An interesting comment from Defense Secretary Bob Gates a little while ago during a press conference. He was asked about the Mumbai attacks and suggested that the attackers were targeting Americans and Britons. Here’s the exchange:
Reporter: Mr. Secretary, can you confirm that Admiral Mullen is on his way to India, can you outline the purpose his mission, and more broadly, can you talk about the Mumbai attacks and who you believe was responsible?
Gates: Well, I think — y’know, I don’t want to get into the intelligence that we have. I would like to commend the Indians for their restraint at this point. Admiral Mullen is in the area, as is Secretary Rice, as you know, and frankly, because the situation’s fairly delicate, I don’t want to say too much about it. It clearly was the action of an extremist group that apparently was targeting Americans and Britons, and — but the truth is most of the people who were killed were Indians, and so it’s important that we find out who did it and try and prevent it from ever happening again.
It’s certainly possible that Gates has intelligence that backs up this claim about the targets being Brits and Yankees. But as Jeff Stein reported yesterday for CQ, the nature and manner of the attacks really don’t lead to the conclusion that Westerners were the targets, despite initial press reports that claimed as much. Fareed Zakaria has made a similar observation, noting that the hotels attacked are Indian-owned and now attract the local elite, more so than the Western hotels in Mumbai where foreigners congregate.
If Americans and Brits were the targets of these attacks and Indians merely innocent bystanders, that would and should dramatically shift the U.S. response. But I need to see more. There’s plenty of bad blood between India and Pakistan, and especially between extremists in both countries, without the U.S. inserting itself in the middle as the intended victim here.
