Chirag I think you should should have read my comment more carefully. I never said what you are attributing me to have said. Your You could have given me the benefit of doubt if you had had any.

As things stand, in American public imagination, a good president is a president who pillages/destroys and conquers new land for them. As long as this mentality remains the person in the post will remain irrelevant.

While I acknowledge the spirit of your concern I believe that change will occur, albeit very slowly. In the early years of my short life the prospect of a woman or a black man running for President was unheard of. We must have faith that eventually the greater good will prevail.

“The journey of a thousand miles…”

peace

excellent post, keep up the good, wide-ranging work.

so, a country should have a president that works AGAINST the national interest? That’s an interesting proposition. India could learn a thing or two from China, the USA, or Europe about acting in its own interest – imagine: no China in Tibet; Afghanistan and Iran as staunch Indian allies; and demanding a final resolution to Kashmir as the price of returning territory in 1971. And that’s just the beginning, and we could have had all of that and more, but basically moralized and explained away the things that were critical to our long term security and economic interests. And I’m not sure things have changed much since that time. Hey, we shouldn’t act in our own interest, right, it’s immoral to do so?

What if we had a more reasonable approach to the USA? It wouldn’t have been the Pakistan and the Taliban that conquered Afghanistan in response to the Soviet invasion -it would have been our allies and friends who led the resistance- and then they would have been permanently entrenched in power. What if we had stopped or intervened in the invasion of Tibet? Then Tibet would be the sphere of India, and not the sphere of China, right about now. The benefits to India or its people from simply acting in their own interest would have been so enormous, but we just threw it away. I just have to shake my head at our “secular socialist” philosophers, what the heck were they thinking?

If we don’t learn those lessons, then we spend the next century (or two, or three) trying our best to stay out of China’s way.