Body Count

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 12:02 PM -0600 12/7/02, Carrol Cox wrote:
>  > I will take a hypothetical situation. A group of 5 Afghans is trained,
>>  armed, financed by ISI, they infiltrate into Indian Kashmir and blow up
>>  Kashmir legislative assembly. They escape and hide into caves of Taliban
>>  ruled Afghanistan. What do you expect Indian government to do?
>
>I expect then _not_ to go to war, whatever else they do. This is _not_,
>in the present condition of world affairs, a legitimate _casus belli_,
>for the ill results of any war (for everyone) will far transcend the
>damage which you describe here. India perhaps should provide better
>guards at the kashmir legislative assembly. If some criminals
>(international or national) still break through, that's the way the
>cookie crumbles. One does the best one can to prevent certain evils, but
>if they happen, one lives with them.
>
>I do the best I can to keep mosquitoes out of the house, but if one gets
>in, I don't throw a hand grenade in the living room to destroy it.
>That's what the U.S. is doing now. That's what India would be doing if
>it went to war to catch those who blew up the assembly.
>
>Carrol

Besides, going to war against Pakistan damages the interests -- and 
indeed lives -- of Indians much more than going to war against 
Afghanistan and Iraq damages the interests -- and lives -- of 
Americans.  The United States is after all next door to neither 
Afghanistan nor Iraq; neither Iraq nor Afghanistan is a nuclear 
state, but Pakistan is.

BTW, India defended the Soviet Union in the Afghan campaign (Cf. 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2542431.stm>), supported 
Najibullah after the Soviet troop withdrawal, and then supported the 
anti-Taliban Alliance (Cf. 
<http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/jir/jir010315_1_n.shtml>). 
A complex history of cross-border interventions that makes the 
calculation of the "body count" in the subject line difficult indeed.
-- 
Yoshie

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