A Few Barbed Question Now That It is Over….

So it is officially over. The damage has been done. The wounds hurt. They will keep bleeding for a while and then they will leave ugly scars. Scars on the stone edifices will be repaired eventually. Those on the psyches of the masses will stay there permanently. The void created in the lives of those who have lost their dear ones will be irreparable: they have suffered the most.  We don't know or rather don't want to think of the torture, the agony the actual victims might have had to go through in the last few moments of their lives. Some might have broken down, others must have put up a brave face before resigning to the inevitability of fate. A fate they had to endure because of the incompetent nitwits this country has had the misfortune to have as leaders.  Others like you and I have had to suffer the trauma of witnessing silently while the respect of our motherland was being torn to shreds; the trauma of collective shame, outrage and pain while the stark dance of violence unfolded on the TV screens. While the mostly rabid and uniformly mindless media persons gave stupid as hell running commentary even as some innocent people were being culled like birds.

It has been repeatedly said that we as a nation and more importantly as a defense apparatus are ill-prepared for offensives of such magnitude, but there have been several questions that come to my mind. Facts say that not only the top brass defense personnel (read police officers, OK, KB?) were under prepared but they were practically stunned, and after coming out of the initial state of shock, it seems that they resorted to some mindless action, without actually being aware of the exact situation and got killed in the process. The first question that arises here is: were they not armed at all? If they weren't carrying any weapon, what they were doing there in the first place? If they in fact were carrying their weapons, what stopped them from using them even once? How they were planning to counter the terrorists? Were their reflexes so slow? They were in the jeep, the terrorists were on foot. (As the details appear in the media) Yet they proved to be sitting ducks. They seem to have perished without showing a semblance of resistance. Is this what we mean by martyrdom? Wars are not won by getting oneself killed, to win battles you are required kill the enemies instead. Correct me if I have my facts wrong, but we need more people in the defense sector who can actually liquidate at least a few of the attackers before succumbing than those who are caught napping. Second question that I would like to ask is, what they were thinking, all the three king pins traveling by the same car? Weren't they aware of the adage advising against putting all one's eggs in one basket? Saving a few litres of diesel shouldn't have been high on their priority list especially in a crisis situation. That they were unaware of the actual ground condition is no excuse. Before embarking on a damage control mission, they should have taken stock of the situation.    (to be continued)

This is what I wrote in response to Subbu’s comments.

First of all, let me thank you for your visit and the comments. Actually I was going to put that one remark at the end of my yet unfinished post: our tradition is not to speak ill of the dead. But here the issue has graver ramifications and a significant bearing on days to come, as far as combating terror is concerned. One positive that we can have (though it sounds like an oxymoron) from this postmortem is that we may be better prepared for such events (God forebid) if any in future, provided we learn something out of it. It is going to be far better to be objectively analytical about the events rather than being conventionally sentimental, as our usual tendency is. Anyways, the idea is to create an awareness, so all comments are going to help build that. As I have already mentioned, please correct me if my facts are not in order. After all, the mayhem is reported variously in different media. Please come back to read the finished post. Thanx once again.