Now what? Again sing 'Spirit of Mumbai'!?

Lauding the role of the security personnel who sacrificed their lives to save Parliament, he said it would have been a tragedy far worse than the September 11 attack in the United States had the terrorists entered Parliament House when top political leaders and 700 parliamentarians were in. - A news item referring to LK Advani and his comments on December 13, 2001 parliament attack

When i read this piece, just for a moment i wished they entered the parliament! Such is the overwhelming helplessness I feel seeing the unfolding events in Mumbai on TV. What a crap we have for our leaders.

Will we ever wake up? Before long, we will again see the dreaded cliché 'Spirit of Mumbai' across TVs and papers. We will proclaim we are not hurt, we get back to work, conveniently forget this whole thing. Its a routine by now, they come, they hit, go back. We sit, wait for them to come back and hit. And meantime, we entertain ourselves with iron-man Advani proclaiming he will 'clean-up' terror in country within 100 days of coming to power. Could he please share with us his magic-mantra? Such statements only show how lightly this issue is taken by him and his party. Of course, it was while he was at the helm, the parliament was attacked. I have always had a positive feel for Manmohan Singh despite his not-so-charismatic approach. This could be because he sounds very honest. But the other day, for the first time, watching him addressing the nation on TV, i felt he is woefully inadequate. No, Mr Singh, ur staid approach doesn’t reassure me, not anymore. Maybe we dont need a scholar for a leader anymore. Not an old man for sure. I am not even talking about a certain Shivraj Patil. If he is still keeping his job, i wonder what his job profile is. Shameless, he utterly is. Maybe we need a raw muscleman who loves his country more than anything else. Even if it means a Narender Modi, despite all his history. Not a single reassuring voice did i hear in the past 3 days.
The Mumbai attacks made a mockery of our borders, internal and external security. From the common man in CST to the honchos in MNCs, terror touched everyone. We lost brave officers from police and NSG not to terror, but primarily for our ineptitude in governance. Think about all those officers, politicians who compromised with corruption, greed for power to make the terrorists roll into our public spaces this easily, in blue jeans and designer T-shirts. I wonder if any of these brave officers wondered for a moment if its worth laying their lives for all our insensitivity and ineptitude. Oh yeah, we will pay our due respects lighting candles and stuff before going ahead and discussing Big Brother six-packs and eight-packs. Our government already came up with the same old excuse - the root of terror is in external countries. Are we supposed to believe foreigners simply walked in without any logistical support, went around and shot every living creature around even as they ate dry fruits. Why is our leadership reluctant to focus on the assistance the terrorists got from our fellow citizens? Simply because its easy to blame the whole thing on Pakistan and get away? Pakistan has of course failed. India is failing! They couldn’t themselves avoid the attack on Marriott in Islamabad in September this year. Whether or not the Pakistan's establishment is involved in this attack does not cloud the huge task we have now for us - to proactively approach terrorism and single-mindedly sustain our pursuit of the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. Even if we have a percent of the commitment the officers who died showed, we would succeed in tackling these warped minds of terror. Quite a few times did we listen US saying Pakistan to 'do more' about tackling terror. I wonder, ironically, if that advice is more suited for our leadership!