Last week, the world turned solemn and could not find the words to express their shock and revulsion at what had just happened.
Mumbai was under attack by mere “kids” or “boys,” no one possibly older than 25, who went about their business without thought or compunction.
Words fail to describe the horror of the event.
And even more the kinds of emotions it brings to us.
I am certain that anyone who saw the news that day, particularly those who have Indian friends or kin in India, would have been speechless at the savageness of it. Some things are simply alien to human conduct, and despite India’s often bloody history a monstrous thing like this happening to it in this day and age boggles the mind.
Particularly when India, like China, is well on its way to becoming an economic power.
Truly you have to wonder how people can be so lacking in human empathy that they can gun down men and women while they go about their daily lives, laughing, loving, wondering what meal they would prepare for their families when they get home. Many of those who died were in the platform of a station waiting for their trains to arrive.
Horror in the midst of normality, extraordinary mayhem amid ordinary life, the sudden visitation of death amid the fullness of life — all these have been known to happen.
But for human beings to do that, willfully, deliberately, and methodically, that is truly horrific. The lack of passion or emotion with which the killers killed, makes you stand in absolute disbelief in the face of it.
I am still loss for words to condemn it.
But more so at a loss for words to grasp it...
4 comments:
It is indeed very tragic how the world have become. Terrorists don't have any more age requirements but only guts to execute the job. It is hard to fathom what came to their minds to commit such horrendous acts. Is it done by adult brainwashing, life desperation or just a random act to be known..nobody knows. This thing is also happening in a civilized world and it is not called terrorism but massacre. In 1999 that US Columbine school massacre done by two troubled kids that cost the lives of 12 and 23 wounded. There was also in Montreal, Canada at Ecole polytechnique, 1989, were 14 engineering female students were massacred, the worst in Canadian history. In England there was a 2 years old boy who was kidnapped and murdered by two boys aged 10.
Who is to be blamed? is it their parents, the upbringings, environments? These are mostly the factors which contributed to the actions of those kids in this western world. In countries like India and other third world attributes mainly to economic,and political isues... i cannot utter anymore words to express , it's horrifying!
Very interesting blogs, Odette, keep on!
So far your chances of being "taken" or killed in a terrorist attack is about the same as getting hit by lightning 10 seconds after cashing the winning ticket in the worlds largest prize lottery.
However it gets great press and thus is a great "weapon of terror" not destruction, they with the world trade centre exception and even that as far as weapons go was not all that destructive but the terror effect is extremely high. In fact I doubt the English word terror conveys the meaning well at all. I don't know how many Japanese speaking friends you have but ask them if they think the Japanese word Kwai conveys the meaning better. It doesn't really translate into English but when we try we get terror or horror or extreme fear.
Sid
Actually Sid, many many people in this country would take GREAT offense at your comment about the plane crashes into the Twin Towers not being that destructive. Two towering buildings, plus smaller structures bellow, were crushed to the point of being compacted enough to stack several floors worth of material, including metal, into one floor. Can you even wrap your brain around what a human body looks like compressed to that degree? I sure can't Even their bones were turned to dust by the shear PSI of presure.
I doubt you or most first responders around the world have ever seen such a sight in person. As you said, it doesn't happen that often. It really is, or was, more to be hit my lightning. The truth is, there has never been any one single, non military device that has done that amount of damage. Osama knew EXACTALLY what he was doing. He knew something as simple as two fully fueled commercial jets would take out the towers.
But, we may never know if that useless, bearded pile of dog shit knew to what degree the heat would reach. It actually melted the monsterous iron structer of these giant towers. The temperature was so high it caused all this hardend iron to become soft enough to bend and rip appart like wet cardboard.
How many of you have ever been up next to these types of iron beams? Well, I have. They aren't that easy to heat up enough to melt like that without a blast furnace. Let alone soften the amount of metal used collectivly to make the framework in the general area that the planes smashed into.
Our firefighters are some of the toughest, well trained and well equiped men and women on earth. Yet, most of them could never have, and still can't imagine, let alone have ever witnessed that level of destruction and carnege. I don't know just how much the rest of the world gets to see from the american mediasince every country spoon feeds different things to their citizens.
Even worse, a lot of what is broadcasted by the american media is totally biased and spun to their liking. Sometimes, the garbage they deliver isn't even close to the truth.
I've seen very explicit, uncut video footage from cameras rolling within the building. The camera opperators were right behind the firefighters trying to run up the thousands of stairs left but never even made it to most of the people trappped above. I don't even know how the hell they got that footage.
