This murderous business still going on in Mumbai, India (formerly known as Bombay), still unfolding … what apparently is a series of terror attacks aimed at Americans and Britons …

If I were sitting in my place in SoCal, it would seem quite remote. People on, literally, the other side of the world, dead, wounded or taken hostage.

But from Hong Kong, it seems fairly close to “home” because Hong Kong is closer to Mumbai than Los Angeles is to New York. A plane ride of about 5 hours and 20 minutes, vs. one of 6 hours and 20 minutes.

I know this sounds like one of those “all about me” concepts, but …

If you were a terrorist, whether Osama bin Laden or just a couple of angry young jihadis sitting in a room, Hong Kong would present a nearly perfect “soft target” for attacks on Americans and Brits.

Matter of fact, I can think where I would stage attacks. It would be fairly easy, really.

Let’s start with the obvious: Westerners are quite obvious, in Hong Kong. You don’t need to look at passports; you can just look at faces and the odds are that any Euro-looking person will be a Brit, an American or an Aussie (someone terrorists will take, in lieu of Yanks or Brits).

Also, the English-speakers tend to gather at a handful of places.

Everybody familiar with Hong Kong knows this. I’m not divulging any secrets. I certainly can’t be the first to think of this.

If I were intent on killing Americans and Brits, or taking hostages, in HK, this is where I would go:

–The Foreign Correspondents’ Club. And, it turns out, I will be there in an hour for a Thanksgiving Day lunch, before going to work. What a great symbolic target! Attacking the colonial-feeling FCC, also a focal point for local journalists and world media and sure to be populated with a batch of Yanks and Brits.

–Any of the big hotels. To name two, over on the Kowloon Side of the city, The Peninsula (famous for its High Tea that attracts tourists by the dozens) and the Intercontinental. Scads of Westerners in both places. Posh hotels, too, the sort of decadence we, as terrorists, so despise in the morally bankrupt West. A quick pass through the lobby of either hotel would yield hundreds of Americans and Brits.

–The airport. Of course.

–Lan Kwai Fong. This is the famous/infamous stretch of bars and restaurants that the expat community throngs to after work. And it’s right next door to the FCC. What better place than to ensnare evil Crusader-type folk than dragging them out of pubs?

There are other places, of course. Some of the big financial buildings in the Central district would be handy, and might produce some of the bankers that terrorists seem to loathe.

The thing about HK? I can hardly imagine a softer target.

Little police presence. Almost no crime. Does HK even have a SWAT-type unit? I doubt it, and if it does, it has to be soft from years of having nothing to do. If terrorists took over a building here, I’m not sure HK authorities would have a real idea of what to do, the place is so peaceful.

Also, there are a substantial number of Muslims already living here. Maybe the current attack in Mumbai isn’t about religious fanatics of the Islamic stripe, but it seems to be, and let’s assume it is. And then you go to HK which has a significant number of South Asians — Indians who might be Muslims and Pakistanis, who certainly are, as well as Indonesians, who are Muslims, as well. So a terror fringe easily could disappear into those communities.

Here is what HK has going for it: I don’t think the sophisticated terror cells want to rile China. And HK now is essentially part of China, even if doesn’t always feel like it.

India? Known for having its anti-Islam moments. China, well, yes, it does, too, in its far west, but those issues seem ethnic more than religious. I haven’t noticed any calls for jihad against China, yet.

Anyway, it is not about me. I know that. It’s about the civilians dead and wounded and captured right at this moment.

But an attack of the sort going on in Mumbai, a distant place with a significant number of Westerners focused at a limited number of areas …

In SoCal, I wouldn’t make this leap. In Hong Kong, I could see it happening here.