Favoring India over Pakistan

President Obama has completely won over India, said Anita Katyal and Faraz Ahmad in the Chandigarh Tribune. At the end of a trip to India marked by lucrative business deals and crucial recognition of India’s struggle against terrorism, he praised India’s “beauty and dynamism” and promised that the U.S.-India relationship would be “one of the defining partnerships of the 21st century.” Then he delivered an unexpected and hugely valuable gift: an endorsement of India’s bid for permanent membership on the U.N. Security Council. No wonder his “mesmerizing speech” before the Indian legislature was met with “thunderous applause” and a standing ovation.

How deftly he played us, said Sankarshan Thakur in the Kolkata Telegraph. Obama made sure to address India’s main concern, Pakistani terrorism, in the strongest of terms. Then he “indulged and extolled” India, saying we were a great and growing democracy and deserved a Security Council seat. Having “brought the gathering to such a high,” he then casually slipped in his demands. Obama made clear that Security Council membership comes with international responsibilities. Yet India, he said, had been sitting on the sidelines even as countries in its own region misbehaved—notably Iran, with its nuclear brinksmanship, and Myanmar, with its political repression. “Bluntly put: The permanent seat is some way off; meantime, start proving to us you fit the bill.”

It’s too bad Obama felt he had to curry favor with his Indian hosts by gratuitously dumping on Pakistan, said the Lahore Nation in an editorial. He accused Pakistan of hosting extremists and failing to stop terrorism. Given that he was standing on the territory “of a country harboring Hindu extremists and practicing state terrorism in Occupied Kashmir,” this was not just hypocritical but “malicious.” Obama went on and on about the suffering of Mumbai at the hands of allegedly Pakistani terrorists, but had not a word to say about the “extensive and brutal” Indian terror against Kashmiris. “Clearly, the compulsion to dwell on Pakistan while in India reflected the pressure Obama feels to sate India on all fronts.”

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Of course he had to appease India, said Mosharraf Zaidi in the Karachi News. Do the math. In the past year alone, U.S. taxpayers forked over $1.5 billion to Pakistan for roads, schools, and bridges and $2 billion more in military funding. Pakistan extorted this money from the U.S. by threatening “to go Talibankrupt.” India, by contrast, is sending money the other way, “from India to the shores of the recession-prone American economy.” During Obama’s trip, the U.S. signed business deals for American companies, including Boeing and General Electric, to sell more than $10 billion worth of goods to India. The trade is expected to create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs. “Now ask yourself which country is going to get special treatment.”