

Blaming the Rescuers is a cancerous game.  It poisons the morale of those most actively engaged in fighting terrorism.  Where credit and gratitude is due for bravery and persistence and valor in the face of threats and horrors and challenges, it delivers wet blankets instead.  It demands a level of perfection that no human being can achieve, deterring some from even joining in the impossible effort.

The game of Blame the Rescuers eats away the living cells -- the leaders, officials, first responders, soldiers, commanders, police and intelligence agents most actively engaged in fighting the war on terror. Consume these living cells, and terrorism will spread unopposed.

Here are some of the many questions that you'll often hear asked in the effort to Blame the Rescuers.  See how many of these questions sound familiar in the war on terror in the United States and around the world:

Why didn't they see it coming?  Why didn't they connect the dots?  Why didn't they investigate?  Why didn't they investigate further?  Why are we wasting so much money on investigations when we haven't had any attacks lately?

Why didn't they have more police, soldiers, or other "authorities" in place to detect it or stop it?  Why didn't they intervene quickly enough upon learning of the terrorist attack?

Why didn't they act immediately?

Why did they rush in without enough advance planning?

Why weren't all the victims saved?  Why were so many police or soldiers' lives lost?

Why weren't all the perpetrators caught?  Who among the rescuers should be fired for incompetence?  Who should be court martialed?  Who should be ridiculed?  Who should be disciplined?  Who should be impeached?

Why are the rescuers so overreaching and heavy-handed in their effort to prevent the next attack?  Why are they trampling on peoples' rights?  Why are they being so unreasonable?  Why are they searching everyone -- do they think everyone is a terrorist?  Why are they conducting random searches -- don't they realize that some of the people they are randomly searching are not terrorists?  Why are they conducting targeted searches -- don't they realize that most of the people in the target group aren't terrorists?  Why are they searching anyone?  Don't they realize that it's none of their business and we have a right to privacy?

Why didn't they search the bag that had the bomb?  Why was their search so superficial? 

Why are they searching every bag?  Why is this security screening taking so long?

Why did they shoot an innocent man?  Why didn't they take just one more second before shooting?

Why didn't they shoot before the bomb was set off?  Why did they delay just one second too long? 

Why didn't they know the terrorist attack was coming?  Why didn't they conduct any searches at all?  Why didn't they search those with suspected terrorist ties?  Why did they only search those with suspected terrorist ties -- didn't they realize that a person with a "clean" record would be used to carry out the attack?

Why are we eavesdropping?  Why are we spying on our own people? 

Why didn't we realize that the attack could come from among our own people?  Why didn't we see it coming?

Why are we restricting travel?  We aren't we restricting travel?

Why are we getting so many warnings about risks that turn out not to materialize?  Why are we wasting money on security to prevent attacks that have never occurred? 

Why weren't we warned about the risk that did materialize?  Why didn't we do anything to prevent the attack that occurred?

Why haven't we won the war on terror by now?  Why don't we have an exit strategy?

Why are we bothering since we know there will always be more terrorist attacks?

Why aren't we winning their hearts and minds?  Why are we spending money on propaganda to win their hearts and minds?  Why are we building schools there when we need the money here?

Why aren't all the security measures in place yet?  Why didn't the security measures we have in place prevent the new form of attack that just occurred? 

Why aren't we doing enough?  Why didn't we have enough personnel in place to prevent the attack?

Why does it cost so much?  Why are we paying for so many personnel to prevent something that has never happened?

Why wasn't there any central coordination of the effort?  Why weren't all the agencies coordinated?  Why wasn't there enough oversight?

Why weren't local officials in charge of the effort in their own community?  Why were agencies prevented from acting individually on they information they had?  Why was there so much central bureaucracy? 

Why won't anyone take responsibility? 

Now that someone has taken responsibility, why doesn't he resign? 

The questions that can be asked are endless, but the result of the game "Blame the Rescuers" is always the same:  The rescuers lose.

Of course, when the rescuers lose, the terrorists win.  But it's easy to ignore that.  After all, the terrorists aren't talking.  They're just taking notes for their next propaganda video and working on their next series of attacks on innocent men, women and children.  You and your loved ones included, eventually.

