Cowboys & Indians

al Qaeda may be dead as an organization, but as a brand they keep on keeping on, and today it was the turn of the world's largest democracy:

Suspected Islamist militants killed seven people, six of them tourists, on Tuesday in a series of grenade attacks in Srinagar, police said, the most concerted targeting of civilians in months.

In the bloodiest strike, a grenade was thrown inside a bus in Srinagar, near the city's famous mountain-ringed Dal Lake, killing the six holidaymakers and wounding seven. Four other people were also hurt. ...

At least forty people were killed in seven blasts on the suburban rail network in India's financial capital Mumbai [aka Bombay] on Tuesday, television channel CNN-IBN said, quoting police.

The death toll has continued to climb throughout the day, to one-hundred-thirty-five at noon today to, at last count, one-hundred-forty-seven.

Indian authorities weren't publicly identifying the responsible parties, and no terrorist group has claimed "credit" yet for this latest atrocity, but Cap'n Ed points out that it has all the al Qaeda calling cards:

This has all the earmarks of an AQ operation. They attacked the transportation system, concentrating their biggest efforts in Mumbai, India's financial center. The terrorists targeted their attacks to maximize civilian deaths. Similarities between these attacks and the London subway bombings are apparent and apposite.

Motivations for jihadi attack abound: beyond the obligatory religious (in this case, anti-Hindu) factors, there is also India's rapproachment with Pakistan over Kashmir, and the positive that is for the (to them) hated President Pervez Musharraf. This would be ironic if, as Peter Brookes suggests, the ISI (Pakistani Intelligence) had a role in the operation. You'll recall that they were the primary proper-uppers of the Taliban prior to 9/11 and are as Islamist as our own CIA is Bushophobic. Reduction of tensions with their larger neighbor is the last thing they want, and Brookes does indeed speculate that this incident will chill Indian-Pakistani relations.

I would suggest one other factor that I haven't read anywhere in the blogosphere today: India's newly established close ties to the United States. Since 9/11 there have now been three mass-casualty al Qaeda attacks - Spain, Britain, and now India - and at the time of each one the targeted country was a staunch American ally in the GWOT. Spain buckled, Britain remained friendly but Prime Minister Tony Blair's resolve and standing was weakened. Now India gets hit, and the question to be answered in the days and weeks ahead is whether they will continue the alliance that was established just a few short months ago, or cut & run from us to try to minimize their exposure to the terrorists.

Berserkers they definitely are, but there is a method to Islamist madness. They found out after 9/11 that the current POTUS was not the pushover his predecessor was, and they have found the going inside the U.S. more difficult. So they have adapted, in a strategic sense, the classic guerrilla strategy: lop off all the extremities first, then go for the head. Attack any country that dares join with us in the fight against Islamic Fundamentalism and intimidate them into retreat, isolating the U.S. and making us bear the entire burden of the war effort. Given how neon-obvious our own internal divisions are and how adamantly disinclined the political opposition is to keep bearing those burdens, as well as the enemy's unshakable belief that the country George Bush leads is soft and weak and cowardly even if he isn't, they are convinced that, sooner or later (or after January 20, 2009 at worst), America will quit the fight, revert completely to a pre-9/11 policy stance, and the head of the Great Satan will once again be on the chopping block - this time for keeps.

And they have good reason to think that. Just take a scan down this list of links from today alone:

Hamdan sounds the death knell for the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program

As Andy McCarthy argues, the TSP was (note the tense) our terrorist early warning system. Now that the Hamdan decision has kicked the constitutional legs out from under the President's inherent Article II war-fighting powers vis-a-vie military tribunals for captured terrorists, the TSP is functionally nullified since the Administration has justified it on the same legal grounds. Whether that power is usurped by the courts or Congress, it seems unlikely that the TSP will survive their feckless mischief-making.

We know that numerous al Qaeda plots have been foiled by the TSP; once it is defunct, future plots will, presumably, inevitably, succeed.

