Operation Searchlight

#69 Ras

{{On India and Indians, it always amazes me how a small number always bring up 1971 as a shining example of the ``defeat`` inflicted on Pakistan.}}

Very well. 1971 was not a “defeat” inflicted on Pakistan, or the Pakistan Army, or the Pakistani establishment. It was at best a stalemate if not an actual victory. Happy now?
{{I hope that most others realize that the reason why India has been bleeding in Kashmir for 13 years now is that ``defeat``. Revenge unfortunately can be a great motivator.}}

Amazing. Am I to understood that Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is motivated by a desire for revenge for the alleged 1971 “defeat”, rather than a pure and unalloyed concern for the human rights and welfare of Kashmiris? Who would have guessed.

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sigalph:

Actually, Hindi is the national language of India. English is also given ``official status`` but is not the national language.

Re goonga

English would have been just perfect. Look the wonders it did in India. The language statement by the QUaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest mistake he made as the Gov-Gen of the new Dominion.

Urstruly:

``The guestimates you provide are ridiculous at best. These estimates range from 300K to 3million. This range of guestimate is not only mind numbing not only for a elementary level statistician but also mind boggling for an ordinary man. The margin of error in this guestimate is 90% statistically speeking. I think in the name of fairness and justice the benefit of doubt should go to the accused, since these estimates with 90% margin of error are horrenduous. ``

Excellent point. I am sure you would extend the same courtesy to the Indian Army in Kashmir?

OH:

#53

``I am accusing them of harboring bigotted views about India in general and Hindus in particular. I base these accusations on the actual words of and statements made by the two. ``

And I am arguing that case was not one of bigotry but of executing national interest. I would like to see the actual comments you attribute to them if you have access to them.

``If the opinions of such people ran so contrary to the opinions of almost everyone else reporting on the events (not just of the state department), one needs to consider whether Kissinger was not deliberately distorting history to paper over the sins of his friend, Yahya Khan. ``

That is the other thing. Whereas interpersonal relations may smoothen or derail poicy, it rarely is the factor to initiate it. Kissinger clearly states their policy objective (relations with China) and the vehicle towards obtaining that goal (Yahya`s Pakistan) and the obstacle (India). If India had good relations with China, then Pakistan would have been a non issue. But all that is hindsight.

#72 Tahmed32

{{Dr. strangelove was modelled after Dr. Teller (father of the atom bomb),}}

Sahib, you are not quite right. Kissinger was indeed a relatively obscure Harvard professor in 1964 when Kubrick’s movie was made.

However, Edward Teller was the mother of the hydrogen bomb, not the father of the atom bomb, as you erroneously claimed. And the best guess for Dr. Strangelove is that he is a composite of several public figures, among them Teller, Werner von Braun, Herman Kahn, and John von Neumann, all of whom had connections of some sort with nuclear weapons or thermonuclear war or missiles. The most interesting figure is von Neumann, whose connections with the nuclear weapons establishment went back to the Manhattan Project days. Like Teller and von Braun (and Dr. Strangelove in the movie), von Neumann spoke English with a German/Central European accent. Most significantly of all, von Neumann became wheelchair-bound during his last fatal illness (cancer) but continued to work and testify in public – shades of Dr. Strangelove again.

Harimau:

``In that case, you should find yet another alternate perspective on Kissinger equally interesting. In the movie ``Dr. Strangelove or How I learned To Stop Worrying and Start Loving The Bomb``, Kissinger was the model for the mad scientist Dr. Strangelove, brilliantly portrayed by Peter Sellers. ``

Yes, I find it about as illuminating as Ii do the Hollywood liberal perception of Bush being as bad as Saddam.


``at that moment, our incipient China policy was more important than India`s goodwill. We judged that it would be easier to restore our relations with India than to remain inactive toward a challenge that might be viewed in Beijing as a rehearsal for pressure against China. I am not trying to refight the substantive argument; the issue was discipline and coherence.``

I actually find myself in agreement with Kissinger`s perspective. This was not ``anti-India`` feeling but a realistic analysis of their priorities at the time. From an American perspective, the Indo-Pak war was at best a sideshow with the main theatre being the cold war. In such a case, making common cause with China was very much more important then making good with India and an as yet unexisting nation called Bangladesh.

