Many years ago, an elderly rabbi (may he rest in peace) with whom I was having a panel discussion, shared with me his regret that some younger Jews are forgetting their history. "They are ignoring the fact that they have always found sanctuary with Muslims," he said, noting "our culture flourished under Muslim rule and our faith was respected and protected." He then leaned forward as if to whisper: "Don't be disheartened, be true to your faith. All of us have had to pay a price before being accepted in Canada and your community will also go through this trial."
This was before 9/11. This wise man of God warned and yet empowered me at the same time. I write today neither to argue the merits and demerits of the propaganda film Obsession (I'd rather rely on the good sense of Winnipeggers to make their own informed judgment), nor as a response to John Gleeson's editorial (Film on radical Islam a wake-up call to the West, June 1). Rather I write as a Winnipegger reaching out to my fellow citizens to request: "enough already please."
Why are we setting the Abrahamic faith communities against each other? The conflicts in the Middle East are not religious: they are about power and control of natural resources, the resulting geopolitical climate, disputes over occupation and how just, equal, coexistence can be achieved. More importantly these conflicts are not our conflicts. Why import these political agendas and interests to our city? We have enough to clean up in our own backyards. The pain of our First Nations people is falling on deaf ears. Why do they have to struggle for clean water while our armies are sent to "help" other nations rebuild? Why doesn't the Asper Foundation reach out to help the First Nation communities? Why are they wasting their money and energies on bringing foreign conflicts to our city?
I do not know what purpose is served by parading "experts" like Ms. Darwish, who make no secret of their contempt for Islam (see http://www.noniedarwish.com/). How does sponsoring her (and others like her) promote mutual respect, understanding and build bridges between communities?
If the objective is, as some claim, to expose the hatred, I am all for it.
Yet why target my faith by relying on propaganda?
Islam does not condone hatred of any people. In fact it is the greatest ally for anyone fighting injustice, hatred and violence. Why focus on the few extremist views we can find in any community? Why not promote the positive and the good: the majority of Muslims who hold dear to their faith values of justice, peace and mercy? Will this not defeat the extremist hate mongers at both ends of the spectrum?
The most insidious citation taken from the film is that 10% to 15% of Muslims support radical Islam. Where is this figure coming from? Where is the evidence? This is blatant fear mongering. By not applying any ethical test to such speculations we have set the stage for lies and innuendo as the standard for public discourse.
The editorial also states that the saturation of hate propaganda against the West is much more pervasive than we realize. The same can be said by the Muslim world about saturation of hate propaganda in the West against Islam and Muslims. Can anyone dispute that Western media is biased in its portrayal of Islam and that misinformation and outright lies are passed on as facts? The practice of rendition, secret trials, hateful attacks on the prophet of Islam, torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi and Afghani prisoners by Western troops, desecration of the Muslim holy book, war based on lies, massacres of civilians, sanctions that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslim children: are these not acts of hate?
And in response, what is the message of the film? That "these people" deserve all the death, mayhem, and destruction heaped on them because, according to the "experts" in this propaganda film, their faith is Nazism reborn? Since some of them live among us, and because we cannot tell a "radical" from a "moderate," to prevent another Holocaust we must "wake up" and destroy them?
The editorial profoundly concludes: "lose the blinders." My response: "No kidding."
That's why Jewish people are streameing from New York and Miami to get back to Babylon. I guess once they get the wheat in the ground they go sort of loopy in Winnipeg
#3
"They are ignoring the fact that they have always found sanctuary with Muslims," he said, noting "our culture flourished under Muslim rule and our faith was respected and protected."
And herein lies a huge problem. This old man is so comfortable with the demons and bogeymen of his youth that he feels the need to excuse what is now, in our time, the TRUE threat to his people and their religion and culture. He wilfully puts on the rose colored glasses about Muslims (who cannot by any stretch be viewed as well disposed towards Jews) because, I suspect, he has come to buy into the automatic fear of things Christian that pervades in his generation.
There is a deep generational divide amongst people living in America - all around, but amongst Catholics and Jews in particular - where people born in the '40's and before have an ingrained sense that the greatest evil possible is the devout White Christian, who is often conflated reflexively with Nazis and the KKK. These elderly folks grew up at a time when there was widespread bigotry and groups like the KKK were powerful. So strong was the (justified!) imagery around this particular form of evil during that period that many, Jews and Catholics in particular, refuse to accept that anything in the world could ever become a greater threat or evil.
To folks of a certain era, the greatest evil in the world will ALWAYS be southern Christians, evidence to the otherwise notwithstanding. 9/11 didn't change that. Nothing will probably ever change that. Changing this ideology would require a fundamental redo of their entire worldview and values.
People get comfortable with their bogeymen just as they get comfortable with anything else. It's a lot easier to just go along thinking that a bunch of nitwits in Idaho waving Nazi flags pose the greatest threat to life and limb than it is to tear down your world view and build it up again with new data. Data which forces you to come to a very different conclusion about which threats are worst.
