Abingdonboy
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For some reason India has now been dragged into this:
US embassy dispute: Does India need to change its approach towards attacks on diplomats? - Economic Times
Some fair points but I hardly see how the "dots are connected". India has its own interests and needs them fulfilled hence seeking out accords with Iran. The US is its own worst enemy, they hare hated by so mush of the Muslim world for their own actions-they can't drag India into it, that's absurd!!
On July 30, The Times of India reported that a Delhi Police report has accused Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, part of the country's military, of orchestrating that attack. On August 30, Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Tehran for the Non Aligned Movement Summit, and met with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Then, on September 11, a small army of an estimated 200 men armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades carried out the Benghazi attack, killing four American diplomats.
Conflicting Signals
While full details are not yet available on the attack in Benghazi, it is becoming clear that it was a pre-meditated military-style assault that only happened to coincide with the protest there (and the one nearby in Cairo) against an anti-Islamic film. When the small army approached the consulate to "finish" the American "infidels" (as one the attackers said to a bystander), they were not on a protest march. They were joining a war.
Some have wrongly characterised that war as one between Islam and the United States or between Islam and the West. Others have called it a war on terror. Today, in the wake of Benghazi, we can look at it as a war between those who attack diplomats and those who do not. Where is India in this fight? Those who know India's respect for the rule of law can be certain it is on the side of the diplomats. India has "strongly condemned" the attack in Benghazi. And India has itself been a frequent victim of attacks on its diplomatic posts in Afghanistan.
But India's behaviour is sending conflicting signals on its policy toward attacks on diplomats. By meeting with the Supreme Leader of Iran, Singh made a mockery of the results of his own police force's investigation. To put it bluntly, Singh shook hands with the man who tried to kill a diplomat nearby Singh's own home. To add insult to injury, the Indian press gushingly told us that the meeting "assumes significance since Khamenei rarely meets leaders of non-Islamic countries".
While the Supreme Leader was deigning to offer the prime minister of India an audience, over 3,000 km away in Benghazi, as we now know, militants were planning their attack on the United States consulate. Who knows if they studied the Iranian attack in Delhi and concluded, given its results, to go for a larger, more brazen assault in Benghazi.
Who knows if they saw a photo of the Indian prime minister sitting with Iran's Supreme Leader and concluded, given their evident mutual respect, that India does not object to assassination attempts on diplomatic personnel, even on its own soil. We only know what the attackers in Benghazi did not see: a refusal by India's leader to meet with the leader of a country that attacks diplomats.
Indians justifiably complain about the United States giving military aid to Pakistan, when elements of its government have been active in 26/11 and other attacks on India. They are correct that American softness on Pakistan is no better than Indian softness on Iran. But there are important differences.
After 9/11, the United States threatened Pakistan's intelligence director with bombing Pakistan "back to the stone age" and meant it. Today the United States shares with India extensive intelligence on threats from within Pakistan. Singh's conversations with the Supreme Leader of Iran, by contrast, focused on India's former leaders (Gandhi and Nehru) and future wheat exports.
The attack in Benghazi is a reminder that the Arab Spring will be a messy and protracted transition to democracy, with uncertain prospects for success. And a reminder that the no-man's-land between dictatorship and democracy that Libya and many of its neighbours now occupy is a dangerous one for Arabs and outsiders alike.
In a dictatorship the regime has the guns. In a true democracy, there is law and order. In between, as happened in Benghazi, criminals can raise an army of two hundred men, overrun a consulate and murder diplomatic personnel.
Benghazi is also a reminder that the way countries like India treat countries like Iran matters. Those who are protesting (often violently) outside American diplomatic missions across North Africa and West Asia, and even in Chennai, are watching and taking note. So are the villains of Libya, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan. Despite what India says, its actions are telling diplomat killers that it will look the other way.
(The writer, a former US diplomat, is the author of China's Nightmare, America's Dream: India as the Next Global Power)
US embassy dispute: Does India need to change its approach towards attacks on diplomats? - Economic Times
Some fair points but I hardly see how the "dots are connected". India has its own interests and needs them fulfilled hence seeking out accords with Iran. The US is its own worst enemy, they hare hated by so mush of the Muslim world for their own actions-they can't drag India into it, that's absurd!!
