In a extremely low attack at the Indian armed forces, lawyer cum Congress politician and ex Home Minister in UPA government P. Chidambaram insulted the Indian army, doubting their capability to take out terrorists like Hafeez Muhammad Saeed.
To quote him, “Soon after the Mumbai attacks, Hafiz Saeed was in a safe house in Karachi and now roams around freely but we don’t have the capability of targeting him in a raid like the one the Americans undertook to get Osama in his Pakistani (Abbottabad) hideout. We didn’t have the capability then (in 2008) and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if we have it now. If we had tried, we would’ve failed and that would have been a bigger blow.”
For those unaware, Chidambaram’s statement came soon after army Chief General Bipin Rawat’s suggestion of an Osama styled attack on India’s enemies, as he stated in his interview with Rahul Shivashankar on Times Now.
To quote the General, “We are doing it differently. One option is that you do what the Americans did to Osama Bin Laden. That is an option, it is possible. But the government is doing it in a different way. Pakistan is being isolated. Today, you see where Pakistan is there have to be some actions shown by the other side to say that we have taken some action.”
Though not entirely unexpected from a politician like P. Chidambaram, this is a real low, even by his own standards. Criticizing the current leadership is not bad, but degrading the armed forces and doubting their capability is not something acceptable by any standard.
Also, it is rather funny when a person like P. Chidambaram, who represents the party that has never treated the armed forces properly, calls out on them and mocks their capability. History has been a rather silent, but unkind witness to the fact that Congress has been everything but respectful towards the armed forces of this nation.
From asking for a ceasefire even when Indian Army was on the verge of winning the entire Jammu & Kashmir, to insulting Army generals when in power, to even doubting the veracity of the recent surgical strikes, you name it and Congress has done it all.
In case P. Chidambaram, we would like to remind him of the valor that Indian Army is well known for. Be it their heroics of Rezang La, where they denied the Chinese a crucial breakthrough, or the Battle of Asal Uttar, where the Indian artillery completely destroyed the Pakistani forces despite being outnumbered, or even the surgical strikes conducted in Myanmar and POK, the Indian armed forces have time and again proven their mettle.
Also, the fact that P. Chidambaram is mocking the Indian Army for not nabbing Hafiz Saeed is the classic example of the pot calling the kettle black. Do we need to know who had prevented the Indian armed forces from retaliating the 26/11 attacks? Who had given free passage to terrorists while creating the hoax of ‘Hindu terror’? Who systematically presided over removal of records that allegedly held Ishrat Jahan guilty of a terror plot to assassinate Modi? We hope the ex Home Minister doesn’t think us to be as naïve as he thought, or does he?