Since the West has no will to survive

From American Thinker:

The Obama administration looks like it's going to acquiesce in the face of a nuclear-armed radicalized Pakistan, just as Jimmy Carter bowed down low in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini. Soon we will have two radicalized Muslim states with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles: A Shiite Iran, and a Sunni Pakistan.

Afghanistan is slipping out of control. But worse, Afghanistan is no longer the main battleground: a Taliban-controlled Pakistan is.

And in case you've forgotten, in the decade before 9/11 Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida suiciders found safe haven with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Talibs are Islamist fanatics just like Ahmadinejad. They will die for Allah. That means they may not be rational actors in the Western sense. They certainly will stir up terror attacks in India and maybe Sri Lanka and the Philippines, just as the Iranians are sponsoring terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Egypt.

Once they have nuclear weapons, they will have safe havens for further terrorist attacks. Expect nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to start spreading even faster.

Weakness? Our enemies have taken the measure of Obama and Hillary Clinton. They are not bothering to wait. They know this is Jimmy Carter II in the White House, and they are acting accordingly. Expect push, push, push on all the fronts: South America with Chavez, Ortega and the Castro brothers, now trying to control Brazil; Africa with Zuma, another mad radical now in control of the modern state of South Africa; the Sudan under its genocidal regime, backed by the Arab League and tolerated by the UN; Iran and Syria now within reach of their own nukes and missiles; and Russia, which will play big power games in the Middle East as long as it hurts the West.

The Taliban just accepted Pakistan's surrender in six provinces. They promptly moved on the seventh province, and are now within a day's drive of the capital of Pakistan. And the West? The West can't even hold down medieval terrorist pirates in little speed boats, who are making a good living off kidnapping Westerners and terrorizing Western shipping companies. The pirates are making the West pay for the Shabab Islamist rebellion in Somalia.

Remember Osama Bin Laden's strong horse and weak horse? Barack Obama is the weak horse. The Muslim world may have hated Bush, but they despise weakness.

Go read the rest.

It is just possible that a radical Islamist takeover in Pakistan could be the best possible thing to happen.

Of course the United States under the "leadership" of on B. Hussein Obama will do nothing in the face of such a catastrophe (other than seek to appease) however India might very well invade and crush the new Islamofascist state, destroying or capturing its nuclear weapons.

I have long said on this blog that India would be a far better ally for the US than most of Old Europe. The Indians have the kind of hatred of Islam that only people forced to share a border with an Islamic state or forced to endure the presence of a large Muslim minority living among them can feel. That is the Indians have the natural reaction to Islam of any sane people forced to see it up close - revulsion.

India has already indicated that it if pushed it would consider the limited nuclear strike that Pakistan could launch against it an acceptable price to pay for the eradication of Muslim Pakistan.

An out and out Islamist takeover of Pakistan is likely one of the contingencies which would trigger an all out invasion of Pakistan by India and since the United States and Western Europe will not do what must be done to preserve their own culture from the barbarians seeking to destroy it all the civilized and sane people of the West (there are still some) can do is hope that some third party will step up and defeat our enemies for us.

Now if we can just get Israel to take out Iran. . .

Singh Defends Nuclear Deal

From The Washington Post:

NEW DELHI, Aug. 13 -- Amid angry protests from lawmakers, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured the nation Monday that India was free to conduct nuclear tests and that its nuclear weapons program would remain untouched under a controversial nuclear energy deal with the United States.

Singh defended the historic agreement during a speech in Parliament, even as opposition members stormed the floor of the chamber shouting, "Take back the nuclear deal!" The prime minister assured lawmakers that India's sovereignty had not been compromised and that many of the country's concerns had been addressed during earlier negotiations with the United States.
[. . .]

India conducted a nuclear test in 1998 under the rule of the Bharatiya Janata Party, which also initiated the strategic partnership dialogue with the United States. Though party members have criticized the deal, analysts say their opposition is merely tactical.

After the British withdrew from India the Indians wasted decades trying to make socialism work and alligning their forigen policy with the Soviet Union. Thy have only recently abandoned that foolishness which is why they are now experiencing explosive economic growth and a rapidly rising standard of living.

Part of their great rethinking of all things important is the seeking of closer ties to the United States. This is good for the US since we have at most one more generation that we can count on Europe to even pretend to be our allies.

