NEW ATTACKS IN MUMBAI – AT 10:36 P.M. ET:  Some 21 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, today.  In November, 2008, the city was the target of terrorist attacks that killed 166 people.  From the Washington Post:

NEW DELHI — Three blasts ripped through Mumbai during rush hour Wednesday evening, killing at least 21 people and injuring more than 110, Indian officials said. The explosions, which officials described as a terrorist attack, targeted crowded areas of the city, India’s financial capital.

“The blasts occurred at about 6:45 p.m., within minutes of one other. Therefore, we infer that this was a coordinated attack by terrorists,” said P. Chidambaram, India’s home minister, speaking in New Delhi...

...One obvious suspect in the attacks Wednesday is Lashkar-i-Taiba, a violent Islamist group that Pakistan once sponsored as a proxy army against India and that is suspected of being behind the 2008 attacks, said former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Another strong possibility, he said, would be an Indian-based Muslim extremist group, such as the Indian Mujahideen, which has been linked in the past to smaller-scale bombings.

“This one’s fairly hard to place,” Riedel said. “It has elements of sophistication, with multiple targets and coordinated attacks, which could suggest Lashkar, but it doesn’t have the large-scale ambition you saw in the 2008 attacks.”

COMMENT:  The blasts come at a time when American relations with Pakistan are at a low point, and this event won't improve them.  Both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers.  The attacks highlight the ability of terrorists to influence world events, even with small assaults.  If the blasts are traced to an Islamic group, as appears likely, they will also show that militant Islam is maintaining its violent pressure on free nations, pressure that will only increase amidst instability in the Arab world and Iran's march toward a nuclear weapon.

At the same time, a new poll shows American prestige declining in the Arab world.  From Nile Gardiner in London's Telegraph:

Today’s eye-opening Zogby poll for the Arab American Institute Foundation should be a wake-up call to the White House on its failing foreign policy. After two and a half years of bashing Israel, appeasing rogue regimes such as Iran and Syria, and promising a new era of relations with the Muslim world, Washington is now less popular in major Arab countries than it was when George W. Bush was in the White House.

Weakness doesn't sell.  We can only contemplate the damage Obama can do if he is given a second term, and can run wild without the need to plan for reelection.

July 13, 2011