And so, one sees the effort by this old rabbi to push away thoughts of problems caused by the Muslims because it would interrupt the easy refrain of "Christians - BAD!!!" that is the underpinning of his life.
Fortunately for everyone involved, younger Americans of all stripes have begun to realize that there has been a major change in what threats exist in the world. Ther are still a few racist supremacist jerks who need watching. But to those who observe ALL the data, the idea that they, and not Islamicists, are still the thing to be most feared is a sad and dangerous anachronism that is really a product of mental laziness, and perhaps not without a bit of bigotry itself.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/03/2006 8:45 Comments ||
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#4
Islam does not condone hatred of any people.
Enslavement, humiliation, slaughter -- but not hatred.
Posted by: Robert Crawford ||
06/03/2006 9:35 Comments ||
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#5
"They are ignoring the fact that they have always found sanctuary with Muslims," he said, noting "our culture flourished under Muslim rule and our faith was respected and protected."
That simply not true. In fact it was a myth fabricated by Jews of Chritsian lands in order to shame Christains (source Bath Yeor). Shariah has much stronger discrimantions against Jews (and Christinas) that anything enforced in Christianity. Also there was never a Muslim ruler calling himself King of the Three Faiths like Alfonso X of Castilia. Never a Muslim king who deprived himself of critically needed reinforcements because those were attacking his Jewish subjects (Spanish kings before Navas de Tolosa). The pogroms were as common in Muslim land than in Christianity. Persian Jews had to feign conversion to Islam (like Spanish marranos).
Finally, if Jews were so well treated under Islam where are the Sepharad Disraelis (prime minister) and Rotschilds? There aren't. The Jews of islamic countries in Islamic countries barely managed to be shopkeepers.
#6
I'm not sure the Jews were particularly "well treated" by many people with whom they were living. Their history has made them extremely tough however, kind of an evolutionary thing. Now they're in an excellent postion to protect themselves as they really NEVER have been.
Posted by: bk ||
06/03/2006 11:14 Comments ||
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#7
The editorial also states that the saturation of hate propaganda against the West is much more pervasive than we realize. The same can be said by the Muslim world about saturation of hate propaganda in the West against Islam and Muslims. Can anyone dispute that Western media is biased in its portrayal of Islam and that misinformation and outright lies are passed on as facts? The practice of rendition, secret trials, hateful attacks on the prophet of Islam, torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi and Afghani prisoners by Western troops, desecration of the Muslim holy book, war based on lies, massacres of civilians, sanctions that lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslim children: are these not acts of hate?
No, they are not. Because most of the "acts" are lies and distortion of truth. And you fail to mention that muslims are killing muslims in far greater numbers than we can accomplish.
The film strips your lies.
The propoganda of your faith is what's killing people. Your faith chooses to set itself against the rest of the world. And you faith chooses not to eliminate the extremist faction among you, but embrace, submit and fund them while denying they represent you.
You have never rejected them. Not in action or speech.
#9
In fact if you reread the article, like the parts about western soldiers raping Muslims or sanctions killing Muslim children it looks a lot like if it has been written either by a Chomskite-grade idiotarian or still more likely by an islamist trying to pass for a Jew since these are strong themes in the islamist propaganda.
The pact with New Delhi is too important to derail.
by Tom Donnelly & Vance Serchuk
The Weekly Standard
06/12/2006, Volume 011, Issue 37
WILL AMERICA'S PARTNERSHIP WITH INDIA fall victim to politics? The Bush administration's proposed agreement on civil nuclear cooperation with New Delhi--once predicted to win approval from Congress as early as June--is under a growing cloud. With the November midterm elections fast approaching, the legislative calendar crowded, and the White House weakened, the happy talk about a new relationship with India so much in evidence during President Bush's trip to South Asia this spring has receded, leaving in its place the realization that we could be in for yet another long, hard slog.
As Congress heads into the summer and the administration works damage control, the time is right to take a fresh look at the case for India--not just the nuclear deal but a strategic partnership generally--reminding ourselves why it is so important to pull off this power play.
The experience of the recent past has shown--even to the allegedly diehard unilateralists of the Bush administration--that the forces struggling against the Pax Americana are stronger and more resourceful than once imagined. In a world where terrorists act like great powers, and great powers are few and far between, the possibility of an alliance with a large, rising, free-market democracy with a serious martial tradition is one that should be seized.
The case for India, in short, is about more than the relationship between two great nations. It is the case for institutionalizing a certain kind of international order: what President Bush has called "a balance of power that favors freedom."