Getting back to Hamdan itself, Mark Levin made this common sense observation:

What the courts, Congress and, alas, the Administration have now done by applying the Geneva Conventions protections to unlawful enemy combatants is to ensure that more and more warfare will involve terrorism since the rules of prisoner treatment apply to everybody, regardless of their behavior — which means there are no rules of war. The result will be more horrific attacks on citizens, more wanton slaughter, and more terrorism.

No, "the Administration" was not a typo. I. kid. you. not:

The Bush Administration said Tuesday that all detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and in all other U.S. military custody around the world are entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the policy, outlined in a new Defense Department memo, reflects the recent 5-3 Supreme Court decision blocking military tribunals set up by President Bush.

The policy, described in a memo by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, appears to reverse the Administration's earlier insistence that the detainees are not prisoners of war and thus subject to the Geneva protections.

If this is true, it is a stunning capitulation on the part of the White House. To all its enemies, both foreign and domestic.

I say "if" because Jed Babbin, a man who knows about the Pentagon, says this is more Enemy Media hype:

The new memorandum about the status of terrorist detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and elsewhere - signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England on Friday - is being widely misreported. The memo....doesn't say that the terrorists are now POWs under the Geneva Conventions or that they will be afforded the full rights and protections of the Geneva Conventions.

What it does say is that with the exception of the military tribunals tossed out by the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan, the treatment of the terrorist enemy combatants - under the cited Defense Department and Army manuals - is believed to be consistent with Geneva standards. The media hype of this is entirely wrong.

A distinction without much of a difference, actually. The proper spin to put on this story is not that the Bushies are retreating from their detainee policy, but that they have undermined their own legal argument by applying Geneva standards to enemies who are not entitled to them. This is what Cap'n Ed calls, "not really giving up much." Which is akin to missing a field goal when you're down by four touchdowns.

The heat the President should be drawing is why these demonspawn haven't been tortured. Or, having been mined for all the intel they possessed, why they're even kept alive.

Here's a convincing reason why [warning: this video is X-rated, and not for sex].

Those were American soldiers, folks. One might say they were U.S. POWs in al Qaeda's custody. Which means they WERE entitled to Geneva Convention protections - every damned last one of them - which they were denied but their executioners' unlucky comrades have been bequeathed.

Hows' that make you feel? It left Brother Hinderaker righteously pissed:

The terrorists who were responsible for this atrocity need to be hunted down and killed. When Russian diplomats were murdered by Iraqi terrorists, Vladimir Putin publicly directed Russia's secret service to track down the perpetrators and kill them. And Russia doesn't even have any armed forces in Iraq.

Has our government issued a similar order? Not that we know of. We chose this war; we chose this battlefield; we chose to send men like Menchaca and Tucker to Iraq because we believed it was important to our security. Their brutal murders have exposed, once again, the face of pure evil that we are fighting in this war. They must be avenged, and the American public must know that they have been avenged, not forgotten.

President Bush started this war with the right spirit, when he said, for example, that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive." More recently, he has internalized and repeated the sophisticates' criticisms of some of his early rhetoric. In this instance, he should put that reticence behind him and commit the full resources of this nation to avenging our soldiers' murders. And I'm not talking about capturing the perpetrators and feeding them three religiously appropriate meals a day in Guantanamo Bay.

In this Rocketman is echoing the New York Post's Ralph Peters, who starkly describes the narrowed options left to U.S. forces in the post-Hamdan world:

Violent Islamist extremists must be killed on the battlefield. Only in the rarest cases should they be taken prisoner. Few have serious intelligence value. And, once captured, there's no way to dispose of them.

Consider today's norm: A terrorist in civilian clothes can explode an IED, killing and maiming American troops or innocent civilians, then demand humane treatment if captured - and the media will step in as his champion. A disguised insurgent can shoot his rockets, throw his grenades, empty his magazines, kill and wound our troops, then, out of ammo, raise his hands and demand three hots and a cot while he invents tales of abuse.

Isn't it time we gave our critics what they're asking for? Let's solve the "unjust" imprisonment problem, once and for all. No more Guantanamos! Every terrorist mission should be a suicide mission. With our help.