Bet on India

An editorial in today's Washington Post gets it right:

IN LARGE PART, modern U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy began with India. India received U.S. aid under the "Atoms for Peace" program of the early Cold War era -- only to lose its U.S. fuel supply because India, which had refused to sign the 1968 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), exploded a nuclear "device" in 1974. Decades of U.S. noncooperation with India's civilian atomic energy program were intended to teach India, and the world, a lesson: You will not prosper if you go nuclear outside the system of international safeguards.

Friday marked another step toward the end of that policy -- also with India. The Bush administration and New Delhi announced the principles by which the United States will resume sales of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India, as promised by President Bush in July 2005. The fine print of the agreement, which must still be approved by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group and by Congress, has not yet been released. But the big picture is clear: The administration is betting that the benefits to the United States and the world of a "strategic partnership" with India outweigh the risks of a giant exception to the old rules of the nonproliferation game.

There are good reasons to make the bet. India is a booming democracy of more than 1 billion people, clearly destined to play a growing role on the world stage. It can help the United States as a trading partner and as a strategic counterweight to China and Islamic extremists. If India uses more nuclear energy, it will emit less greenhouse gas. Perhaps most important, India has developed its own nuclear arsenal without selling materials or know-how to other potentially dangerous states. This is more than can be said for Pakistan, home of the notorious A.Q. Khan nuclear network.

You can call this a double standard, as some of the agreement's critics do: one set of rules for countries we like, another for those we don't. Or you can call it realism: The agreement provides for more international supervision of India's nuclear fuel cycle than there would be without it. For example, it allows India to reprocess atomic fuel but at a new facility under International Atomic Energy Agency supervision, to protect against its diversion into weapons. The case for admitting India to the nuclear club is based on the plausible notion that the political character of a nuclear-armed state can be as important, or more important, than its signature on the NPT. North Korea, a Stalinist dictatorship, went nuclear while a member of the NPT; the Islamic Republic of Iran appears headed down the same road. Yet India's democratic system and its manifest interest in joining the global free-market economy suggest that it will behave responsibly.

Of course we have, or should have, a "double standard". Just as parents will give more liberty and responsibility to their 18-year-old child than to their 8-year-old the US and the rest of the civilized world needs to evaluate nations based upon their form of government, its stability and their past behavior.

India has a great deal to offer to the US and the US has a great deal to offer to India. Enabling and encouraging them to move as much of their energy production to nuclear as possible helps us, them and the world by reducing demand for petroleum.

Democratic India with nuclear arms provides a valuable counterbalance to both Pakistan and China in the region.

Industrially developed and prosperous India becomes an alternate source of low cost goods for the US economy, at least partially replacing China. And India becomes a vast market for US goods. Throughout the era of the Cold War India, which was attempting -unsuccessfully - to make socialism work, aligned its foreign policy with the USSR and bought the bulk of its military hardware from them as well.

As the various conflicts the world has seen in the years since the USSR folded have amply demonstrated when Russian weaponry comes into conflict with US weaponry the results bring to mind the proverbial "hot knife through butter" with the American hardware filling the role of the hot knife. This fact cannot be lost on the Indians as they seek to upgrade their military to meet the needs of the 21st century.

We also make better commercial aviation aircraft and our automobiles are competitive with much of what Europe and Japan are producing now as well. India and the US could form a strategic partnership which would provide vast benefits to both nations.

The key is going to be energy. The US consumes vast quantities of energy and as the economies of India and China continue to grow they will only increase their already large appetites for energy as well. If the US get behind nuclear power for electricity production and coal liquefaction for motor fuel as well as relaxing domestic oil exploration restriction (ANWAR and the Gulf of Mexico - including the coast of Florida) it can once again become energy independent and even a net exporter of energy. After all our coal reserves are the largest in the world.

If the US can prove itself as a reliable supplier of India's energy needs we will have a powerful ally, an emerging superpower actually, for the next century at least.

To achieve this we will need a president and congress which understand, and do not feel threatened by, capitalistic profit seeking, new technology and full development of America's natural resources.

While I am sure that there are individual exceptions I do not believe that these qualities find their home in the Democrat Party. I urge all who read this to remember this next November.

