"So you discount the contention that the limited quantities of F-16's provided are for continuing operations against the Talaban and Al-Queda forces hidden in the mountains?"
---Completely! Tell me how AMRAAMS can be used against the Talaban and Al-Queda forces? Those guys have an airforce?
"Or that the assumption that these aircraft would be deployed against India would require the Pac's to be suicidal? "
---So you dont think those F-16s will be used against us? Buddy, we cant be so stupid as not to see that those F-16s have only one target and that is INDIA. F-16s make a much more effective delivery system for nuclear weapons.
"I'm just asking the question. I believe the Administration is trying to develop a new strategy in the region that incorporates all who share the same interests. I think it's more productive for India and Pakistan to join in the common defense rather than either side expecting the U.S. to favor one over the other. Wouldn't you agree?"
---Cant agree until we agree on one thing and that is : Pakistan is still a terrorist state. Only due to a strong American presence they have so far kept a lid but thats not gonna be permanent. And if your administration chooses to incorporate them, then we are on different sides (although we are fighting the same enemy).
"I would think the interest for India would be to help Pakistan and Musarrif(sp) shed the radicalism of the past and continue to democratize as India has shown so well. Just my opinion."
--Yes but to do that, I wont give them F-16s. F-16 will not help shed radicalism or put them on the path to democratization. BTW your administration has actually strengthened the military regime rather than democratizing them.
A number of commentators have missed the shift in U.S. strategic priorities by drawing an analogy between the administration's policies on arms sales to Pakistan and India, and in the bestowing of "major non-NATO ally" status on Pakistan. And in the minds of others, the practice of strategy invalidates the commitment to democracy--Pakistan being something less than a fully free state. The New York Times and Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer denounced the sale of F-16s to Pakistan as "A Con Job by Pakistan's Pal, George Bush." But, as so often, Bush-hatred blinds these sorts to the larger strategic picture.
It would be useful for them to listen to the new voices emerging in New Delhi; Indians see the importance of this change more than many Americans do. "The F-16s don't matter," Raja Menon writes in the March 30 Indian Express. "The March 25 Statement"--it's already taken on an almost-iconic status in India--is creating "opportunities like never before" for India. "If India has the boldness to dump the non-aligned rhetoric of the past," Menon argues, "the country stands to gain in many areas."
Militarily, Menon is quite right; the F-16s are almost a waste of money for Pakistan, whose primary security worries come from the Sunni Islamists inside its borders. A major conventional war with India would be suicidal for the Pakistanis, as, of course, would any nuclear exchange. The guerilla war in Kashmir is a ball and chain that Pakistan cannot seem to lose. Fretting about the F-16s is myopic; as Menon concludes, "If 24 F-16s make Pakistan feel secure, all the better."