AMERICAN TRAGEDY
WAWHINGTONS, Unsolicited offer of what it chooses to all military aid to New Delhi is a diplomatic balancing act. The objective is to justify its policy of continuing arms supply to Pakistan in defiance of world opinion. The U.S. diplomatic equation in this sub-continent equates India with Pakistan. And publicly every attempt is made to hold the scales even between the two. In reality, though, they are tilted in favour of Pakistan all the time. The real beneficiary of American bounty in this sub-continent is Islamabad and New Delhi is given some crumbs on occasion just to keep up the pretence of parity. this is no less true of economic assistance than of arms aid.
There is nothing accidental about the decision of the White House to continue arms shipment to Pakistan. President Nixon has not given his approval to the decision in a fit of absentmindedness. Indignant New Delhi rightly holds that supply of arms to the military junta in Islamabad at the present juncture is tantamount to underwriting tyranny and condoning genocide. But Washington could not care less. It knows full well what the implications of its action for the oppressed majority in Pakistan are. What it is doing it is doing deliberately. For it is firmly committed to the preservation of the unity of Pakistan even if it be by gun-point. Hence its unabashed support to naked oppression and savage butchery in Bangladesh.
There is little doubt that India’s protest will be contemptuously thrown into the wastepaper basket by the powers that be in the United States. That, however, does not mean that it has been in vain. For it is Washington that stands humiliated in the comity of nations and not New Delhi, American’s Pakistani policy lays bare its sordid aims in global diplomacy and indicates that. Vietnam was no abertation. Currently her democratic professions ring hollow because they clearly lack conviction. Whatever little faith one had in America’s democratic aims even after Vietnam has now been completely destroyed by her shameless betrayal of the democratic ideal in Bangladesh where the saddest American tragedy in contemporary times is unfolding itself. (Editorial]
Reference: Hindustan Standard 14.07.1971