NO MATTER WHEN YOU DATE the beginning of the relationship, America and India got off on the wrong foot. The United States broke away from the British Empire just as South Asia was being conquered by it. A century and a half later, relations between Washington and postpartition Delhi got caught in the chill of the Cold War. Even after the Soviet collapse, relations with Delhi remained stagnant, dominated by the nonproliferation community and advocates of a "hyphenated" approach to India and Pakistan: Rather than engaging with each country on its merits, the United States adopted a relentlessly trilateral attitude toward the subcontinent during the 1990s.
The Clinton administration began to break this logjam in its final years, beginning with a dialogue between Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and the Indian minister of external affairs, Jaswant Singh. At the time, Pakistan's burgeoning support for terrorist groups, its nuclear proliferation, abandonment of democracy, and client-patron relationship with the Taliban--the rap sheet of a rogue state--made the old pretense of equivalence harder to sustain.
Enter George W. Bush, whose presidential campaign in 2000 emphasized a renewed focus on great power relations in foreign policy and suggested a particular soft spot for India. Even so, nothing could have prepared Delhi for the charm offensive the new administration unleashed during its first eight months in office.
Robert Blackwill, one of Bush's foreign policy advisers from the campaign, was named ambassador, while a steady stream of senior officials dropped in to Delhi throughout the spring and summer of 2001. Jaswant Singh, who was favored in Washington with a long walk around the Rose Garden with the president, predicted that U.S.-Indian cooperation would result in "a totally new security regime." Bush was expected to visit India in late 2001 or early 2002.
The September 11 attacks disrupted those plans and might well have done deeper damage to the budding relationship, as the old balancing games with Pakistan threatened to reemerge. The mood further cooled after Islamist terrorists attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001, and there ensued several months of intensive, hair-raising diplomacy by the United States and Britain to prevent the outbreak of a nuclear war with Pakistan. Western demands during this period grated on Indian officials, and by the time the crisis had been defused, international attention was turning toward Iraq.
And yet, away from the limelight, patient discussions with the Indians proceeded. And despite the tensions and disruptions, the geopolitical order that began to emerge in their wake actually accelerated the strategic convergence of Washington and Delhi in unexpected ways.
Consider the three overarching security challenges that the United States has stressed in the post-9/11 world: radical Islam, nuclear-armed rogue states, and the rise of China. These dangers also confront America's traditional allies, but in varying, mostly lesser, degrees. India is one of the few states to score the same trifecta as America.
Begin with the fact that more Indians have been killed by radical Islamists over the past decade than any other nationality. From the strike on the Indian parliament in 2001, which killed a dozen people and injured twice as many, to the bombings this spring in Varanasi, which killed 15 and injured more than 60, India is a frontline state in the war on terror.
India also has more than passing familiarity
with the threat posed by rogue, terror-sponsoring states armed with weapons of mass destruction. Indian policymakers have watched as Pakistan, since acquiring its nuclear deterrent, has been emboldened in its strategy of sponsoring "third party" attacks against Delhi--safe in the knowledge that India can't retaliate conventionally without risking mutually assured destruction. More dramatically, the potential destabilization or radicalization of Pakistan--terrifying as it is for war planners in Washington to contemplate--represents a near-existential threat for planners in Delhi.
Finally, there's China. Before September 11, Beijing's rise was the most commonly cited rationale for closer ties to India. Critics have countered that it's premature, futile, or dangerous to believe that Delhi can be used as a balancer against the PRC. In fact, both claims are simplistic. Policymakers in Delhi want their country to take advantage of China's economic boom every bit as much as their colleagues in Washington. But at the same time, Indian strategists are concerned about China's military buildup, its growing regional influence, and its relentless global search for natural resources.
Granted, India isn't likely to sign up for an aggressive containment regime aimed at Beijing any time soon; but then, neither are we. Rather, India and the United States share an interest in encouraging China to become a stakeholder in an international system dominated by liberal democracies, while maneuvering to hedge against any challenges that Beijing might be tempted to mount.
Even so, cooperation between the United States and India is driven by more than just a calculus of shared dangers. It springs from shared political principles. As Indian strategist C. Raja Mohan has eloquently put it, India is "the single most important adherent of the Enlightenment in the non-Western world," representing "the triumph of the values of reason, cosmopolitanism, scientific progress, and individual freedom against great odds."
What's more, in contrast to world-weary Europeans, profoundly cynical of projects to remake the world, Indian policymakers often share Americans' faith in the universality of political liberalism. As a 2002 study commissioned by the Pentagon concluded from interviews with dozens of Indian civilian and military leaders, "Indians believe that as the only democracy in South Asia--and a highly successful 'democratic experiment'--they are the appropriate model for developing countries around the Indian Ocean basin."
India's location in the middle of a rough neighborhood also makes its population more likely to appreciate that the defense of freedom requires the taking up of arms. While Europeans have let their defense establishments go to seed, India is pressing ahead to develop a modern military capable of projecting power. Delhi already commands one of the best navies in Asia, not to mention the third largest air force and fourth largest army in the world.
