Belmont Club

By Richard Fernandez

Bio

Get Updates From Richard Fernandez
A Comment About

Mumbai in Kabul

February 12, 2009 - 7:57 pm - by Richard Fernandez
Jim in Virginia
2009-02-13 19:13:29

It’s probably a bad idea to try to get inside the mind of someone from an alien culture, but imagine you’re a fundamentalist Wahhabi senior ISI officer. I’d guess you hate, roughly in this order:
The Pakistani secularists
India: polytheists; 60 years of bad blood, plus all that went on before partition.
The United States: the Great Satan, and they support India.
Israel: Jews,and they support India.
Britain: the Raj.
Russia: Godless atheists, Afghanistan, Chechnya.
China: Godless atheists, Kashmir

Somewhere down the line are Iran (Shia heretics, threatening Persian nationalists) and the Arabs. The Sauds are guardians of the holy places but they are rich and arrogant; the emirates are just rich and arrogant.
Dave #9 wonders about a gotterdamerung. So, if you’re a fundamentalist Wahhabi senior ISI officer, would you mind if Islamabad were vaporized if Mumbai and Delhi were nuked too? And if you managed to get control of a nuke, would you sell it to someone with delivery plans- or would you lob it at Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Teheran, or Dubai and see what happens?