Racism and Media Bias

No doubt some of you out there have eagerly been following the unfortunate incidents in Mumbai (formerly Bombay, for you colonials out there), perhaps even worried about friends, relatives and loved ones back in Bharat. For those not savvy on the incident, you can read up on it at BBC South Asia, The Deccan Herald, al-Jazeera English and/or MSNBC.

Now you know me. I'm practically in bed with the so-called 'Liberal Media,' but as the dust settles and question start getting asked, quite a few things about these attacks bother me. First of all, at least a couple hundred people are currently dead, and I expect that toll to rise a bit as the authorities start taking census of the carnage. Yet the media chooses to focus in solely on a couple of dead Americans, Brits and others. These murders are a tragedy, regardless of whom died. Yes, my heart goes out to my fellow Americans who died or lost loved ones. But I also feel empathy for the Britons who died, and the Australians, and the Israelis, and the Indians, and everyone else. How could I not? The vast majority of the people killed in these attacks were not tourists, though; they were local people just going about their daily lives, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is a tragedy, and their lives are just as valuable as some European or American tourists.

Far more worrying than media bias, though, is the disturbing degree or organization on the part of the attackers. South Asia is no stranger to terrorism. But these attacks are different from, say, random car bombings in Kabul, the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, or Maoist guerrillas in Nepal. For one, these attackers were highly disciplined, organized and trained, and armed to the teeth. They were more akin to professional soldiers than your typical terrorists. Who were they? Who trained them? Who were they working for? Those are the questions that need to be asked. The Indian government should have made it a top priority to try and take as many of them alive as they could, in order to interrogate them, because we (the international community) need to know these things. The fact that they could carry out such an organized attack on one of the world's largest and most important cities is bad. Very bad. The only way to stop future attacks is to find out who is supplying them, because nothing would prevent another cell from attacking, say, Calcutta, Madras, Goa, Hyderabad, Amritsar or Jaipur at the moment.

Both India and the US have wasted no time in pointing fingers at Pakistan, and while I cannot rule out involvement/backing by the ISI, there are no list of possible suspects in this crime. Russia, China, Iran, the EU, even the US... any country could have trained and backed these people. India is a rapidly expanding economic power. Indian goods are sold around the world. And, in contrast to every other Asian country, India actually has a single overseas military base (in Tajikistan), and could easily expand into other parts of Central, South and Southeast Asia. The attacks on Mumbai were meant to disrupt India's banking, economy, tourism and even Bollywood... it is part of an organized, well-planned terrorist attack. And there are no shortage governments that could have been behind it. Worse still, in this day and age, it is easy enough to find, and hire, private security contractors mercenaries. Even the US is employing some, like Blackwater and Triple Canopy, in Iraq. It is not inconceivable that a mercenary company somewhere could have trained these terrorists. That is why they need to be captured and interrogated.

Terrorism is bad for us, our allies, and the entire free world. Above all else, I am in favor of capitalism and free trade, spreading prosperity so that we don't have children starving to death in the streets. We have already seen what happens when elements in the US hijack our country to drive it to war, like in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, it might benefit a few individuals, but for you and I, it only makes things worse at the end of the day. How many Americans and Iraqis have died to help Halliburton's shareholders? That is not the American way! That is not FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY and CAPITALISM! Were it up to me, I would recommend sending American military, police, medics, mercenaries, security consultants, government agents and diplomats - anyone we can spare in both the government and private sector - to India immediately to help with the clean-up efforts. We cannot allow instability to take hold of the world's largest democracy, nor can we allow another ally to fall.

That's my two cents on the issue