Indeed, when it comes to questions of global power, India is moving in precisely the opposite direction from Europe. As Mohan has argued, "While Europe was the principal arena of conflict in the world, India could posture about the problems of deterrence, containment and the Cold War. The Europeans, in contrast, emphasized the centrality of defeating totalitarian ideologies. But today with the focus of the new war on terrorism being riveted on the Middle East and South Asia, India is far more sensitive to the complexities of the battle and the importance of imparting a resounding defeat to the forces of extremism and terrorism."
"INDIA IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY is a natural partner of the United States," said President Bush during his trip to Delhi in March, and it's easy to see why. But even if the desirability of a closer relationship between the world's two largest pluralistic, free-market democracies is a no-brainer, there's still the issue of how to make it happen.
The first comprehensive attempt at rapprochement by the Bush administration and its Indian counterparts came in 2004 and pledged Delhi and Washington to work together in four contentious areas: civilian space programs, high-technology trade, missile defense, and civilian nuclear energy. This was followed in July 2005 by the visit of Prime Minister Singh to the White House, where landmark proposals on bilateral cooperation, including civilian nuclear power, were announced. Several months of negotiations over the contours of the nuclear agreement followed, resulting in the deal announced in Delhi this March.
Briefly, the agreement promises to bring India into the nonproliferation mainstream. In exchange for full trade in civil nuclear energy, India has agreed to separate its military and civilian nuclear programs over the next eight years, placing 14 of its 22 reactors under permanent international safeguards, as well as all future civilian thermal and breeder reactors. It has also agreed to maintain its unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing and to work with the United States toward a fissile material cutoff treaty, which would ban the production of fissile material, like plutonium-239, used in nuclear weapons and other explosive devices.
Critics have argued that the Bush administration's decision to tackle head-on the thorny question of Delhi's nuclear status was a miscalculation. Rather than focusing attention on a divisive issue, they suggest, Washington and Delhi should have first gone after the low-hanging fruit in fields like trade, economic development, and military-to-military cooperation.
This is an appealing argument, but there are several problems with it. For starters, the Bush administration and the Singh government have pursued those other avenues of cooperation, and with vigor. Although you'd hardly know it from the press coverage, energy cooperation was just one element of the July 18 U.S.-Indian Joint Statement. Perhaps the nuclear issue distracted attention from the other proposals--although a "Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture" might not have made the front pages on the slowest of days.
What cannot be said is that the nuclear deal has inhibited broader bilateral cooperation. On the contrary, the past year has witnessed a quiet explosion of wonky agreements, initiatives, treaties, delegations, and bilateral consultations between the United States and India. And although the Bush administration might have succeeded in pushing these in the absence of the nuclear deal, there's no question that the agreement gave the relationship a new momentum. That's precisely why proponents of the U.S. strategy argued for disposing of the nuclear albatross in the first place: Only if this were done, they insisted, could the broader partnership get off the ground. And so far, it looks like they were right.
It's also worth noting that the Bush administration--with less than three years to go in office--has its own reasons to be leery of a go-slow approach. In the past, closer U.S.-Indian ties have been hamstrung by hostile bureaucracies and personalities in Washington or Delhi or both. Since 2005, however, the constellation of power in the two capitals has been almost perfectly aligned. Condoleezza Rice and her team at the State Department are united in their push for a nuclear deal, even as the Indian prime minister is prepared to spend political capital to reach an accord. It's an opportunity that may no longer exist come January 2009. Given that uncertainty, it's hard to blame Bush and Singh for deciding to be bold.
As for the substance of the deal itself, there is a growing body of literature--both in India and the United States--about whether it gave away too much or too little, whether it will be good or bad for the cause of nonproliferation, and so on. This debate reveals the extent to which the agreement is the product of a genuine compromise by both sides; the suggestion that Delhi took Washington to the cleaners, or vice versa, simply doesn't hold up. It should also send a cautionary signal to congressional leaders who think they can reverse-engineer eight months' delicate diplomacy by rewriting the agreement in the months ahead. (As congressman Tom Lantos sagely put it, "Every member of Congress could come up with a more perfect agreement--but we could not sell it to the government of India.")
Like any challenge to the status quo, the agreement has also riled entrenched constituencies, who are now on the warpath. For the most strident members of the American nonproliferation community, the very notion of nuclear accommodation with India is nothing short of apostasy--the start of a slippery slope toward an atomic Armageddon in which everyone from Japan to Saudi Arabia to Liechtenstein will end up with ICBMs.
In fact, the deal with India does establish a double standard. But as Robert Kagan has pointed out, the Nonproliferation Treaty itself established a double standard long ago, and "a particularly mindless kind of double standard" at that. The NPT, after all, is "not based on justice or morality or strategic judgment or politics but simply on circumstance: Whoever had figured out how to build nuclear weapons by 1968 was in. At least our double standard for India makes strategic, diplomatic, ideological, and political sense."