Besides, Pakistan was key to the China policy. All the Americans had recieved from India were hypocritical lectures on morality which seemed to somehow vanish when the Soviets were in the wrong.

``By the way, State did seem to have suggested before the Shrub`s intervention in Iraq that post-war Iraq would not be easy to govern. They seem to be right.... once again. ``

Very convenient. State was not in favor of the Iraq war. Thier job is not to decide foreign policy objectives but to execute them.

#59 Urstruly

{{Your contention is nothing but argumentative.}}

And yours of course are not.

{{The facts like Hitler`s ideology of ``the Final Solution``, the presence of death camps, Nuremburg Trials in open courts of law, and thousands of survivors of those death camps are undeniable historical facts which attest irrevocably that Nazis had only one objective i.e. to exterminate as many Jews as possible not only in Germany but throughout Europe.}}

Dude, whatever. It is a known fact that not everybody who arrived at a death camp went straight from the cattle trucks to the gas chambers, as those thousands of survivors will attest. Lots of people survived in Auschwitz for months and months. The late Italian writer Primo Levi is a good example. Victor Frankl spent 3 years in a succession of concentration camps and survived to tell the tale, living to a ripe old age. Storage and ‘economic’ activity contradict the supposed goal of maximizing rate of killing which was your contention in choosing the Nazis as a benchmark.

I also find your professed passion for truth and reconciliation somewhat contradicted by the slipshod manner in which you carry out elementary calculations, omitting a factor of 60 without so much as an apology. Time for remedial arithmetic, perhaps?

But in any case I am merely adducing facts for your kind consideration. Feel free to weave them into your preferred narrative in any way you please or discard them entirely should you find them inconvenient to your desired conclusion. It’s all the same to me.

harimau #64 Dr. strangelove was modelled after Dr. Teller (father of the atom bomb), and one of the generals in that movie was modelled after Gen Curtis le May. when the movie was made in 1964, dr. kissinger was a relative unknown, being a university professor at the time.

Kindly contribute the 50 cent i charge for error corrections to the Chennai Welfare Society for Retired RSS Warriors where your uncle jay has now been transferred.

It is very rare that Urstruly and I are even in partial agreement about something but maybe its a blue moon tonight? The Germans had severe problems with disposing off the corpses of all the Jews, Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, etc, that they slaughtered. They finally came up with the incinerators at Auschwitz, Dachau and the other camps. These took months to design and build and even then they did not completely destroy the bodies. So, at the risk of being truly macabre, where are the three million bodies? Even if we take Rummel`s conservative estimate, that still leaves us with 1.5 million. Where are all the mass graves since no one has said that the Pakistani Army was actually incinerators.

The answer to Punjabizulu`s question is to read Sisson`s and Rose`s book, ``War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh.`` Here they quote unnamed (for obvious reasons) high Indian officials who give their estimate of total deaths from all causes in E. Pakistan of 300,000. After getting incredibly filthy looks from his fellows there, the official hastily revises it to 500,000 deaths. Presumably, the Indians are in a better position to know what actually happened than random newspaper reporters and Western academics AND they have no reason to downplay the actual numbers (as the Paksitanis do). So, even after subtracting the number of dead Biharis and West Pakistanis from the 500,000 upper estimate, this gives us a number much closer to the 300,000 low estimate contemptously dismissed by people like Rummel. Privately, Pakistani officers who were there acknowledge that this is probably close to the correct estimate (i.e., somewhere between 200,000 to 300,000), although some diehards insist that it was actually closer to 30,000. By any reckoning, these are indications of an incredibly brutal civil war that made no effort to spare civilians.

I believe the number killed in Vietnam are generally believed to be in the 1 to 1.6 million range, mainly by the US forces there. Now, let me ask you, how many Kashmiris have been killed by Indian security forces? How many Punjabis? Assamese? Mizos? Nagas? How many Biharis killed by the Bengalis? How many Chakmas by the Bengalis?

And before you ask, I think the figure is about 35,000 Baluchis in the insurgency and probably 12,000 Sindhis but am not sure about these figures.

See, as I say, there is more than enough blame to go around for everyone. We are all guilty of something.

