While the pattern is clear, the reality is far more complex. It would be irresponsibly hateful to assume that all Muslims condone nihilistic terror tactics. In India, international press reports make it clear that the Muslim population, itself subject to terror inflicted by the Hindu majority, were grief stricken and outraged by the attacks in Mumbai.
But when the international phenomenon of terror is viewed as a whole, the very complexity of the situation is still cause for despair. Muslims as a group may not embrace the politics of death, but a large and growing dedicated cohort does. And the weight of contrary opinion and actual resolve is clearly insufficient to stop the bloodshed. (That the Mumbai terrorists sought to target Americans, Britons, and Jews is particularly troubling, and is an unmistakable clue to understanding what motivates Islamic radicals, who are as anti-Semitic as they are anti-Western. Targeting the out-of-the-way and obscure Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Community Center clearly flags a terrorist pathology.)
Mumbai may be half a world away from the United States, but its violent reality is only a step away from our shores. Perhaps only a half-step.
A definite connection has not yet been established, but it appears that the Mumbai terrorists have ties to Pakistani militants, who are in turn supported by elements of that nation's secret services. And while reports that the Mumbai terrorist group may enjoy connections with Al Qaeda have not been confirmed, there is little doubt that this terrorist group serves as an inspiration. America's war in Afghanistan has spilled over into Pakistan. And President-elect Barack Obama appears committed to intensifying the military fight there.
Other than denouncing the violence, Obama has wisely refrained from further comment. No doubt he is weighing the options he will face in confronting the international implications of the thankless situation he has inherited.
The Mumbai terrorists appear to a have fashioned a murderous tool: marshaling a well-coordinated attack by gunmen intent on fighting to their death — not unlike the now all-too-familiar suicide bombers throughout the world. Since terrorists in this DIY age of decentralization are by nature copycats, this is a potential new wrinkle with which Obama will have to contend.
As serious as this tactical innovation is, however, it is overshadowed by the inescapable fact that both Pakistan (an all-but-failed state) and India (the world's largest, and arguably most chaotic, democracy) are both armed with nuclear weapons. If a confrontation were to coalesce between these two powers, the threat of Iran, the quagmires in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the perpetual tinder box of the Middle East will become sideshows.
The fact and the spectacle of terrorism have conjured the not-especially-remote possibility of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. Those who do not condemn the terrorists of Mumbai and elsewhere — most especially those in the Muslim communities in the US and in Boston who do truly denounce terrorism, but whose voices remain whispers, if not altogether silent — will be complicit if the frightful present mushrooms into an even more terrible future.