There will be far too many victims of terrorism in our lifetime -- and in no small part because too many people in the civilized world are devoting massive amounts of time and energy to the game "Blame the Rescuers."

All of our time and energy should be spent ostracizing, penalizing, hunting down, deterring, and stopping the terrorists who have already committed thousands of heinous attacks on innocent civilians worldwide.  The terrorists are determined and persistent.  If we in the civilized world we are consumed with attacking our own rescuers rather than with fighting the war on terror, we will lose the war, and much more with it.

The game of "Blame the Rescuers" serves the purposes of the terrorists in many ways.  First, it provides false comfort to India by promoting the fallacy that a simple change in leadership will avoid further attacks.  Second, it provides false comfort to other nations that the attack on India was a response to unique failings of that nation, rather than being merely the latest manifestation of the global Islamic jihad.  Third, blaming the rescuers divides nations and allies and inappropriately punishes those who were, and remain, on the front lines in the defense against terror -- police, intelligence agencies, and local, state, and national officials.  

India, harden your defenses, and choose the best leaders you can at every turn, but save your anger for the terrorists. 

One Year Ago Today on GINA COBB: Message to India: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Infant Girls Included

Originally published on July 6, 2007:  Message to India: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Infant Girls Included.

News from India:

HYDERABAD, India —  A newborn baby girl was buried alive by her family in southern India on Thursday but was rescued when a farmer saw the baby's hand sticking out of the ground, officials said.

The two-day old baby, who had apparently never been fed, was recovering in a hospital in the Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, said Charu Sinha, district superintendent of police.

Indian society has long favored boys, who do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when their daughters marry.

The baby was buried by her maternal grandfather, Abdul Raheem, and his brother, Abdul Rasheed, with the consent of the baby's mother, Mehrunnisa, near Otkur village, about 150 kilometers south of the state capital of Hyderabad, Sinha said.

The police arrested the two men and will charge them with attempted murder, Sinha added. Mehrunnisa, who only goes by one name, will be charged as an accomplice.

This is nothing new for India, where being born female can get you killed. 

Some 10 million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before birth or shortly after. (Warning: the following excerpt contains upsetting details about how newborn girls are killed.)

A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Today, we have the odd distinction of having lost 10 million girl children in the past 20 years," Chowdhury told a seminar in Delhi University.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

"We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children."

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys.

The ratio has fallen since 1991, due to the availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests.

Although these are illegal they are still widely available and often lead to abortion of girl foetuses.

Chowdhury said the fall in the number of females had cost one percent of India's GDP and created shortages of girls in some states like Haryana, where in one case four brothers had to marry one woman.

By the way, widows in India don't fare very well either.

Is there any bright spot in this story?

Only this.  That someone cared enough to save this baby out of the millions who have been killed.  An Indian farmer named Ram Kumar noticed the baby's hand in a field.  He and other villagers rushed the baby to a hospital. 

A tiny ray of hope shines in a vast darkness.

News from India:

HYDERABAD, India —  A newborn baby girl was buried alive by her family in southern India on Thursday but was rescued when a farmer saw the baby's hand sticking out of the ground, officials said.

The two-day old baby, who had apparently never been fed, was recovering in a hospital in the Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, said Charu Sinha, district superintendent of police.

Indian society has long favored boys, who do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when their daughters marry.

The baby was buried by her maternal grandfather, Abdul Raheem, and his brother, Abdul Rasheed, with the consent of the baby's mother, Mehrunnisa, near Otkur village, about 150 kilometers south of the state capital of Hyderabad, Sinha said.

The police arrested the two men and will charge them with attempted murder, Sinha added. Mehrunnisa, who only goes by one name, will be charged as an accomplice.

This is nothing new for India, where being born female can get you killed. 

Some 10 million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before birth or shortly after. (Warning: the following excerpt contains upsetting details about how newborn girls are killed.)

A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Today, we have the odd distinction of having lost 10 million girl children in the past 20 years," Chowdhury told a seminar in Delhi University.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

"We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children."

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys.

The ratio has fallen since 1991, due to the availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests.

Although these are illegal they are still widely available and often lead to abortion of girl foetuses.

