Sunday, November 30, 2008

I blame Gandhi

One of things that stands out about the Mumbai attacks is the reluctance of the police in India to shoot. This is a clear case where our avoidance of one kind of error-using too much force-leads to the opposite error-using too little.  A set of constraints designed to save innocent life ends up costing innocent life.

More Gandhi-ism run amok from a story about Somali pirates hijacking a Liberian oil-tanker: "We
have been informed by coalition military authorities that three of our
unarmed security staff were rescued from the water by a coalition
helicopter and are currently on board a coalition warship in the Gulf
of Aden,"

A) if they don't have guns, what are they guarding against? B) Why isn't this Liberia's problem? All of this international law business seems to create a massive free-rider problem. 

At Citizens for Peace they are calling for Mumbaikars to "chanel [their] collective outrage" into "action not just...attitude." She also wants "an end to platitudes." Good luck with that.

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