India, the next superpower

From The Washington Post:

After two years of controversial negotiations, the United States and India yesterday announced a deal on peaceful nuclear cooperation that allows trade in nuclear reactors, technology and fuel, permits India to reprocess nuclear fuel and opens the way for the United States to become a "reliable" supplier for India's energy program.

"This is perhaps the single most important initiative that India and the United States have agreed to in the 60 years of our relationship," said R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, in announcing the deal. It is also a boost to an administration struggling with diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East, Africa, Russia and other parts of the world.

The deal could foster greater strategic cooperation between the two nations and open up markets for U.S. energy and defense industries. The so-called 123 agreement still faces significant hurdles, however, notably in Congress, which must approve the accord. Critics say the deal sets a bad example because India will win access to U.S. technology without complying with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows cooperation on nuclear energy only when countries pledge not to develop nuclear weapons.

The nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty should not be abandoned because it makes too useful a stick to beat rogue nations like Iran with. However the civilized nations of the world need to understand that responsible nations like India do not threaten the peace and stability of the world by possessing nuclear weapons. In fact a good argument could be made that the world is a safer place because India has them.

India is in a dangerous part of the world sharing borders with nuclear armed Pakistan and China. While the Chinese, at least at the present moment, seem more interested in growing their economy through trade than in military expansion that could change in a very short time. Pakistan is walking a very thin tightrope over the pit of full blown Islamofascism and it would take very, very little to cause it to fall in.

Nuclear India provides a check against both of those potentially dangerous forces and should be encouraged.

Free trade

Reader Elvez73 responded to my post about the Administration's change in policy toward India with this:

As much as I hate seeing US jobs being sent to the subcontinent due to Indias booming economy, one must realize that a new era in US-Indian relations will be a good thing for both nations from a strategic point of view.

I would not worry over much about job loss to India. As their economy continues to boom they will reach a point where they are customers for the things we do well, like aircraft, automobiles and military hardware.

Catching up with the times

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 18 — President Bush reversed a decades-old ban on nuclear cooperation with India on Monday, signing legislation allowing the United States to sell civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India for the first time since that country tested a nuclear device in 1974.

Mr. Bush, who has taken a hard line against nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, negotiated the atomic energy pact during a visit to India in March, and Congress approved the measure shortly before adjourning this month. In return for access to American technology, India must now open its nuclear program to international inspection.

“This is an important achievement for the whole world,” Mr. Bush said during a signing ceremony in the East Room of the White House. “After 30 years outside the system, India will now operate its civilian nuclear program under internationally accepted guidelines, and the whole world is going to be safer as a result.”

Critics say the pact will open the door to nuclear proliferation. Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has been a leading opponent of the bill, said it “may well become the death warrant to the international nuclear nonproliferation regime.”

It should. The "international nuclear nonproliferation regime" is based upon a flawed concept. The "regime" attempts to keep any nation which currently does not possess nuclear weapons from acquiring them.

The flaw is this. Not every nation is irresponsible yet the nonproliferation regime them as though they were. India is a civilized nation which offers no threat to any other civilized nation. The only people who need feel threatened by India's nuclear arsenal are the Islamic fanatics who always seem to hover a hair's breadth away from the taking over the levers of power in Pakistan.

The only people threatened by Israel's nuclear weapons are the Arab/Muslim tyrants who have the stated goal of "pushing the Jews into the sea" and the nukes of NATO nations were only ever aimed at communist targets.

The people who we ought to fear having atomic weapons are the "bad-guy" states like Iran and North Korea. To devote the same efforts to keeping nukes out of the hands of the good guys as we do to keeping them from the bad guys all in the name of avoiding "hypocrisy" is a moronic wast of time.

The fact is that a nuclear armed Japan and South Korea would do wonders for damping Communist China's ambitions to establish hegemony in the Asian sphere and would effectively pull Kim Jong-il's fangs. Just as putting the former Soviet satellites under the NATO nuclear umbrella significantly limits the damage that a newly totalitarian Russia can inflict on the world.

The fact is that weapons in the right hands (doesn't matter if we are talking about a nuclear tipped ICBM in a silo in Nebraska or a .38 handgun tucked into the purse of a nurse who has to go to her car in a dark parking lot at 1:00 AM) are a force for good in the world.

It is past time that the civilized world abandon nonproliferation in favor of targeted proliferation.