A possible upside to the Mumbai attacks

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November 30, 10:43 PM

by Amos Wright, Conservative Politics Examiner

 

Churchill, like Admiral Yamamoto, knew that America was vast in resources, people, invention and fight and that her entry into the war would probably guarantee victory against the Third Reich.

While Barack Obama - chickenhawk fascist warmonger of war - talks about gunning in Pakistan, the reality is that if we're serious about keeping Afghanistan, we need to be delicate about Pakistan -- there's no other viable way into the landlocked former Al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold.

Our need to be delicate may have just gotten less urgent.

According to the Financial Times, Pakistan's President, Asif Ali Zardari, made an urgent appeal to India to come off a war footing following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

“We live in troubled times where non-state actors have taken us to war before, whether it is the case of those who perpetrated [the] 9/11 [attacks on the US] or contributed to the escalation of the situation in Iraq,” said Mr Zardari.

Nice of him to notice. Actually, I mean that. At least he's rational enough to admit that terrorists were the ones who made Iraq a nightmare. That's a vast improvement over the Progressive view that America is to blame for it (that is the point of reminding us of and fictionalizing body counts, yes?).

While we have to be nice - or very mean - to Pakistan in order to keep Afghanistan, India's interests are in protecting its population. If Pakistan isn't going to get serious about creating the conditions that make India's life less bloody, Pakistan may be the one who pays a price.

This doesn't mean that Pakistan is on the same side as India, any more than Yalta meant that Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were on the same side as Joseph Stalin. But it does mean that the interests of Pakistan and India - as well as ours - may have gotten a lot closer.

A LAST NOTE 

One of the "justifications" for terrorist behavior is that America has a presence in the Middle East (this is itself an imperialistic argument, because those Muslims who argue it are asserting that they have a right to overrule by force the will of Middle Easterners who do not have a problem with America's presence in the Middle East).

But if any culture has an ancient claim to Kashmir - the troubled region associated with the disputes between Pakistan and India – it would be Hindus - not Muslims. The logic of the argument, "terrorism is a response to American imperialism" falls apart in Kashmir. In historical terms (what terms aren't?), Muslims are the interlopers, the aggressors. It should be Hindus slaughtering civilians in Pakistani hotels and marketplaces.

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