Category: Terrorism, Security, and Defense Reform
Friday, September 10, 2004
My heart goes out to the people of Australia, who are suffering from a tragic terrorist attack against their embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia that killed nine people and wounded more than 180 yesterday.
The blast was the work of one of the most active Islamist terror groups in the world, Jemaah Islamiyah. Among JI's other atrocities are the 2002 Bali nightclub bombing that killed 202 people, and the 2003 bombing of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta that claimed another 12 lives.
JI was also the group that notorious terrorist Hambali called home. Hambali was an associate of Osama bin Laden before his capture in 2003.
This terrible attack adds another stain to the already sordid history of JI. The people of Australia deserve some room in our thoughts and prayers today.
Except where otherwise noted, all content on this site is provided under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.
If you think anything I write here represents the opinions of anybody but myself, you need more help than I can give you. The opinions are all mine, folks. Nobody else's.
If that's too hard to understand... well, I'm sorry. There's only so much I can do. I'm not a therapist, and I'm not a miracle worker. I wish I could help you work through your delusional belief that I'm speaking for anyone else but myself. Honestly, I do. But in the end, that's a monkey you'll have to get off your back on your own. Sorry.
Web feed
Also spare a place for the Indonesians, who are likely the majority of the victims. It always is a wonder that more Muslims don't notice the number of Muslims who die in attacks like this and the Al Qaeda attack against US embassies in Africa. You'd think they'd at least call for the Islamicists to change their tactics.
Absolutely -- how thoughtless of me to forget to mention them! That's what I get for posting first thing in the morning.
The local population generally does end up taking these things more directly than the "targets" do... witness the bombings of our embassies in East Africa, as you mention, which killed hardly any Americans, but many local civilians.
Of course, one of the things I'm learning from reading the 9/11 Commission report (more on that soon) is that the new terrorism doesn't really care about the casualty counts. It's much more about the symbolism of the target than it is about how many bodies you leave behind. So to them it doesn't particularly matter if you don't kill any Americans when you blow up a U.S. Embassy.