India: US Ally Making Tremendous Strides and Success on Domestic, Anti-Terrorist Fronts

Dashing the illogical trisectionist proposal of the 'abandon Iraq quick' crowd, Victor David Hansen makes some excellent points about tribal (Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni) rivals:

If the three sects cannot get along with each other inside Iraq, why would they outside when interested neighbors would draw them into their respective orbits to renew and expand the conflict on international terms?

A Sunni/Zarqawi state would be hyper-Wahhabist in the manner of the Shiite south becoming ultra-theocratic, as any internal moderating force on the majority populations would be lost.

India has far fewer problems from its own multimillion-person Muslim minority than from neighboring Islamic and nuclear Pakistan..... India is a success because it has more or less embraced pluralism and allowed Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians to live tolerably with one another — in a way that a nearly uniformly Islamic Pakistan never cared to achieve with non-Muslims either inside or outside its borders.

Fortunately, the eighth in an annual series of war games by navies of India and the US begins Sunday off India's west coast in a training exercise to counter terrorism, piracy, and anti-submarine warfare. (Salute to Eagle1: "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid" - General Dwight D. Eisenhower)

"In terms of the assets being committed by the two sides, this is the most advanced naval exercise between India and the US," Rear Admiral D.K. Joshi, the Indian Navy's assistant chief for information warfare and operations, told reporters Friday.

India and the US will both employ aircraft carriers to boost inter-operability of their naval pilots. Several of the warships and aircraft fielded by the US - including the nuclear powered submarine USS Santa Fe and the P3C Orion long-range patrol planes. The Indian Navy is interested in acquiring similar technology.