Bombs and Dollars – American Foreign Policy Blog – China, Afghanistan, Pakistan

President Pratibha Patil, the youthful 74-year-old head of state of India, made history earlier this week by flying a Sukhoi 30 MKI fighter jet for an unbelievable 40 minute sortie from the Indian Air Force base at Pune, India. By doing this she made history by being a woman, as well as the oldest individual, to have done this feat, which has possibly not been done in the World ever before…

She was on a solidarity tour of the Indian Forces a couple of days before one full year of the Mumbai Terror attacks. In a move much appreciated by the Indian media, our First Granny had to give a tiresome physical test, before getting in the jump-suit for the sortie…

President Patil also pitched hard for women pilots in the defense forces in the press conference afterward, which in India is still a mostly male dominated affair.
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* Exactly a year since 11/26, Mumbai. Nothing changed, basically. Same skulduggery by Pakistan, same confusion of U.S.A. and U.K., and same dithering on the part of the Govt. of India. Meanwhile it costs a bloody Rs. 31 Crore ($6,700,000) to keep the terrorist Ajmal Amir Kasab alive and secured for trial… in the last year! And you thought the recession was because of economy!
It costs Rs. 31 crore to keep a terrorist alive!

* Talking about Mumbai, here’s a view from one of the most influential Israeli dailies. Israel, by the way, had the highest number of casualties in the terror attack after India, followed by U.S.A. and Britain, when a Jewish Chabad house was specifically targetted by the gunmen.
A year later, the rubble remains in Mumbai

* And this is what Pakistan did…
Paki satire on Mumbai 11/26

* While more attacks could happen anytime…
Mumbai-linked terrorists are still on the loose

* Some bitter memories of the attacks (via Atlas Shrugs):
Detailed reports on Mumbai

* Of which I was unfortunately a witness…
My experience of Mumbai
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Our Managing Director is ecstatic. Not only ’cause yesterday we got record traffic (Thanks, Neil Boortz!)…even 1 hit from China!…which is a cause for celebration in itself…but also I wrote this post entirely focusing on China and its relation with U.S. and other relevant news snippets. As you know, President Barack Obama’s Asia trip was a public relations disaster…which scoffed both time-tested allies like Israel, and India, but it also resulted in Chinese diplomatic victories on every front…and even snubbing of U.S. suggestions on some points…

Even just a month back, India and the U.S. were training for wars together. The U.S.-India relationship thrived under Bush, and they are a key ally in the War Conflict Against Terror.

Now, in China, Indian media is reporting that Obama’s comments about getting China more involved in the Pakistan are causing controversy.

India and Pakistan have had a tenuous relationship since the 1947 partition of India and the and the Indo-Pakistan War. India has had conflicts with China, too, over border lands, and just this summer, both countries were increasing troop levels on their border.
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India, a country with a ever passive and successive pacifist government, where the government officials always talk to press on conditions of anonymity, and where citizens are used to ministers not keeping promises about talking with Maoists and Islamists, has put it’s nuclear plants on high alert after intelligence reports of an attack.

This comes after a man, was arrested in the U.S. who was found to have done a reconnaissance of the places. Continue reading

God came to Arunachal Pradesh in an Indian army helicopter. Dalai Lama, who is known as an avatar of God, continued on his visit to Indian territory of Arunachal Pradesh, which is also claimed by China, as they claim or previously claimed all other territories, including Taiwan, Manchuria, Kashmir, and Singapore-Hongkong. Nevermind that.
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The 43rd U.S. President, best known for one very essential and one completely unnecessary war, working tirelessly for Africa, getting a goodnight kiss with a size 11 shoe at the dusk of his career, and to a lesser extent as a guy who was hated by the Dixie-Chicks and other “intellectuals” worldwide, was back to meet “with an old pal,” on a pleasure trip in India.

He came to meet one Manmohan Singh, the Prime-Minister of India, who famously risked the fall of his own government to stand stoically in the support of his comrade through the thick and thin, despite the venomous jokes hurled at him, to go through with a historic Nuclear deal…something which took the Indo-U.S. relations to a different high and something which no other U.S. president EVER did before…
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