Unlike the Hamdan SCOTUS majority, Peters' is an accurate reading of the "oft-cited, seldom-read Geneva and Hague Conventions" and the traditional rules of warfare.

Oh, sure, if you thought the DisLoyal Opposition howled about Abu Ghraib and Haditha, just wait for the field day they'd have if we stop taking prisoners and start remanding them directly to Allah instead. But that just highlights what we have lost in this war: anger. Cold rage. Righteous indignation. I'll never forget the front page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle - the San Francisco f'ing Chronicle - on 9/12/01: "BASTARDS!!!" All Americans were stupefied, all Americans were shocked, all Americans were scared, and all Americans were mad as hell. An email I received soon after had a picture that captured the sentiment perfectly:

Five years ago it was "BASTARDS!!!" and "We're coming, motherfuckers!" Now we're all but putting them up at the Gitmo Marriot.

The Bushies' waving white flag has generated some anger, however - from the base with whom they have so painstakingly regained some ground:

So look where President Bush's decision to sideline the neoconservatives has gotten him. Instead of worrying about America, Iran now holds the upper hand, choosing which U.N. officials will inspect it as America begs Tehran to accept an offer of negotiations and "incentives" that include civilian airline parts. North Korea is as belligerent as ever, test-firing medium range missiles. Iraq's capital is a bloodbath of sectarian violence. Israel is under fire from a Hamas state in Gaza. Russia and Communist China are blocking American action at the U.N. Security Council....

Well, if this is what four months of a "softer line" has gained us, we say bring back the neoconservatives, particularly because Mr. Bush himself hasn't totally abandoned their — and his — freedom agenda.

I wish I didn't have to doubt that. But there's just too much contrary evidence of his Admistration's flight from its enemies abroad and here at home to take that at face value. Suffice it to say that, far from the "neocons" having "hijacked" his Administration before, it is the appeasers, in the guise of "realism," who have hijacked it now, with increasingly ominous results.

Pray for the Indians. Pray for the families of those the Islazi butchers murdered today. Pray that India doesn't head for the tall grass like Spain did. But also pray that Bush the Cowboy and his neocon posse returns, Superman-like, to reverse the nation's drift toward strategic disaster. Pray that we don't have to suffer another taste of al Qaeda's bloodmisting "cuisine" in order to regain the grudge we need to maintain in what is, as I've always said, a war of annihilation.

And pray that we're still capable of it. Otherwise, this war will be lost, and our way of life along with it.

UPDATE: The death toll continues to mount, and the terrorists' objective moves toward fruition:

Eight bombs exploded in first-class compartments of packed Bombay commuter trains Tuesday, killing 190 people and wounding hundreds in a well-coordinated terror attack on the heart of a city that embodies India's global ambitions.

Suspicion quickly fell on Kashmiri militants who have repeatedly carried out nearly simultaneous explosions in attacks on Indian cities, including bombings last year at three markets in New Delhi.

Pakistan, India's rival over the disputed territory of Kashmir, quickly condemned Tuesday's bombings. Even so, India alleges that Pakistan supports the Muslim militants, and analysts said a Kashmiri link to the blasts could slow - or perhaps even derail - a peace process that has gained momentum between the nuclear rivals over the past several years.

Goad the Indians toward confrontation with Pakistan; that turns the heat up on Musharaff; maybe the Islamists finally manage to pick him off; and voila! al Qaeda has a new base of operations and its own nuclear arsenal. In the mean time the Bush Administration is put in the position of trying to calm the Indians down, when their fury is entirely justified, if its target is still a bit premature. Possibly a wedge is driven between the two democracies, oldest and biggest. What might not be attained by intimidation is perhaps gained via alienation.

I gotta say, the jihadis chose their target well. It makes it all the more imperative that we strike another Iraq-magnitude blow against the enemy someplace else - like Iran, for instance.

Lame condemnations aren't gonna cut it. The enemy is going for our throat; why aren't we going for his? Especially when we've got so much longer arms?

UPDATE: David Frum has a comprehensive primer on India here.