So, India carried out an airstrike in Pakistan, and irrespective of the damage caused, their ability to penetrate deep into Pakistan airspace is being touted as a victory. Pakistan says it detected the incursion and its own fighter jets chased the intruders away, who dropped their ballistic payload to make a quick getaway. From the Indian side, the estimated casualties range from 300 to 700. The strike obviously had the U.S.' blessing as Trump had warned that India was about to take a "very strong" step.
We may never know the whole truth about the number of dead/injured because it is in the interest of both sides to lie. Both sides want to play the provoked predator, not the aggrieved prey.
The public discourse has become so jingoistic that pacifism isn't a tenable position anymore. It is all quite depressing. One can only hope that Pakistan continues to play it down and India stops foaming at the mouth and doing idiotic stuff like trying to kick Pakistan out of the cricket World Cup. But, with right-wing nuts in government in India, there is no guarantee that they will stick to the charade. They can be relied upon to stumble into a rapidly escalating game of strikes and counterstrikes that will end up in full-blown war. That might seem far-fetched. Direct wars between two large powers are messy, expensive and enormously disruptive to capital accumulation. But, we don't live in a textbook neoliberal/neoconservative world any more and those rules don't apply. Who would have thought that the successor to that world order could potentially be worse?
We may never know the whole truth about the number of dead/injured because it is in the interest of both sides to lie. Both sides want to play the provoked predator, not the aggrieved prey.
The public discourse has become so jingoistic that pacifism isn't a tenable position anymore. It is all quite depressing. One can only hope that Pakistan continues to play it down and India stops foaming at the mouth and doing idiotic stuff like trying to kick Pakistan out of the cricket World Cup. But, with right-wing nuts in government in India, there is no guarantee that they will stick to the charade. They can be relied upon to stumble into a rapidly escalating game of strikes and counterstrikes that will end up in full-blown war. That might seem far-fetched. Direct wars between two large powers are messy, expensive and enormously disruptive to capital accumulation. But, we don't live in a textbook neoliberal/neoconservative world any more and those rules don't apply. Who would have thought that the successor to that world order could potentially be worse?
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