Published November 29, 2008 | 
Part of the vast unfathomable horror of the World Trade Center bombings was the helplessness of those trapped by the collision of plane and skyscraper. A plane is too big to battle. All people could do was die, or save themselves, or try to help others. There was no way to fight the catastrophe itself.
In comparison, the Mumbai assault feels intimate, personal, familiar. A small-scale nightmare: people (even unarmed wedding guests) against people (armed with guns and grenades, yes, but individuals who might be placated or tricked). Current news says that the attack was staged by just ten gunmen, nine of whom are now dead. (Other reports are saying 15.) Almost 300 people were wounded, almost 200 killed. These numbers are easily imagined. How many people attended your wedding? graduated in your class? work in your office?
We’ve seen so many elements of this attack before in other places, including the dead Jewish hostages in Munich. Every day people pull guns on strangers or friends or family members. Often they shoot. Sometimes they don’t miss. Every day someone is held hostage. Sometimes a child, drenched with blood, miraculously escapes.
But the small scale and the human face of the Mumbai terrorist attacks don’t make them less horrifying. In some ways it makes them worse, because we can grasp them.
My prayers go out to those who are grieving and those who will live with this horror to the end of their lives. My prayers go out for peace and healing. It’s a long road.
The ache is simultaneously dull and sharp. Can’t explain why, but it’s as if I forget and then I remember.
sigh
Although being scared is certainly a better position than dying, terrorist acts should be measured by how large of an effect they have on how many of the living. By that measure, the Mumbai attacks are, in my opinion, as large in scale as the Twin Towers.
Three days of people cowering in their homes, wondering how many gunmen there were about the city. Words cannot express my sympathy for all of India, from those who faced gunmen or lost loved ones to people who were far from bullets but will spend years eyeing hotels suspiciously and guessing at odds, the same way we San Franciscans tried to calculate the likeliness of an attack on the TransAmerica pyramid in 2002 and 2003.
I am just now getting some of the operational details of this horrific attack. It has been an open secret, which sadly I can now discuss, that hotel security is nearly the poorest link in the chain.
Terrorists are a nuisance as long as we can keep our perspective and our nerve.
My sympathies also to the Indian people.