All I do know is, all over the country, even 8 years later, there are STILL people wearing FDNY baseball caps, T-shirts etc, in honor of the firefighters. That doesn't even come close to the amount of nationwide grief and utter hatered of all terrorists we all have shared overone event over the years
Neither the media's hype, nor our government's rantings about taking out terrorism has anything to do with causing this amount of fear and all our murderous thoughts towards all terrorists and arabs in general. It started as soon as the first footage hit the airwaves was seen by the people who lost family members in the initial crash.
As for the rest of us, it took a while to see just how many families accross the entire country who where directally affected. They had family memebers who were vaborized by the initial explosions. Family members who, afterward, jumped out of windows from up to 20 stories to avoid being slowly burned alive. Family mambers who couldn't even get to windows who WERE burned to death, as well as those who were crushed to the thickness of a piece of notebook paper once the tower's stucture collapsed.
I still feel so disconnected from them. I'll never have a clue the amount of pain, hatered or fear all those families have gone through. As I said, this amount of damage has never been seen in any one event before without a military strike. But, this is much worse for these families.
It's totally different than hearing your sons or daughters or any family memebers were blown appart by road side bombs while serving a tour of duty in the military. These people were totally inocent and never had anything to do with the intentions behind what Obama set into motion.
I don't know Sid, maybe I missread what you were saying in your comment. If so, I'm very sorry. But, dispite the Iraq war and anything else that this country will do about terrorists, this tragety will go down in history as the worst thing that has ever happened to usEven worse than the Japanese air strike on Pearl Harbor, At least that was a strategic, military strike on a military base.
I agree about what you are saying. I currently have a disabilty that partly results from what happened that day. I also hope to here clarify what part of what I meant. I also want to take this chance to pay tribute of many of the heroes of that day.
First I will say all I can that is not classified. What is will always be so added questions will get no intelligable reply.
From early 78 till I was honorably discharged in early 80 I was our unit's IO. That is short for intelligence officer thought to the press it is as a joke always refered to as information officer. In 79 I was at a lecture on world intelligence in general. It is amazing how accurate predictions were. Fall of the Berlin wall was to within a week. Just one example. One thing shocked me then. Various world intelligence agencies were stopping attempts at the WTC at the rate of 2 a day. Even the KGB was one of the big players in stopping them. Many you always see as enemy's took a very active role in anti-terrorisim with great sucess.
Here is the part one made me sick years later and 2 led to my leaving our forces. you will see some of this from things your own media reported.
My job when I was IO ( I had other duties ) was to spot and report for investigation those that were possibly terrorisit conected. I could be relatives family conections girlfriends anything that triggered the slightest lets say hunch I was to report and the RCMP would investigate further. ( we didn't have CSIS our version of the CIA at the time ) problem was anyone we reported ( others with the same job in other units ) all we could do for the time was see they didn't get special weapons training till cleared. Many did clear. The problem was those that didn't complained to their members of parliment and got the training.
Sound much like what happened on your side of the border. People reported them and your politicians got them exempted from the checks. I got so sick I left the forces which I loved.
From here this is mainly an apology for not being clear. Doing what I did it was always worst case situations. What Bin Laden did hadn't been thought of in 79 at that time worst was two planes loaded with high explosive. At that it was assumed fighter bombers not commercial aircraft. What he had done was probably the worst thing possible with tools a terrorist could access. It hadn't been thought of in 79.
What was more feared and this where the misunderstanding comes in. Was what if he ( or anyone like him ) got his hands on a true WMD. At that time we didn't even have that term but feared for example a high yield nuke at that location. Or other things I won't mention but you can guess at. I'm sure you understand without prompting.
Excuse me a moment I need to get some emotions out of my head.
Back.
I also left our forces for something happening only here. I have given odette instructions to give you my personal email if you wish to contact me directly and also am extending through her an invitation to visit me if you wish. I am not wealthy but only about a six or seven hour drive from you. I can put you up here and all your meals etc would be on me.
You lost many heros that day, fire police ambulance and ordinaray men and women. No I take that back noble ladies and gentlemen. There is comic book salute to them and that is in my mind more accurate than any other as they were Super Heros.
my illness came partly from knowing that those who did as I had and reported these villians had been overuled.
There were other factors but that eats at me to this day. What if I had stood up in 80 and raise a stink. ( probably nothing )
via our host I hope to hear from you directly.
One on one I can be more direct to not mince words.
Once again I regret any impression I may have given that it was not terrible. You didn't misread me. I am used to not saying all I should. To some extent I even to this day blame myself. It is a burden I sincerly wish I could lay down.
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