Chowdhury said the fall in the number of females had cost one percent of India's GDP and created shortages of girls in some states like Haryana, where in one case four brothers had to marry one woman.

By the way, widows in India don't fare very well either.

Is there any bright spot in this story?

Only this.  That someone cared enough to save this baby out of the millions who have been killed.  An Indian farmer named Ram Kumar noticed the baby's hand in a field.  He and other villagers rushed the baby to a hospital. 

A tiny ray of hope shines in a vast darkness.

Two-Faced Baby Girl Born in India

There seems to be a lot of interest in the story of a girl in India born with two faces, shown on the right.  Here's her story:

A baby with two faces was born in a northern Indian village, where she is doing well and is being worshipped as the reincarnation of a Hindu goddess, her father said Tuesday.

The baby, Lali, apparently has an extremely rare condition known as craniofacial duplication, where a single head has two faces. Except for her ears, all of Lali's facial features are duplicated - she has two noses, two pairs of lips and two pairs of eyes.

"My daughter is fine - like any other child," said Vinod Singh, 23, a poor farm worker.

Lali has caused a sensation in the dusty village of Saini Sunpura, 25 miles east of New Delhi. When she left the hospital, eight hours after a normal delivery on March 11, she was swarmed by villagers, said Sabir Ali, the director of Saifi Hospital.

"She drinks milk from her two mouths and opens and shuts all the four eyes at one time," Ali said.

Rural India is deeply superstitious and the little girl is being hailed as a return of the Hindu goddess of valor, Durga, a fiery deity traditionally depicted with three eyes and many arms.

Up to 100 people have been visiting Lali at her home every day to touch her feet out of respect, offer money and receive blessings, Singh told The Associated Press.

"Lali is God's gift to us," said Jaipal Singh, a member of the local village council. "She has brought fame to our village."

Here's brief video clip about Lali from CBS News:

And here's a longer video clip from the AP:

There's talk of building a shrine to Lali, which is understandable from the point of view of Hinduism, but definitely a bit much if you're a monotheist like me.  But I'm glad the girl is being welcomed and counted as one of God's blessings.  She is.  We all are.

Death by Monkey

For all of India's recent modernization, life remains very different from life in most Western democracies.

Evil and Misery in India: Islamic Terrorists Strike Again

Murderous Islamic terrorists have stricken again:  Twin bombs kill 42 in Southern India

HYDERABAD, India - A pair of bombings minutes apart tore through a popular family restaurant and an outdoor arena on Saturday night, killing at least 42 people in this southern Indian city plagued by Hindu-Muslim tensions.

The restaurant was destroyed by the bomb placed at the entrance. Blood-covered tin plates and broken glasses littered the road outside.

The other blast struck a laser show at an auditorium in Lumbini park, leaving pools of blood and dead bodies between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel. Some seats were hurled 100 feet away.

"We heard the blast and people started running out past us. Many of them had blood streaming off them," said P.K. Verghese, the security manager at the laser show. "It was complete chaos. We had to remove the security barriers so people could get out."

Most of the dead were killed in the Gokul Chat restaurant at Hyderabad's Kothi market, said K. Jana Reddy, the state home minister. By Sunday morning, the death toll had risen to 42 as victims succumbed to injuries. Some 50 people were injured in the two blasts.

Officials have not publicly said who they think is behind the bombings. But local media — citing unnamed officials — reported Sunday that authorities believe Islamic extremists were responsible.

The Press Trust of India news agency reported Sunday that intelligence agencies were investigating a possible link to a Bangladesh-based militant group, Harkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami.

From another report -- there were at least six separate explosive devices, five of which were detonated:

“To be precise, a total of five explosive devices were used. We now have at least 38 people killed and 60 people injured,” Balwinder Singh, Hyderabad police chief, told reporters.

At least 15 of the injured were in serious condition, officials said, as police chief Singh said a sixth bomb was recovered from a cinema theatre and defused.

Federal Minister of State for Home Sriprakash Jaiswal said the explosions in the city, which has a large Muslim population and is considered communally sensitive, were the handiwork of “some terrorist group.”

