The Lessons of Mumbai

The Lessons of Mumbai:
Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit.
Mike Vanderboegh
1 December 2008

My family had just about the best Thanksgiving that could have been imagined. My son was home safely from his second tour of Iraq, my oldest daughter returned from a successful first semester at college and my youngest daughter even cleaned the first floor of the house. Of course the fact that she "cleaned it" all off and dumped the non-trash in the master bedroom did not detract from the joy of homecoming and the laughter that my wife and I had been missing these many months. It was truly a blessing.

Yet running through it all, in the back of our consciousness, reinforced every time we turned on the television or fired up a computer to answer our email was the tragedy of Mumbai. What can you say about such a monstrous act? That the jihadists are a medieval death cult? Certainly. They put the worshippers of Cali, the thugees, in the deep shade.

(For proof, if you need it, see "I was told to kill to my last breath': Captured terrorist's account of Mumbai massacre reveals plan was to kill 5,000" here)

Mark Stein observed that "Mumbai could happen just about anywhere." (See here.)

He observed:

What's relevant about the Mumbai model is that it would work in just about any second-tier city in any democratic state: Seize multiple soft targets, and overwhelm the municipal infrastructure to the point where any emergency plan will simply be swamped by the sheer scale of events. Try it in, say, Mayor Nagin's New Orleans. All you need is the manpower.

Indeed. This reminds us, if any of us needed reminding, of a few salient facts. The first is that the police, the Indian equivalent of David Codrea's "Only Ones" (see the War on Guns blog) refused to endanger themselves by firing on terrorists in the open who were even then gunning down innocents. Innocents, it must be added, who had been previously disarmed by local gun control laws. When seconds count, the police are minutes away, as the bumper sticker says. And if not, they're just as likely to be running in the opposite direction, or worse, setting up a "perimeter" to "secure" the crime scene while the dying inside proceeds apace. There is no more powerful argument for the armed citizenry's right to carry -- open or concealed.

(See here and here)


The second fact is that we are in a world war for western civilization that we are rapidly losing. It is once again 1940, only this time the United States does not stand to one side, gathering its wits and its strength to show up late and save the day. The United States is already a battleground in that war, which is more cultural than military, and we are losing here too.

Tim Rutten, writing in the LA Times here) reminds us:



Mumbai was selected not simply because it was a so-called soft target but because it is a symbol of modernity in the world's most populous democracy. The city the West first knew as Bombay is today the symbol of India's place in the modern world, as the center not only of banking, commerce and a burgeoning high-tech sector but one of the world's great film industries. (It's worth recalling that when the Taliban swept to power in Afghanistan, one of the first things it did was to close the cinemas and ban DVDs from Mumbai's Bollywood.) The places the killers struck -- luxury hotels, a railway station, a hospital for women and children, the Chabad Jewish center -- are all powerfully linked in the popular mind with the modern world. As the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has argued, the jihadis have linked anti-Americanism, anti-British sentiment (the assumption is that London is Washington's lap dog) and anti-Semitic antagonism toward Zionism into a potent new ideology. To the extent it seems to find an increasingly sympathetic hearing in some fashionable sectors of the intellectual West, including the U.S., Levy correctly labels it "the socialism of imbeciles."

We shall see just exactly how much imbecility and how much socialism the Obamanoids will bring us. More than a little, I think. Indeed, if you're looking for a death cult with a proven track record, look no further than Obama and his liberal Democrat Party supporters. It is they who have countenanced the murder of fifty plus million unborn since Roe v. Wade. This body count makes Hitler look like an amateur, and Stalin and Mao look like pikers.

Which begs the question: Are we not already two different countries, the liberals and we traditional believers in free men and free markets? If we cannot agree on something so philosophically findamental as the sanctity of life, what else can we agree on? Have we not just been agreeing to disagree on when the next American civil war will break out?

We must admit that the reason we are losing the world war for western civilization both at home and abroad is because we have elected not to fight it. And we will continue losing it until we do.

Those of us who long for the restoration of the Founders' Republic are out of time. We cannot allow ourselves to pushed back from our God-given, inalienable liberties any longer. WE MUST REFUSE TO BE SUBJUGATED A THIN SALAMI SLICE AT A TIME. We must refuse to concede to our own enslavement. In the end, and it may come sooner rather than later, we must fight.

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

And it could well be that no matter how long the odds, if we but have the will, we can and shall win.

Forgive me these somber thoughts during what should be a time of unsullied joy at our many blessings. I am compelled to say what I believe and not what you want to hear.