The histrionic claims about Iran and other rogue states are considerably flimsier. Tehran has a nuclear weapons program because--surprise!--it wants nuclear weapons, and specifically the freedom of action they will grant the regime against its adversaries. The deal with India may give the Islamic Republic a talking point or two at the U.N., but it will not sway the behavior of any country engaged in the real world struggle with Iran, or the regime itself. That dispute is being shaped by hard-nosed, and often crude, calculations of national interest and power, not what happens between the United States and India.
That said, the nuclear deal with India does contain risks. As Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and the most incisive critic of the agreement, has warned, it's certain to push Pakistan toward further development of its own nuclear arsenal, aided and abetted by China. It may also provoke China into overt nuclear competition with India, laying the groundwork for an arms race in Asia.
But this critique--in framing the nuclear deal as a choice between a destabilizing arms race and a benign status quo--fails to consider two questions: Is it in the U.S. national interest to keep India in a position of permanent strategic weakness vis-à-vis China? And, in the absence of the nuclear deal, is a rising India itself likely to accept a position of inferiority?
The answer, in both instances, is no. Like it or not, Asia is going to be the scene of geopolitical competition in the twenty-first century. The issue at hand is how intelligently the United States can manage it.
To its credit, the White House seems to grasp the importance of the regional dynamic in pursuing its entente with India--although, for obvious reasons, it cannot make too much of it publicly. As Ashley Tellis, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment and an architect of the nuclear deal, has argued: "If the United States is serious about advancing its geopolitical objectives in Asia, it would almost by definition help New Delhi develop strategic capabilities such that India's nuclear weaponry and associated delivery systems could deter against the growing and utterly more capable nuclear forces Beijing is likely to possess by 2025."
Ditching the agreement would not make Indian nuclear weapons or the prospect of Indo-Chinese rivalry go away. Instead, it would align Washington with Beijing in its bid to confine and contain Indian power--a very strange position for the United States to be in. India, meanwhile, would no doubt seek out other patrons to protect its national interests. It's no coincidence that Jacques Chirac was in Delhi a week before President Bush this spring, touting the benefits of Franco-Indian nuclear cooperation.
The Bush administration's proposed deal, moreover, would not only strengthen India's geopolitical position in Asia, but also provide Washington with new opportunities to influence New Delhi's strategic calculus, both in the short and long term.
The recent confrontation with Iran over its own nuclear program at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provides a case in point. India has long hoped to build a 1,700-mile gas pipeline from Iran to satisfy its rising demand for energy. Despite pointed threats from Tehran, however, Delhi voted twice with the United States against Iran at the IAEA. It did this precisely because the prospect of the nuclear agreement with the United States outweighed its interest in placating the mullahs. India, incidentally, was the only member of the nonaligned movement to do so.
Much of the leverage that the nuclear deal would afford the United States would come in subtler forms. As America and India became accustomed to working closely together, each government would have a greater incentive to consult the other, both to preempt and defuse disagreements, and to identify and exploit new fields of cooperation. Strategic partnership thus becomes self-reinforcing.
Public perceptions can play an important role in this process. It's notable that, over the past few years, India has bucked the global trend toward anti-Americanism, with more than 70 percent of its citizens expressing a favorable view of the United States. That's up from 54 percent in 2002 and the highest U.S. approval rating in any country polled by Pew. On Iraq, India is the only country other than America where a plurality believes the removal of Saddam Hussein has made the world safer.
Statistics like this are important not only because they validate the Bush administration's outreach efforts, but also because, in a democratic polity such as India, pro-American views can help empower pro-American governments. And as the Indian public increasingly sees the United States as a friend and ally, they are likely to be more willing to listen to Washington's arguments on topics where we do not immediately agree.
Americans, of course, are accustomed to thinking of alliances as quid pro quo arrangements: You give us basing rights, we put you under our security umbrella. You give us access to your markets, we give you access to ours. But this kind of analysis works poorly with a rising power like India.
Rather, the institutional framework that the Bush administration is constructing with Delhi is best understood as a long-term investment in a stock that is going to appreciate in the years ahead. As one U.S. military officer observed, "The costs of building a relationship with India today are significantly lower than the costs of facing India as a spoiler in the future. Moreover, the costs of building a relationship with India will probably increase over time."
SO LET'S ASSUME that the Bush administration succeeds in pushing through the nuclear deal in more or less salvageable form. What then?
To be sure, the raft of programs that the White House and the Singh government have already initiated can keep bureaucrats in both capitals beavering away for years to come. With luck, these linkages will build constituencies, and these constituencies will help sustain the relationship--irrespective of the inevitable changes in national leadership.
