On Friday 14 Sep 2007 6:21 pm, Udhay Shankar N wrote: > >governments do not always respond rationally, instead playing things > >up rather than down and reinforcing defences of what terrorists > >nominate as targets. Were al-Qaeda to strike next by reintroducing > >foot-and-mouth disease into Britain, I have a suspicion that both > >sides including violent Islamists would have the uneasy feeling that > >this was cheating: unsporting, like dynamiting fish. > > My view is that most terrorist acts are not optimising for maximum > damage inflicted, but rather maximum political/media mileage > achieved. With this assumption, the selection of targets becomes > easier to understand.
True Udhay, but I believe the statement in the article about "Playing things up rather than own" is debatable. The author, being in the UK, naturally has no clue about India. The Indian government has consistently followed a policy of playing down rather than up, just as suggested the article The result is there for all to see with India having the second highest number of terrorist deaths in the world, next only to Iraq. I see in the Indian media now a tendency to no longer toe the "play down" government line and I note (to my personal satisfaction) that papers like the Times of India after the Hyderabad blasts have been asking the government some serious questions about what the heck is being done. Terrorism in India needs the asking and addressing of questions that are inconvenient for the government. But without actually addressing those questions - it will be business as usual. shiv
