Chuck Hagel stirs up India-US storm over Afghanistan

[alp227]

New US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has stirred up a sudden storm in a chai glass here, with past suggestions that India has been using Afghanistan as a "second front" against its old rival Pakistan.

"India has over the years financed problems for Pakistan" in Afghanistan, said Mr Hagel in a 2011 speech at the previously little-known foreign policy seed-bed of Oklahoma University.

If nothing else, it showed what a liability the internet can be for politicians who would wish for their past thoughts to be forgotten.

For Mr Hagel's Republican opponents, it was just a few clicks' work to ferret out the speech, get it online via a sympathetic outlet, then picked up 10.5 time zones away.

full: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21601120

[frazzled]

1. Wrong: Republicans stir up shitstorm

By dragging some (probably out-of-context) statement from several years ago given at a minor talk at a remote university.

Thanks, Republicans!

[closeupready]

2. Dovetails with the fact that India's neighbors deeply distrust

India, and its meddling in affairs all over South Asia - Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Afghanistan (as Hagel notes), Bangladesh, probably lots of other places where they have no business being.

And if Hagel's claims had been false, there'd have been no controversy.

[TwilightGardener]

3. Yes, I think he said this just today, right after his swearing in, just to stir

the shit with other countries--and not two years ago, when he was a professor of foreign policy and wasn't thinking of hiding his thoughts and analysis from eventual enemies against his taking a cabinet position. They will dig up anything he's ever said and present it now as OUTRAGEOUS!11!!

[gateley]

4. Just like with Biden, Hagel seems to stir up controversy by speaking the truth.

We're not supposed to know what's really going on, you know.

[ellisonz]

5. "storm in a chai glass"

I just like that phrase.