Capitol Hill, alas, has no Rahul Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh, Mallikarjun Kharge or any of our ‘liberandus’ for that matter to needle the Pentagon over which Iraqi WMD bunkers were busted and, more awkwardly, how many of its vaunted B-2 stealth birds lost their way over the desert. Imagine a Rahul demanding satellite proof of every precision strike, or a Jairam filing RTIs from Foggy Bottom [US State Department] asking where the bodies were buried.
Flourish like mushrooms in the monsoon
But back home, our Doubting Thomases flourish like wild mushrooms in monsoon. Every time India responds to a terror attack with calibrated force, they erupt on cue, demanding proof, footage, timestamps, and if possible, a notarised confession from the dead. Surgical strikes? Staged! Balakot? Kite flying! Pahalgam response? Political stunt.
At the outset, I oppose war, anywhere and in any form. The ultimate victims are always innocent people, and the long-term cost is devastation, not just in lives but in economies. But opposing war is not the same as reflexively disbelieving your own country’s response to terror. Especially when the disbelievers make no such demands of other nations whose foreign policies come armed with aircraft carriers and talking points.
Democratic virtue
Even as their party colleagues board flights for diplomatic briefings to make India’s case abroad, these leaders remain steadfastly rooted – heads buried in the sand, eyes tightly shut, and fingers perpetually pointed at New Delhi. American hawks must envy our home-grown sceptics: the Pentagon never has to explain itself to a Rahul Gandhi asking, ‘Where’s the proof?’ Yet our armed forces can barely sneeze without triggering a televised panel debate.
Questioning authority is a democratic virtue. But when every counter-terror operation is treated like a magician’s trick, you have to wonder are these leaders are searching for truth, or just allergic to outcomes they did not script?
