Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Richard Holbrooke: A contrary opinion from India

 Richard Holbrooke: A contrary opinion from India

While the Western leaders and media is piling up glowing obituaries on US diplomat Richard Holbrooke, a contrary opinion hit the Page:19 Times of India story by its Washington correspondent Chitanand Rajghatta.

All things said, it is surprising that if Indian circles hold that the overarching motivation for US diplomat is/was to make it to Nobel Peace Prize list, why should Indian authorities succumb to arm-twisting by the West to vote for Chinese dissident Linbao, when it was clear the West's nomination was political and meant to humiliate China.


And to think that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was to visit India on a goodwill/business visit within days. Can there be more belligerent in your face reception to a neighbor than India's attending Nobel Peace Awards ceremony, just to get India's good mention in Nobel award's presentation speech. India should not get so cheaply managed by western

India should have taken this singular opportunity to send out a signal to the West that it has its own opinion as to the Western herd mentality to view all the world in its own strategic colored glass
and ready to raise world media campaigns like Nobel prizes, to push its agenda on world's silent majority.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
<ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com>


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http://lite.epaper.timesofindia.com/getpage.aspx?pageid=19&pagesize=&edid=&edlabel=TOIM&mydateHid=15-12-2010&pubname=&edname=&publabel=TOI

When the Raging Bull met the Indian wall

Delhi Nixed Holbrooke Plan To Link Kashmir,Af-Pak
Chidanand Rajghatta TNN


The man who died of a ruptured aorta was famously credited with bursting blood vessels of many a player in the world diplomatic community.Richard Holbrooke,who passed away on Monday in Washington DC at the age of 69 from complications following a heart surgery,was variously described as feisty, abrasive,and high-octane by admirers and critics alike. His in-your-face style earned him the nickname Raging Bull. Henry Kissinger,his forbear in the world of aggressive diplomacy,once advised someone, "If Richard calls you and asks you for something,just say yes.If you say no,you'll eventually get to yes,but the journey will be very painful."

But in the stolid Indian government, Holbrooke, the irresistible force, met the immovable object. New Delhi must have caused the ruptured aorta, was the feeble joke in the Indian analysts community, as news of the death of this much admired man trickled.Some mandarins compared him to J N Dixit, India's former foreign secretary,who died less than a year into his role as the National Security Advisor,before he could leave his imprint on Indias foreign policy,born from a capacious intellect and ceaseless learning.

Like Mani Dixit in South Block,Holbrooke too fell just short of the policy making pinnacle in Foggy Bottom.A lifelong Democrat,friend and acolyte of the Clintons, he was tipped to be Secretary of State if Hillary reached the White House in 2008.In a sparkling career that lasted nearly half century,Holbrooke held almost every important job in Washington's diplomatic world, from serving as the US permanent representative to UN to ambassador to Germany to two stints as assistant secretary. His expansive interests covered the globe,except for a small patch of geography that involved the sub-continent,although Indian mandarins had a few run-ins with him in Turtle Bay.

President Obama plugged that gap when he appointed Holbrooke a special envoy to the Af-Pak region.The scuttlebutt in Washington was that Holbrooke wanted India,including the vexing Kashmir issue,in his brief.

The Raging Bull aka Bulldozer was famously credited with hammering together the Dayton peace accord (which his admirers felt should have earned him the Nobel Peace Prize).He believed resolving the Afghan situation was linked to ending the tensions Pakistan had with India,and at the end of that rainbow (according to his fan club),lay a Nobel Prize.

But New Delhi,questioning the linking Af-Pak to Kashmir,balked.The Obama administration was persuaded to keep Holbrooke's mandate restricted to Af-Pak.For months thereafter,Holbrooke tried to visit New Delhi,but there was always scheduling problems and the two sides struggled to find mutually acceptable dates diplospeak for you are not welcome just now.

When Delhi finally consented to receive him in January this year,it was not the lion it expected,but a lamb.

As ambassador Timothy Roemer reported in his cable to Washington DC (disclosed by Wikileaks), Holbrooke, in his meeting with foreign secretary Nirupama Rao,noted that he comes with a clear vision of the centrality of India to the strategic landscape in the region. He reiterated that his portfolio explicitly excludes India.

Holbrooke assured Rao that he is not influenced by what he hears in Islamabad.

German Schools Embrace Islam By Herbert L. London

http://www.hudson-ny.org/1725/german-schools-embrace-islam


In an odd form of social suicide, rather than increasing efforts to integrate Muslims into German society, German students will be taught about Islam. In a sense, German educators will be engaged in proselytizing for Islam.

The German state of Lower Saxony will start including Islam in its schools' core curriculum as part of an initiative to counter growing anti-Islam sentiment in Europe. Dr. Bernad Althusmann, Minister of Education in Lower Saxony announced that schools there will start including Islamic education in their main curriculum, saying, during a visit to an elementary school in the city of Hanover which offers an Islamic education class, "I think we will be able to start implementation by the academic year after the next," said Justifying this approach, Juergen Zoeliner, Berlin Minister for Education, Science and Research, notes, "For years, society and schools have been faced with a variety of new duties and challenges. One of these big challenges is to have people from different traditions, cultural and religion affiliations living together peacefully and respectfully." .

One might assume that Muslims in the West should come to know and appreciate Western Civilization. Students who are not versed in the history and customs of the polity they find themselves in will be handicapped. Yet integration -- once the overarching strategy for dealing with immigrants -- has been replaced in Germany, and throughout Western Europe, by efforts to bend over backwards to accommodate the Islamic population. In the process, this effort produces results that counter good intentions. First, the Islamic population believes, with considerable confirmation, that Europeans do not possess the will to assert the importance of their own culture and traditions. Second, the insertion of Islam into German schools suggests tacitly that Islam is on the rise and cannot be denied even in non-Islamic nations

"Diversity education" is predicated on the belief that we in the West have on obligation to understand Islam -- however, the converse does not follow.

Of course, whether the program ultimately leads to a peaceful result is questionable. Why did the armies of Europe turn back the Turks at the gates of Vienna 500 years ago when programs, like these instituted in Germany, are handing Islam the keys to the future?

Although German shame over Nazi atrocities has made Hitler's heritage the end of German history and identity, should this shame be replaced by preemptive capitulation to a religion with a relentless imperial impulse?

To be sure, the Salafists, with Saudi funding, will follow up on their efforts in the schools. But will the full story of Islam be told including the stoning of adulterers, the execution of homosexuals, polygamy, apostasy as a capital offense and the belief that Jews are the offspring of apes and pigs?
Preemptive capitulation is nothing more than a form of defeat, and Islamic leaders recognize it in this way. The aggressive stance taken by Islamic leaders in Europe is based to an extraordinary degree on the flexibility and weakness of those who could defend the West.

G.K. Chesterton once noted that "an open mind, like an open mouth, should close on something." 

As I see it, that something should be the traditions of the West, the Judeo-Christian principles that gave birth to our civilization. If people want to live in this civilization, that is what they should be obliged to learn.