A post by Maynard

This new HBO documentary, “Terror in Mumbai”, is worth noting. If you get HBO, check your schedule.

On the evening of November 26, 2008, ten young Pakistani men reached Mumbai in a small hijacked fishing boat, having slaughtered its captain and crew, and glided unnoticed into the teeming Indian port city. Over the next three days, armed with cell phones, machine guns, and fruit and nuts to sustain them, they unleashed coordinated attacks across the city that left at least 170 people dead and more than 300 wounded, sending shockwaves of fear around the world. Narrated by Mumbai-born Fareed Zakaria, CNN host and Newsweek International editor, and directed by award-winning filmmaker Dan Reed (HBO’s “Terror in Moscow”), TERROR IN MUMBAI provides a 360-degree view of a terrorist act, recounting in harrowing detail the bloody events of that 60-hour period…

The documentary walks you through the events as they happened, showing dramatic videos captured by security cameras and the media. It includes intercepted phone conversations between the terrorists and their handlers. These are particularly eerie…the audio is captioned, of course, but the tone you hear when a coordinator instructs a terrorist to commit murder is as matter-of-fact as you might ask an assistant to bring you a stapler. The terrorists are given spiritual encouragement as they tire, with ongoing references to the pleasure Allah is deriving as the operation unfolds and the dead pile up, along with assurances of splendid rewards awaiting the faithful. This is the sort of dialogue you’d expect to come out of the mouths of bad guys in a cheap movie, or maybe words Dr. Evil would say. It’s almost impossible to wrap your head around the concept that it’s real.

People will debate what we are to learn from revisiting these atrocities. I see this as a reminder of the depths of evil depravity to which human beings are capable of falling. Obviously Islam is a big part of the modern equation. But it should never be forgotten that the Nazi movement came out of a culture that was productive and relatively wealthy and second to none in terms of modern enlightenment and sophistication.

The fundamental error of the Left is the idea that evil arises as a result of economic and material factors. Hence the Leftist fixation on “economic justice”, which they see as the primary foundation of a world in which people do not turn to evil. In fact, evil exists independent of money or material or intellect. We will all be tempted by evil in some way, and we must find some spiritual strength within ourselves to resist that temptation. Cultural and environmental factors may strengthen or weaken or even destroy our personal resolve, but the battle remains on a spiritual, rather than a material, plane.

*UPDATE by Pat Here’s the clip of the handler dispassionately telling the terrorists to shoot the hostages at the Jewish Center. Warning, this is strong stuff. You will hear the gunshots.

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