The first thing that came to my mind after the terror attacks on Mumbai (formerly Bombay) was that India should evaluate the hawkish foreign policy of the Bush-Cheney years. You know “fight them there, so we don’t have to fight them here.”
Of course “there” for the Bush folk is “where they pick,” like an Iraq, which didn’t have anything to do with 9/11. And how has that worked out? More terror attacks worldwide were the natural fallout from the Bush Doctrine.
So India can opt to “fight them” in Islamabad, Karachi and Rawalpindi instead of fighting the terrorist in Mumbai, New Delhi and Jaipur. Or not.
Why inherit a failed state such as a Pakistan long propped by the U.S. foreign aid, just as the U.S. has inherited Afghanistan and all its woes? Just as the terrorist learned how to commit more terrorist acts by getting inspired by their fallen brothers, who went before them, India has a blueprint of how not to act, courtesy of a bungling U.S. foreign policy (long before even Bush took office).
On a related note, have folks wondered why when a terror attack occurs in India, other nations such as the U.S. and U.K. “urge calm and restraint” but America does not do the same when it is attacked?
It is simple. The U.S. has long funded Pakistan, a cold war ally and a net exporter of terrorism by propping up dictators thereby strengthening its, Pakistan’s military-industry complex. Which in turn helped to “set-up” Al-Qaeda (and the Taliban) the rest being history, as we have all come to know it.
MATT PHILIPS
Mangilao, Guam
