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Why Obama's Trip to India Was Worth It
Topic Started: Nov 13 2010, 08:43 AM (201 Views)
George K
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Finally
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/11/AR2010111106072.html

Why President Obama is right about India

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, November 12, 2010;

Much grousing about the expense of President Obama's India trip. This is silly and vindictive. The one thing this country owes its leader is to spare no expense in protecting him. Especially when his first stop is Mumbai, scene of one of the most savage and sustained terror attacks in modern times.

It is protested that Britain's prime minister took a British Air flight when he traveled here in July. So what? To be blunt about it: A once-imperial middle power flies commercial; America flies colossal. Why do you think we built that 747 flying palace emblazoned with the presidential insignia - if not to land to awestruck crowds wherever it goes?

There was grumbling about the White House taking over every room at Mumbai's five-star Taj Mahal Palace hotel. What is the Secret Service to do? Allow suites to be let to, say, groups of Pakistani madrassa instructors?

I will admit that Indian authorities went somewhat overboard when they cut down the coconuts surrounding the Gandhi museum in Mumbai. I am no expert on this, having never been subject to a coconut attack, but it seems to me that a freefalling coconut is no match for an armored car built to withstand anything short of a small nuclear device. Now perhaps the enemy, always racing one step ahead of us, is working on the dreaded RPC - the rocket-propelled coconut. I'm not privy to all the intelligence here, and, try as I may, I could get nothing out of the Coconut Desk at CIA. Nonetheless, to this outsider, the anti-coconut measures seemed a bit excessive.

But I digress. The only alternative to drawing down the Treasury to move the president around safely is for him not to go at all. And that's not an alternative. Presidential visits are the highest form of diplomacy, and the symbolism alone carries enormous weight. No one remembers what Nixon did in China; what changed the world is that Nixon went to China.

The India visit was particularly necessary in light of Obama's bumbling overenthusiasm in his 2009 trip to China in which he lavished much time, energy and praise upon his hosts and then oddly tried to elevate Beijing to a G-2 partnership, a kind of two-nation world condominium. Worse, however, was Obama suggesting a Chinese role in South Asia - an affront to India's autonomy and regional dominance, and a signal of U.S. acquiescence to Chinese hegemony.

This hegemony is the growing source of tension in Asia today. Modern China is the Germany of a century ago - a rising, expanding, have-not power seeking its place in the sun. The story of the first half of the 20th century was Europe's attempt to manage Germany's rise. We know how that turned out. The story of the next half-century will be how Asia accommodates and/or contains China's expansion.

Nor is this some far-off concern. China's aggressive territorial claims on resource-rich waters claimed by Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are already roiling the neighborhood. Traditionally, Japan has been the major regional counterbalance. But an aging, shrinking Japan can no longer sustain that role. Symbolic of the dramatic shift in power balance between once-poor China and once-dominant Japan was the resolution of their recent maritime crisis. Japan had detained a Chinese captain in a territorial-waters dispute. China imposed a rare-earth mineral embargo. Japan capitulated.

That makes the traditional U.S. role as offshore balancer all the more important. China's neighbors from South Korea all the way around to India are in need of U.S. support of their own efforts at resisting Chinese dominion.

And of all these countries, India, which has fought a border war with China, is the most natural anchor for such a U.S. partnership. It's not just our inherent affinities - being democratic, English-speaking, free-market and dedicated to the rule of law. It is also the coincidence of our strategic imperatives: We both face the common threat of radical Islam and the more long-term challenge of a rising China.

Which is why Obama's dramatic call for India to be elevated to permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council was so important. However useless and obsolete the United Nations, a Security Council seat carries totemic significance. It elevates India, while helping bind it to us as our most strategic and organic Third World ally.

China is no enemy, but it remains troublingly adversarial. Which is why India must be the center of our Asian diplomacy. And why Obama's trip - coconuts and all - was worth every penny.
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
And I fully agree. Read that yesterday.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Seems this *thinker* disagrees:

Obama's Ignorance of World Affairs on Full Display in India

Hat tip to Gryphon over at Fat Shirley's Grill.
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
George K
Nov 13 2010, 08:43 AM
Why do you think we built that 747 flying palace emblazoned with the presidential insignia - if not to land to awestruck crowds wherever it goes?
I'd always assumed it was a subconscious attempt to compensate for something. :lol:
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Renauda
Nov 13 2010, 01:47 PM
Seems this *thinker* disagrees:

Obama's Ignorance of World Affairs on Full Display in India

Hat tip to Gryphon over at Fat Shirley's Grill.
As thinking goes, Krauthammer has a serious advantage over the clowns on that site.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
Krauthammer is worth reading, even if I don't always (but rarely so) agree with him.
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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OperaTenor
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Pisa-Carp
jon-nyc
Nov 13 2010, 03:12 PM
Renauda
Nov 13 2010, 01:47 PM
Seems this *thinker* disagrees:

Obama's Ignorance of World Affairs on Full Display in India

Hat tip to Gryphon over at Fat Shirley's Grill.
As thinking goes, Krauthammer has a serious advantage over the clowns on that site.
:yes: (And I rarely agree with Krauthammer)
Edited by OperaTenor, Nov 13 2010, 04:02 PM.


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ivorythumper
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
jon-nyc
Nov 13 2010, 03:12 PM
Renauda
Nov 13 2010, 01:47 PM
Seems this *thinker* disagrees:

Obama's Ignorance of World Affairs on Full Display in India

Hat tip to Gryphon over at Fat Shirley's Grill.
As thinking goes, Krauthammer has a serious advantage over the clowns on that site.
The two articles are not in contradiction. Krauthammer notes that "and the symbolism alone carries enormous weight. No one remembers what Nixon did in China; what changed the world is that Nixon went to China." It is not important that Obie said some stupid things that managed to offend both Pakistani and Indian sensibilities. The main thing is that he went there (per Krauthammer, though I don't agree with him about that).
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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John D'Oh
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MAMIL
I have to say I find 'The American Thinker' to be one of the most annoying sites on the internet.

Everything about the layout of the thing just screams 'pretentious asshole'. And let's face it, to stand out as a bunch of pretentious assholes on the interwebs is really going some.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
ivorythumper
Nov 13 2010, 04:11 PM
It is not important that Obie said some stupid things that managed to offend both Pakistani and Indian sensibilities.
It's a delicate balancing act, like our current relationship with China and Taiwan.

For the older generation in India, Obama's comments about Islam must have been grating.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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Piano*Dad
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Bull-Carp
John D'Oh
Nov 13 2010, 05:37 PM
I have to say I find 'The American Thinker' to be one of the most annoying sites on the internet.

Everything about the layout of the thing just screams 'pretentious asshole'. And let's face it, to stand out as a bunch of pretentious assholes on the interwebs is really going some.
I seem to recall you saying that "American" and "Thinker" should never be spoken together in the same sentence. :tongue:
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Mikhailoh
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If you want trouble, find yourself a redhead
Well, I hardly think an American president's trip to India today is the bold, visionary move Nixon's visit to China was, but it was important.
Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead - Lucille Ball
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