I’m not real concerned about what the military may choose to sell the Pakistani government. We’ve got enough kaboomski lying around that we could, certainly, incinerate their entire country from a distance, if we so chose… although this might have been something to think about back when we were gleefully equipping Saddam Hussein and the Afghani freedom fighters with all the kaboomski they could handle, a couple decades ago.
What I find bothersome is the fact that we have very good relations with India, and have for quite some time… and here we’ve gone and peed in their lemonade for no apparent reason.
No, scratch that. The “apparent reason” would seem to be truly appalling stupidity on the part of the State Department. This entire incident could easily have been avoided simply by contacting India via normal diplomatic channels and letting them know what we were up to, instead of surprise! (Well, maybe not avoided, but certainly we would have upset the Indians a lot less).
I mean, in the last few years, we’ve really gone overboard on making ourselves unpopular overseas… but why did we go and upset an ally and trading partner? Particularly in a way that makes our government look like a bunch of inconsiderate boors?
True…but India is the largest Muslim country in the world…there are more Muslims there than any other country.
And, I think you’re more likely to find people using “Paki” as a slur in Britain than the US. It’s not generally considered to be offensive over here.
Also, we’ve pretty much always had a better relationship with Pakistan than with India. During the Cold War, India’s position in the non-alligned nations movement really pissed us off.
Eh? What has Iraqi public opinion (and CNN’s coverage of it) got to do with US relations with Pakistan and India?
Anyway, I think this sort of thing is typical of the Bush administration. Not the granting of major non NATO ally status to Pakistan (although i disapprove of this, i can see why they did it), but the way they have gone about it. From the article linked in the OP:
“The U.S. of course has the prerogative to confer whatever status it desires on any nation,” India’s ambassador to the U.S., Lalit Mansingh, said in Washington last week. “But the way in which it was done–the substance and the style–of how it was done is what has caused deep disappointment in India.”
Al the US had to do is tell India beforehand what it was going to do, and the damage to US-Indian relations wouldn’t be as great. The fact that they didn’t bother to do this says a lot about their attitude to diplomacy and other nations generally, and is IMO one of the major reasons the Bush administration is so isolated internationally.
Back to the OP, I didn’t think that US-Indian ties were actually that “chummy.” While certainly not hostile, I’m not sure that relations have been that great since India launched the non-aligned movement back in the '50s.
Back to the sideshow, dictionary.com says Paki is “used as a disparaging term for a person from Pakistan or neighboring countries or for the descendant of such a person,” and that it is “Chiefly British Offensive Slang.” After having lived in Britain for a bit, I would never dream of considering “Paki” as interchangable with “Pakistani.”
Damn, 5 time champ beat me to it. And I notice we have almost the same post count and join date…hmmmm…
Btw, according to this little blurb (and other sources), India has the third largest muslim population, behind Pakistan. Dunno for sure, as the figures seem pretty damn close and probably hard to calculate precisely…and there are other sites that give it as the second.
Responding to the OP, it’s certainly a rude slap in the face, but it’s not entirely out of the ordinary for the region. India and the US have never had a solid diplomatic relationship before, going back to when India first became sovereign. Take a look at India’s military. You’ll see a lot of Russian hardware in there. You’d think that the world’s largest democracy and the democratic superpower would end up on the same page, but during the cold war they ended up on opposite sides. Pakistan was anti-communist, so the US was friendly to Pakistan. We actually have deeper ties with them as a result. India saw the US back Pakistan and got friendly with Russia. Both the US and India saw each other cozy up to their respective arch enemy. US-India relations haven’t really warmed up until recently after the end of the cold war.
I’m not saying it’s right, but historically the US and India have never been close allies so it’s not surprising to me on that level. On the other hand, it sure is a diplomatic bitchslap, especially during a time when the United States can use some friends in the world.
This move seems like maybe an emergency bolstering of Pakistan – something big is or was about to happen there and making an arrangement like this makes it easier for the US to keep tabs on what’s going on there, or respond if it goes south. That’s my hope anyway… That there was some reason, some urgency that prevented them from letting the Indian government know what was going on. Hopefully there’s a bunch of US diplomats in New Delhi smoothing things over and this isn’t a case of Bush & Co. running roughshod with their foreign policy (which, sadly, is what it looks like IMHO.)
I’m really sorry to bother you about this, as you are clearly a cut above mere mortals like myself, but could you spell it out for this unperceptive humourless moron? I still don’t know what your point was.
