The NYT, the Economist and several U.S. congressmen have been on a sanctimonious, anti-India tear after the India-U.S. deal for nuclear power generation.

The NYT op/ed committee for Dubya’s South Asia trip

They continue to define a nation of 1.1 billion in terms of the much smaller states of Iran and Pakistan; attempt to turn back the clock 30 years to before India had nukes; reward governments which proliferate nuclear weapons to the world’s most murderous regimes; and hypocritically kowtow to a nuclear-armed, authoritarian China while excoriating democratic India.

It’s just baffling why Mr. Bush traveled halfway around the world to stand right next to one of his most important allies against terrorists — and embarrass him… when Mr. Bush agreed to carve out an exception to global nonproliferation rules for India, it should have been obvious that Pakistani opinion would demand the same privileged treatment… [Link]

Fast-forward to Thursday’s nuclear deal with India, in which President Bush agreed to share civilian nuclear technology with India despite its nuclear weapons programs and its refusal to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… This would be a bad idea at any time… Mr. Bush might as well have tied a pretty red bow around his India nuclear deal and mailed it as a gift to Tehran. [Link]

President Bush wants to carve out an exception for India. That’s the worst possible message to send to other countries — Iran comes to mind — that America and its nuclear allies in Europe are trying to keep off the nuclear weapons bandwagon. Already, Pakistani officials are requesting the same deal for their country, although it is a request that is unlikely to be granted. Congress would have to approve this nuclear deal, and it should kill it. [Link]

What has emerged on Capitol Hill is an alliance of conservative Republicans, who are concerned that the deal will encourage Iranian intransigence, and liberal Democrats, who charge that the Bush administration has effectively scrapped the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty… “People are worried about the precedent of establishing a full-fledged cooperation with India while we’re wagging our finger at North Korea and Iran”…

“This deal not only lets India amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants, it looks like we made no effort to try to curtail them,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is Santa Claus negotiating. The goal seems to have been to give away as much as possible.” [Link]

The Economist even quotes A Passage to India, a landmark of colonialist literature, and puns on a fakir’s rope trick. Stylistically, it’s a retrograde embarrassment:

George Bush could do a lot worse than to put aside his briefing books and curl up instead with E.M. Forster’s best-known novel… In July, when India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, visited Washington, he came home with a remarkable present: a promise from Mr Bush that he would aim to share American civilian nuclear technology with India. That was too generous… Mr. Bush, in effect, was driving a coach and horses through the treaty in order to suit his own strategic ends… [Link]

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p>Unilateral nuclear disarmament is a pipe dream. Can you imagine any scenario in which the U.S. would scrap its nukes with two nuclear-armed neighbors parked on its borders? It ain’t gonna happen. Nobody’s going to eliminate their nukes any time soon — not India, which has been processing plutonium since 1964; not Pakistan; and not Israel. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, now almost 40 years old, is outdated and in need of severe amendment to recognize de facto nuclear states and distinguish between responsible actors and bad ones.

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p>If preventing future prolif is the goal, you have to focus on the nuclear merchants: Pakistan, China and North Korea. Analysts say India has never sold nukes to other countries. And the NYT’s concern for Musharraf’s feelings is truly precious. Successive Pakistani military dictatorships have created the very problems they want to be rewarded for solving. Bin Laden most likely sits in Pakistan this very day. The Pakistani military has been one of the most irresponsible nuke proliferators for 20 years — that’s blackmail, not alliance.

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p>Comparing India and Iran is laughable. Iran is hardly as important to the U.S.’ future as India. With 68M people, it has only 6% of India’s population and 14% its PPP-adjusted GDP, largely from state-owned oil rather than a healthy, organic economy. Iran has attacked U.S. troops and sponsored acts of terrorism against the U.S.; India has never done so. Iran is an Islamist mullahcracy; India is a secular democracy. Iran signed and then broke the NPT; India has never said it would sign. Discussing India in the same breath as Iran makes about as much sense as demanding that America disarm to spare Libya’s feelings. It’s about as silly as defining ‘East’ Indians in terms of the West Indies (4% of India’s population).

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You don’t go to the U.N. and say ‘the India deal tarnishes the Iran argument,’ or ‘India is a special exemption,’ or ‘we’re doing India a favor.’ You go to the U.N. and tell them that trying to compare the world’s sixth-largest GDP (PPP-adjusted), a country with more purchasing power than Germany, the UK, Russia, Canada, South Korea and Taiwan, a country which is the second-largest arms importer in the world, with Iran is simply asinine:

“The comparison between India and Iran is just ludicrous,” R. Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, said… “India is a highly democratic, peaceful, stable state that has not proliferated nuclear weapons. Iran is an autocratic state mistrusted by nearly all countries and that has violated its international commitments.” [Link]

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p>… we are somehow supposed to believe that by favoring India, Bush has made it much harder to put pressure on Iran… This overlooks the fact that Iran is governed by a zealot who has pledged to eradicate Israel and who firmly believes in the inherent evil of the United States of America… No one worries about India or Israel making the technology available to terrorists. Everyone worries about Iran doing that. These are distinctions with great differences. [Link – thanks, WGIIA]

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p>And India and North Korea? Please. If you want to talk double standards, let’s talk coddling authoritarian states (China), proliferators (China and Pakistan) and supporters of terrorism (Pakistan) while jawboning the world’s largest democratic republic.

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p>It’s all big steaming piles of shitpocrisy.

Dubya’s motive in pushing this deal is to shore up the country which runs the Fortune 500’s back room and has the world’s second-largest consumer market. And he’s trying to eliminate a competitor for oil field rights by helping India switch over to clean nuclear technology.

These rags are suffering post-ColdWar-onial hangover. It is against American interests to oppose this deal.