Urstruly & Nakhok,

the truth needs to be told but is a double edged sword. My American source

who served the people of Pakistan and Bangladesh for over 30 years & spent ALL of 1971

in Dhaka and the surrounding area put in his estimate at 100,000 to 150,00 peple killed by

ALL sides (not 1.5 million). I asked him about the millions killed in

these reports in the western press and he just smiled.

But what if someone in Ballu Khan`s or Nakhok`s immediate family was murdered?

Does the 150,000 or 3 Million make a difference to them?

On India and Indians, it always amazes me how a small number always bring up 1971

as a shining example of the ``defeat`` inflicted on Pakistan. I hope that most others

realize that the reason why India has been bleeding in Kashmir for 13 years now

is that ``defeat``. Revenge unfortunately can be a great motivator.

The Pakistan Army was fighting the Indians AND the Bangladesh people in 1971.

Defeat was inevitable. So the question remains; WHY was this operation started?

We the people of a once United Pakistan who accepted ZAB and Mujib as our

leaders would like to know why they were forced apart at such a great human expense?

Ras

Stuka,

``Going by the rest of your post, I think you have the need to read Kissinger`s memoirs. He and Nixon did what they percieved was right by American foreign policy.``

If the foreign policy of US is/was to overhtrow democratically elected governments and install dictators, then they followed it well. Chile comes to my mind, whenever someone talks of kissinger and Nixon. Victims of dead and disappeared in chile are trying to use legal methods to net in kissinger for his role in the atrocities. But perhaps, they are not very popular as yet for not using terrorism and suicide bombing to gather attention.

Adios

Ras

Mere apology would not do any good. As a matter of fact it would be like pouring salt on the old wounds. For reconcilliation truth must be told first. Truth must be investigated first. And only then we would be able to learn from our mistakes. And that goes for both countries and both people. Hindus may also learn a good lesson from this whole mess who still have time to make things right but they just are complaining and whining while reaping the seeds they sowed in Kashmir. Payback is a bitch - isn`t it?

The insistence of Hindus and nationalist bengalis on the exagerated extent of carnage is indictive of the guilty conscience for the sins they have committed against their fellow human beings. It is a deliberate effort to exagerate on the crime of other so that their own crimes would look smaller. But history has a nasty way of getting back at the people who do not learn from it. The point in case is the Hindu excess in Kashmir.

Three million Bengalis killed. What an absolute tripe. But this tripe is being indoctrinated very cleverly and with exerted effort in the minds of Bengali nationalists and Hindus in India through academia and intelligentia. People are gullible. They buy prejudices wholesale without bothering to putting it to test. This indoctrinated hate expresses itself as remorseless carnage of Muslims in Kashmir, in Gujrat and in countless other places in India everyday. Someone has to stop this madness before more human beings get hurt.

Dont these people realize that in order to accomodate 3 million deads over 9 months averaging 12000 murders per day 270 mass graves are required; each mass grave containing 12000 corpses. Such a mass grave dug everyday for nine months would require immense number of human resources, equipment, and land. The task becaomes even more difficult and impossible if these smaller graves have to be dug at various places everyday. My estimate is that in order to accomodate so many killings everyday a mass grave of the size of two football fields are required dug approx. 5 feet deep. Where are those 270 mass graves? Where are those incinerators if corpses were incinerated. Why haven`t Bengalis dug those 270 mass graves and gave an honorable burial to the ``war dead`` of a freedom fight?

No one who exagerates this number can answer these question - not bengalis not Hindus. yet they would feed this hatered in the minds of their young with religious fervor and a murderous conviction. As a result what it has turned us - the people of whole subcontinent -into? The blood thirsty neighbors. Isn`t our descent from humanity so obvious.

If we want to live in peace and prosper, truth must be told. The truth must be told.

He said Urdu and Urdu alone shall be the National Language of Pakistan. That was the seed for the creation of Bangladesh.
Just thinking to ask you if not Urdu then what language could be the NL of Pak? And could this mess be avoided if Quaid had announced ‘English’ as NL of Pak. I think English would be fine. There would be no question of roots and love for Bengalis such as basic elements of language, culture and literature with English! Hey na?

I think Urdu was the only right choice for East and West Pakistan at that time.

I also beleive that the Hindu propaganda of 3 million bengalis dead is absolute tripe and non-sense.

Hindu propaganda??????

Don`t you mean Indian propaganda. Or do Indian and Hindu mean the same to you? If so, you are just like the RSS.