In the interim, however, there are several areas where the two governments could still push ahead more aggressively, especially in defense policy. The security of the Indian Ocean is a top concern for both the United States and India, as well as the first object of India's military modernization. Given India's naval assets, the country's integration into a network of Asian-Pacific democracies is an obvious long-term objective.
Central Asia is another arena where Washington and Delhi can work more closely together. From energy security to democracy promotion to the stabilization of Afghanistan, they have a wide range of common interests there. Building a road or railroad into Afghanistan should be an immediate priority. Not only would it undercut the rationale for Indian-Iranian relations, but regional economic integration is also the best hope for success in Kabul. If Washington wants a long-term partner in the transformation of the Hindu Kush, it should look toward Delhi, not Brussels.
There's also much to be gained by deeper military cooperation between Delhi and Washington. Although there's been progress on this front in recent years, senior policymakers would do well to keep a close eye on the details. Defense-industrial cooperation, managed properly, can do wonders to help secure an alliance; botched, it can inflict irreparable harm.
Although a more sensitive subject, the United States should also be quietly thinking about basing arrangements with India. As Stephen Blank at the Army War College, among others, has observed, "American force posture remains dangerously thin in the arc--many thousands of miles long--between Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and Okinawa and Guam in the Pacific." Given the range of threats that could arise in this region, access to Indian real estate would be very valuable.
The United States should also embrace India's bid for a larger role in international institutions, including seats at the G-8 and on the U.N. Security Council. If nothing else, this would help push India's foreign policy elites to think more like leaders of a great power and less like advocates of the nonaligned movement. A U.N. seat for India, along with one for Japan, would also have the advantage of breaking Beijing's Asian monopoly on the council.
Beyond these bilateral initiatives, a global partnership with India will depend on reforms and policies internal to both countries. For Delhi, this means, above all, good stewardship of its economy. The encouraging news here is that India is booming; its economy is averaging approximately 9 percent growth, the second-highest in the world.
But beyond the headlines, India remains a very poor country, with 25 percent of its population living below the poverty line. Economic development here is not only a moral imperative; it is also crucial for India's emergence as a major power and its viability as a model for other countries to follow.
The nuclear deal would aid that process somewhat by helping Delhi expand and diversify the energy sector on which so much of its growth depends. (India's energy needs are expected to double by 2025.) Even more important are nonnuclear reforms that would improve India's energy efficiency, which is currently abysmal. The United States could help here, with an expanded energy dialogue and technical assistance, but much of the heavy lifting would ultimately fall to India itself.
For the United States, the growing importance of India raises questions about the way our foreign policy bureaucracy is organized. To take one example: In the Defense Department, India is on the periphery of U.S. Pacific Command, while Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia are assigned to U.S. Central Command. This arrangement cuts an artificial seam through the heart of Asia, complicating any attempt to develop coherent strategy toward the whole. Simply put, having the four-star general responsible for India eight and a half time zones away from Delhi is dangerously dumb.
One solution might be to establish a joint subregional command that would bind together South and Central Asia, and assign it the task of coordinating between CENTCOM and PACOM. The logical place to put this post would be Afghanistan, which is already home to a large American troop presence, not to mention a U.S. subregional command, with Pakistan and Central Asia in its area of responsibility. With NATO expected to take charge in Afghanistan this fall, the Pentagon is going to need to come up with a new framework for the region anyway--and as the British and Russians alike understood a century ago, there's no better back door to India than Afghanistan.
"FIVE WASTED DECADES." That is how Jaswant Singh characterized U.S.-Indian relations on the eve of President Clinton's visit to Delhi, and rightly so. Six years later, President Bush has done more than any leader since 1947 to transform Washington's relationship with Delhi. The question now before Congress is whether to endorse the partnership that we are at last on the threshold of securing--or condemn it to yet another wasted decade.
To be clear on this point, if Congress rejects the nuclear deal--or allows it to unravel by legislative nitpicking--the result will be a devastating setback to U.S.-Indian relations. Just as the agreement helped spur cooperation on a range of fronts, its collapse would disrupt a range of interactions.
The resistance to the nuclear deal is made all the more ironic by the fact that the White House's Indian diplomacy cuts against many of the stereotypes about President Bush's foreign policy. It is a step toward a long-term alliance, grounded in shared interests and principles, not a temporary coalition of the willing. It is a deliberate courtship of a rising power, not a shotgun marriage with a client state. Most important, it is a rare instance of the White House successfully closing the gap between ambition and implementation that has dogged its initiatives, from democracy promotion to the war in Iraq. If a balance of power in favor of freedom is to come into being, it simply must include India.
Tom Donnelly and Vance Serchuk are fellows at the American Enterprise Institute.
Posted by: john ||
06/03/2006 12:54 ||
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#1
As Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and the most incisive critic of the agreement, has warned,
The name sounded familiar. So I did a little checking. Henry Sokolski is the author of Defusing Irans Bomb In Policy review#131. One of his suggestions for countering Iran's nuclear ambitions is Isolating Iran as a regional producer of fissile materials by encouraging Israel to take the first steps to freeze and dismantle such capabilities.
