Decisive Battle...

May 22, 2002 3:58 PM

Decisive Battle... or not? The british are removing diplomats. The expulsion of the pakistani ambassador. Is India preparing to go to war or is this just another in a series of bluffs?
posted by bittennails (16 comments total)

"Army officers responded by declaring the troops were primed for war and prepared to die, and India's navy moved five warships nearer to Pakistani waters as fears of war between the nuclear-armed rivals grew. Cross-border shelling has killed dozens in the past week in divided Kashmir, which both nations claim in its entirety. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the Himalayan region." [Italics added].

Bravo to the leadership. Armed conflict has been marvelously successful at resolving this mess in the past.

Why not try it yet again?
posted by fold_and_mutilate at 4:13 PM on May 22, 2002

Let me get this straight:

India wants Kashmir so that they can track down all the Kashmiri separatists who keep blowing things up in India because they don't want to be part of Pakistan (or India).

Pakistan wants Kashmir because they've got it and them damned Indians aren't taking it away.

Kashmir wants them both to go away, except for all the Kashmiris who want to be Indians and all the other Kashmiris who want to be Pakistanis.

I know, let's everybody shoot each other for a while.

Isn't it funny how ridiculous it seems when it's happening to somebody else?
posted by hob at 4:25 PM on May 22, 2002

This doesn't seem particularly funny when the obvious Pakistani response to a full-on Indian attack would be all the beginning of an all-out nuclear war.
posted by muppetboy at 5:00 PM on May 22, 2002

My understanding of the situation is somthing like this. If the USA were to split in 2 countrys, say east versus west, and it was never settled who owned Alaska both sides claimed it. It represents more then just land, its the pristine beauty and vacation wonderland of myth. So they will blow it up.
posted by stbalbach at 5:49 PM on May 22, 2002

check out this article if you want to get an idea of the mind set going on in this conflict ........ very scary. meanwhile the big news back in the USA is chandra levy. g-zus!
posted by specialk420 at 6:00 PM on May 22, 2002

More complex than that, stbalbach: if many of the people of Alaska wanted to be on one side, but the governor of Alaska flubbed about before deciding to be on the other, that'd come close. But not quite close enough.
posted by riviera at 6:39 PM on May 22, 2002

wow, that's pretty chilling there specialk... i was amazed at how little coverage this very dire situation got even on the pbs news hours. basically no coverage at all. no attempt to understand the situation and no interest in defusing it. if there are pakistanis that feel like the one interviewed in that article with their fingers on the button, then it's already a foregone conclusion... millions dead.
posted by muppetboy at 7:06 PM on May 22, 2002

say east versus west, and it was never settled who owned Alaska both sides claimed it. It represents more then just land, its the pristine beauty and vacation wonderland of myth. So they will blow it up.
exactly what me irish cousins have been doing in an attempt to remove the british for the last gazillion years.
posted by quonsar at 7:27 PM on May 22, 2002

Or the Palestinian/Iranian/Iraqis vs Israel, or...

The world is screwed.
posted by swerdloff at 9:36 PM on May 22, 2002

the world is screwed


does it have to be screwed ? its a pretty nice little gift we were given - why is killing a bunch of people on the other side of the fence the answer?
posted by specialk420 at 11:41 PM on May 22, 2002

it's not the answer. but it is traditional.
posted by zoopraxiscope at 6:48 AM on May 23, 2002

Seems calmer today, I have a chill in my bones though. This could get real very fast. That was a scary article you linked to special420.
posted by bittennails at 6:56 AM on May 23, 2002

This doesn't seem particularly funny when the obvious Pakistani response to a full-on Indian attack would be all the beginning of an all-out nuclear war.

This kind of shit would never fly in the western hemisphere.

But savages will be as they are, so start popping your potassium iodide pills and wait for them to cull the savage herd down to a more managable size.

and while they're irradiating eachother with their beginner-nukes, I say we neutron bomb that moutainous region where al qaida and taliban are able to find shelter. Its a backwards bunch of warloving peasants for whom pakistan is effectively unable to control anyhow.

Who here wants to be the first to shed tears over the world's loss of such a fine example of ethnic peoples?
posted by BentPenguin at 7:39 AM on May 23, 2002

Having read specialk420's linked article, all I have to say is: Oh. My. Dear. God.
posted by alumshubby at 7:43 AM on May 23, 2002

This kind of shit would never fly in the western hemisphere.

Hrm, I seem to remember this little brouhaha we had over here called... what was it? World War One? Went down quite a bit like this, as I recall... less the nukes, but plus mustard gas... wasn't it Austria wanting Serbia to control its separatist terrorists that set that one off?

Calling someone "savages" for making the same mistakes everyone else has made isn't really fair or helpful. Let's just hope somebody over there has the sense (that we did not have) to knock this crap off before it gets out of hand.
posted by hob at 10:07 AM on May 23, 2002

I am sure that there are many more like Asma Jahangir out there. But these people don't have a voice in Pakistani polity. And with every passing generation, that nation becomes a little more obscurant (by the way, that interview is about 4 years old, but its still a great read).
posted by justlooking at 12:15 PM on May 23, 2002