One terrorist group or the other, which is bent on destroying the unity of the country, is certainly involved in the blasts in Hyderabad,” Jaiswal said.

The Hyderabad city administrator said on Saturday that police “already have some leads” but did not elaborate. The Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajshekhar Reddy called on “everyone to be calm.”

“Bomb blasts are the cruellest acts against humanity. The perpetrators of such an act could have no religion, ideological or national identity. They at best could be described as traitors of humanity,” said Reddy.

Dismembered limbs, clothes and shoes of people watching the laser show lay scattered on the ground and there were pools of blood where victims had fallen.

These are indeed crimes against humanity, but Reddy is wrong in claiming that the perpetrators have "no religion, ideological or national identity."  These crimes were committed by specific, depraved individuals.  They have a very specific ideology and, as for religion, they are probably Muslim. 

Their twisted ideology does not include the fundamental commandment not to kill innocent civilians going about their everyday lives.  And, yes, they are traitors against humanity. 

The human vermin who deliberately committed this mass killing against innocent civilians should be hunted down by all the nations of the earth.

Update:  More on this heinous crime and the heroic rescuers at Gateway Pundit

Message to India: Thou Shalt Not Kill. Infant Girls Included.

News from India:

HYDERABAD, India —  A newborn baby girl was buried alive by her family in southern India on Thursday but was rescued when a farmer saw the baby's hand sticking out of the ground, officials said.

The two-day old baby, who had apparently never been fed, was recovering in a hospital in the Mahbubnagar district of Andhra Pradesh, said Charu Sinha, district superintendent of police.

Indian society has long favored boys, who do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when their daughters marry.

The baby was buried by her maternal grandfather, Abdul Raheem, and his brother, Abdul Rasheed, with the consent of the baby's mother, Mehrunnisa, near Otkur village, about 150 kilometers south of the state capital of Hyderabad, Sinha said.

The police arrested the two men and will charge them with attempted murder, Sinha added. Mehrunnisa, who only goes by one name, will be charged as an accomplice.

This is nothing new for India, where being born female can get you killed. 

Some 10 million girls have been killed by their parents in India in the past 20 years, either before birth or shortly after. (Warning: the following excerpt contains upsetting details about how newborn girls are killed.)

A UNICEF report released this week said 7,000 fewer girls are born in the country every day than the global average would suggest, largely because female foetuses are aborted after sex determination tests but also through murder of new borns.

"It's shocking figures and we are in a national crisis if you ask me," Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury told Reuters.

Girls are seen as liabilities by many Indians, especially because of the banned but rampant practice of dowry, where the bride's parents pay cash and goods to the groom's family.

Men are also seen as bread-winners while social prejudices deny women opportunities for education and jobs.

"Today, we have the odd distinction of having lost 10 million girl children in the past 20 years," Chowdhury told a seminar in Delhi University.

"Who has killed these girl children? Their own parents."

In some states, the minister said, newborn girls have been killed by pouring sand or tobacco juice into their nostrils.

"The minute the child is born and she opens her mouth to cry, they put sand into her mouth and her nostrils so she chokes and dies," Chowdhury said, referring to cases in the western desert state of Rajasthan.

"They bury infants into pots alive and bury the pots. They put tobacco into her mouth. They hang them upside down like a bunch of flowers to dry," she said.

"We have more passion for tigers of this country. We have people fighting for stray dogs on the road. But you have a whole society that ruthlessly hunts down girl children."

According to the 2001 census, the national sex ratio was 933 girls to 1,000 boys, while in the worst-affected northern state of Punjab, it was 798 girls to 1,000 boys.

The ratio has fallen since 1991, due to the availability of ultrasound sex-determination tests.

Although these are illegal they are still widely available and often lead to abortion of girl foetuses.

Chowdhury said the fall in the number of females had cost one percent of India's GDP and created shortages of girls in some states like Haryana, where in one case four brothers had to marry one woman.

By the way, widows in India don't fare very well either.

Is there any bright spot in this story?

Only this.  That someone cared enough to save this baby out of the millions who have been killed.  An Indian farmer named Ram Kumar noticed the baby's hand in a field.  He and other villagers rushed the baby to a hospital. 

A tiny ray of hope shines in a vast darkness.