The important point here which should be taken into consideration is that we are not forming a government but we are forming a state and a system from scratch so naturally the difficulties we'll face during each stage will be much bigger than the difficulties that would face other states that are already democratic during similar stages, say after elections.
Patience and hard work are the key to victory and in the same time obstacles, violence and disputes are no excuse for quitting; just like al-Qaeda and its allies concentrate on Iraq and consider it the nucleus for their Islamic state, we and the whole world must unite to rescue Iraq and present our model of freedom and justice.
Iraq is the key to the change and the terrorists realize this so we must show how determined we are if we want to defeat them.
Posted by: DanNY ||
06/03/2006 00:46 ||
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It would be interesting if someone could write a theoretical guide to counterinsurgency which took into account the effect of the media on operations. One interesting possibility is that the reason small footprints preferred by Boot are more efficient than big footprints is that they prevent a war from being politicized by a media circus. Sometimes the word circus is literally apt. Recently in East Timor, competition between two rival TV networks captured how the ringmasters works. Channel 7 got a film clip of the Channel 9 correspondent setting up an interview and subsequently aired the bombshell. The film clip
shows host Jessica Rowe interviewing East Timor taskforce commanding officer Brigadier Michael Slater. "I'm wondering how you feel about your safety given that you've got armed guards there standing behind you, armed soldiers," Rowe says.
"Jessica, I feel quite safe, yes," Brigadier Slater says. "But not because I've got these armed soldiers behind me that were put there by your stage manager here to make it look good."
The Jessca Rowe-Slater incident was enlightening because it suggests that since the media is part of the battlefield, the coverage of the media must be a vital part of the entire picture. The curious over-reaction by the MSM to embedded bloggers -- questioning their legitimacy, their "objectivity", their professionalism, etc -- recollects nothing so much as the effect of garlic or a Cross on a vampire. Reflecting on it, I think the reason is that bloggers often do what the Channel 7 did to Channel 9 in the incident above. One unnoticed fact -- you can check it out -- is that blogger Stephen Vincent was the only Western media person killed in Iraq in 2005. The statistical unlikeliness of that fact has always bothered me. But from the viewpoint of the Ba'athist insurgency it would make sense to target the anyone who could cover the media. After all, the regular media works through stringers and must maintain "access"; it's got to sell stories, etc. As Eason Jordan reminded us, the regular media has long had relationships with the Ba'ath. If the media is a weapon then it makes sense to eliminate threats to that weapon. Just hypothetically.
Posted by: Mike ||
06/03/2006 09:23 ||
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#2
The media is the only thing that keeps freedom in domestic society.
You can't be free if you don't know what is going on and you cannot make informed decisions.
A free media is integral to democracy.
The problem isn't the media but the laws governing them.
The problem is the media isn't free.
The problem is they are bound by rules and pushed by special interest lobby groups such as the Islamist lobby groups that can use law courts to penalise media through fines and suppression orders.
There are complex guidelines governing what the media can and cannot print from hate speech laws to blasphemy laws to defamation laws.
The only people it is safe to criticise are famouse celebrities (TV, Film, Movies) and politicians: commenting on public figures is priviledged.
You pretty much can't be sued (it's rare).
Thus the media is all about talking trivial trash or rabidly criticising Western politicians.
We never criticise foreign cultures the way we criticise our own or hold them to the same standards of behaviour for two reasons:
1) the public wants to know what is relevant to them: local focus or for world news how it impacts us or how we reacted to it.
2) there is no punishment for criticising our government but if you criticise China, you won't be granted another interview, or access to the market (see: google) or criticise Islamist fascism and you will be sued for hate speech and publicly called racist.
So there you have it.
Then there is the culture of the media. Within the media stories rewarded (eg: MEAA awards in Australia) typically go to stories that have had an impact on politics. A policy has been reversed, someone has been sacked: a quantifiable example to which you can refer to show your story has had influence and an impact on life in the country.
That is what gets awarded. But the problem is you can only get access to information that is legal or that people give you.
So Freedom of Information laws let you get access to government documents: so the light is on them for criticism.
Freedom of Information doesn't give you access to all the inner runnings of Lakemba mosque, that's a lot more difficult. You cannot legally bug or even record a conversation.
So the big critical stories on our enemies never get written, we keep whipping our own governments and democratic leaders for not being perfect while we let the cockroaches breed in the darkness under the floorboards.
Media aren't the enemy.
You need to change the rules by which media operate.
And that means changes to legislation.
1) safeguard freedom of speech. In Australia it is not protected by a bill of rights or even by law.
2) take away the right to sue for defamation by organisations: political, religious - any organisation.
