Were the circumstances not so tragic, it would have been easier to appreciatethe farcical nature of the political and media responses to the latest Islamistterrorist outrage, this time the March 7, 2006, bombings at the ancient SankatMochan Temple and the Cantonment Railway station in Varanasi, at a site and in acity revered by the Hindus. There were, of course, the usual cries ofintelligence and policing failure, with now-routine claims of ‘hardevidence’ of the attack having been received ‘months earlier’; politicalparties sought to muddy issues, communalizing the attack and blaming each otherfor ‘weak policies’ and administrative failure; a new Rath Yatra, seeking torevive the communal passions of the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi mobilization of1990-92, was announced by the architect of the original movement, former DeputyPrime Minister L.K. Advani, though it gained little support even within his ownparty; citing the earlier (failed) attack at Ayodhya on July 5, 2005, and theJuly 28, 2005, explosion on the Shramjeevi Express near Harpal Ganj, Jaunpur,poorly informed commentators fretted that Uttar Pradesh was the "new hub" ofIslamist terrorism; even worse-informed were commentators who profoundly soughtto link the attack to ‘geopolitical shifts’ in South Asia, and to PresidentGeorge Bush’s visit to Delhi and Islamabad the preceding week.