ASPuar wrote:This is so disgusting. This man is so antinational that I dont know what to say. He has dealt a death blow to our international stance that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terror. This entire UPA government with its Saffron Terror and Hindu terror bullcrap has ruined us. Thu!!!!
Dont worry too much about our international stance. Internationally people know reality. Whether it is in their interest sometimes to not acknowledge reality is another matter. Digvijay's statements dont ruin our international stance. There were many cuky Americans, some fairly prominent, who actually disseminated similar statements after 9/11, that it was the US government that perpetuated 9/11. Did not dilute US's stance. Our stance is more damaged by our own internal weaknesses and weakness of the country as a whole, which gives the outsiders the feeling that they can say and do anything to India and get away with it. No one, internationally, pays any attention to Digvijay Singh or even the Gandhi family for that matter. The Gandhi family is a joke internationally and everyone knows how corrupt and self serving they are and even the Gandhi family themselves qutie shamelessly accept their status as corrupt buffons internationally. The leader of India, particularly in today's environment, should be considered at the same level as any European Head of State. Have you seen any kind of respect accorded to Sonia Gandhi in international circles or the press ?
I am new so I think I posted this in the wrong thread. I know cross posting is possible, but dont know how. Therefore, I am just pasting my post from the other thread here, as it is relevent to this discussion here.
Admins can feel free to remove anything they dont think belong in this thread.
Hello everybody.
Been going through the posts. Conventional wisdom on this forum seems to be as follows:
1) Pakistan's nuclear weapons deter us from retaliating overtly against it
2) Covert action is possible.
3) But it is largely due to American pressure that India doesnt retaliate, either covertly or in a limited overt fashion which doesnt have much of a chance to escalate into a nuclear flare up
Am I correct in my reading ?
What is the considered opinion here ? What weight would you assign to the following factors in India not retaliating.
1. US pressure to not retaliate
2. India lacking the specific military capability to retaliate in the manner which is both effective and not invite a nuclear escalation
3. India lacking even basic military capability because of massive corruption in the procurement process within the Defense department among both the civilian officers and high level military officers who oversee such procurements, year after year, decade after decade and retaliation will thoroughly expose it, like Kargil did to a certain extent (some say Kargil was not escalated into a wider war by India due to the lack of such capabilities and the fear of being exposed)
4. No proactive and strategic thinking among the politicians
5. Lack of proactive and strategic thinking among the Indian armed forces and intelligence officials and whatever little there is, is not listened to by politicians, as the armed forces have very little say in any kind of political decision making in India
6. Lack of genuine and sustained outrage among Indian populace in general, with only a few educated middle class, salaried or professional and nationalist "Macaulytes" (macaulytes come in two flavors, the traitors and the nationalists) feeling this extreme urge to "hit back" and in general the overwhelming "OBCs" and "Dalits" for lack of better terms (which together form roughly 70% of Indian population) being totally apathetic to any sense of nationalism and having no interest to hit back (I am stating reality as it exists, not as everyone would like for it to be, which is what explains Digvijay Singh's getting away with statements made on behalf of Sonia and Rahul which pander to this group)
7. Indian political leaders not wanting to risk losing their positions of power and disrupt their "business as usual", which is bribe taking, more bribe taking and then even more excessvie bribe taking, thus using the Pak nuclear weapons as a very welcome and convenient excuse for not striking back and then blaming the bad old US for pressuring them into restraint, with a gullible Indian public ready to believe anything about the Americans
Also, how many feel that the Indian nationalists are the most inept nationalists anywhere in history and have completely failed to grasp the causes of India's failure time after time and thereby failing to come up with strategies to reverse the trend.
Also, there seems to be another conventional wisdom here. That India is a young country and one should have patience and wait. Things will fix themselves over time. How many of you are comfortable with the idea of waiting another five years, ten years, twenty years, or even longer ? Waiting will be a much more paletable idea if one saw strategic thinking among policy makers and had faith in a strategic plan even if the plan is a 50 year plan. Problem with waiting right now is that no one has any strategic thinking and there is no plan and therefore it is very difficult to have faith in nothing. Waiting will therefore, simply result in more of the same, actually worse by the day and getting nowhere, while the gullible keep parroting the talking points of those narrow ruling elites whose interest it is in to continue more of the same.
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