3) limit defamation payouts for individuals (unlimited in Australia. Lose a leg, the payout is limited. Lose your reputation you can be paid any amount of money to infinity).
4) remove religion and culture from hate speech laws. They are not genetic characteristics over which you have no control but a set of ideas and behaviours that should be open to criticism, even strident criticism.
5)Truth and the frank and honest debate of facts and figures MUST be safeguarded. Debates that could even be called racist must be absolutely protected if they are true and based on fact.
Truth must be an absolute defence against defamation, hate speech, anti-racism and any other law.
If 98% of the prison population is of one ethnic or racial group then it is a matter of public interest to discuss why that might be without fear of legal censure.
If most suicide bombings are committed by Muslims we MUST be able to write: Islamic suicide bombers, and ask the question: why is Islamist Fascism on the rise and debate it without fear of being sued in the courts and harrassed from our jobs.
The media wants to be free it is the laws that restrain it.
#3
ps: DarthVader, you sound like an idiot when you post things like hang the media. What a fascist. Go to Saudi Arabia - your enemy shares your view but they're smarter. They're busy buying the media. Look up Prince Alwaleed and see what he's doing buying up Newsltd and cinema chains
#5
How about holding the Media to the same standards they hold everyone else. What happens to a manufacturer of defective merchandise? What happens when a company which files false and misleading statements? What happens when an enterprise engages in knowningly false claims and misrepresentations concerning their product? Why in the name of 'equal before the law' is there a difference between libel of a 'public' and 'private' person?
First, this is not the press of 1790. It is a major 'entertainment' industry driven by ratings and circulation. When local purveyors of 'news' enraged enough of their local readership, they simply went out of business. Today they are protected by corporation constructs which simply put good money into the rat holes because they are not profit centers. Stock in major corporations is do deluded by volume that the ability to ousted the good old boys is near to impossible, so they raid the corporations in this manner to support their personal agendas.
Second, this only highlights that those charged with conducting warfare have surrendered their mission to the Media. The senior brass in the Pentagon has never wanted to spend either the monetary or personnel resources to conduct this type of warfare. They still live in a pre-20th Century mentality. The only time the Media has been on their side was in the short period around mid-century. All their technology and all their trained troops mean nothing if you still lose the war because you lose the home front. Given the recent efforts by the Army hierarchy to squelch bloggers in the ranks, they dont get it. And dont give me crap about Opsec. Anyone whos spent time at the company level knows that commanders dont want to deal with anything more than they have too, so all they want is an excuse to shut the problem off. You beat the MSM by providing a better product.
by blogger Ace of Spades; EFL'd from a longer post
. . . The left, to a man, considers itself to be educated and enlightened. It matters not how little actual schooling a particlular leftist may have had, nor how unintelligent the person might be. They all consider themselves intellectuals of sorts. If they dropped out of college after one semester, they just think of themselves as autodidacts whose genius could not be stimulated by the ossified and bourgeois teaching of the academy. If they're just plain stupid or crazy -- like, say, Charlie Sheen -- they indulge in farcial conspiracy-theorizing, reassuring themselves that they are intellectual because they know things others do not. They are one of the chosen few brave enough to see past the web of lies and glimpse the arcane truth behind, say, the implosion of the World Trade Center (a SEAL team planted those charges, you know?).
This conceit, usually wholly undeserved, of practically every leftist in the world is what makes leftism so intoxicating for the intellectually insecure, and what makes leftists so easily led and manipulated. It's an attractive doctrine for those who wish to conceive of themselves as intellectual and brilliant, for it provides an instant short-cut to the equivalent of an MIT education. If you simply believe these things we tell you to believe, you are one of Us, one of the Intellectually Elite, one of the Cultural Vanguard. Just as giving oneself to Christ, and believing in His power, and accepting the need for and gift of His redemption, instantly makes one "saved" and enters one's name in the Book of the Heaven, so too does accepting leftist tropes and core beliefs make one one of the Secular Elect.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Mike ||
06/03/2006 00:15 ||
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#1
"and I also can't believe what Chomsky tells me"
Yes it's always been a bit tricky trying to believe the words of millionaire communists who travel half-way around the world to be photographed with the leaders of Islamic terror groups.
#3
"True, a leftist can reject any progressive leader's opinion. But when he does so he imperils his sense of self-worth. If progressivism can be challenged on this point, why not that one? And if it can be fairly challenged on many points, then how can it be those who believe in progressivism are enlightened for doing so? If major tenets of orthodox progressivism are open to debate and challenge, doesn't that mean that one's status of intellectual, based almost entirely on one's belief in progressivism, is similarly open to challenge?
That way madness lies, of course. . . ."
What could drive one mad...
...more than not being one of the "cool kids"?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
06/03/2006 9:18 Comments ||
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#4
...and not getting the hot chicks.
Just ask any fat drunken Senator from Massachusetts.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
