NYT comes up with verbal diarrhea to bat for Pakistan and denounce Operation Sindoor, quotes Shivshankar Menon to insinuate how doing nothing after terrorist attacks is best response

It takes a special kind of journalistic acrobatics to watch a rogue nation like Pakistan getting pounded ruthlessly by India, its air defence humiliated, and its terror camps destroyed, and still declare it a draw. This is what The New York Times (NYT) has done. Basically, NYT did not let facts get in the way of defending Pakistan or mocking India’s right to self-defence.

In their latest piece of verbal diarrhea titled “Why There’s No Battlefield Solution to India’s Perpetual Pakistan Problem,” NYT correspondents Mujib Mashal and Alex Travelli conveniently repackaged strategic passivity as wisdom and suggested that India should simply accept terrorism as a fact of life.

Their source? None other than Shivshankar Menon, the same Foreign Secretary during 26/11 who presided over the strategic doctrine of “let us light candles and move on”. India failed to take revenge for the murder of over 160 people by the terrorists sent and sponsored by Pakistan. NYT wants India to repeat the same again. Why? Because, according to them, it is evidently the right thing to do.

NYT conveniently skips who started the violence

Interestingly, NYT cunningly hid the basic chronology of the India Pakistan conflict. India’s initial response to the 22nd April Pahalgam terrorist attack was limited and specific. It targeted only terror camps in Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Pakistan. No civilian or military Pakistani targets were touched. India gave Pakistan an option to step back and accept the destruction of multiple terror camps and the death of over 100 hardcore terrorists.

However, Pakistan decided to escalate and launched military attacks on Indian civilians, religious sites and defence infrastructure. Only then did India answer with full force and destroyed 11 Pakistani air bases, turned two radar systems into dust and crippled Pakistan’s war machinery. While doing so, India managed to jam the air defence system of Pakistan, making it possible for India to strike strategic locations to inflict the most damage in the least time.

Pakistan sent drones and nuclear capable missiles, one of which was headed towards New Delhi, but all were intercepted and destroyed by the advanced air defence system of India. Over time, India has developed its own version of “Iron Dome” that saved it from the vicious Pakistani attack. While Pakistan tried to use civilian airlines as a shield by letting them fly during the conflict and fired missiles from civilian locations, as shown in videos shared by Pakistanis, India maintained restraint to ensure the least collateral damage.

And yet, according to NYT, this is still “a draw.” By that logic, what would defeat look like? Pakistan no longer existing?

The 26/11 peace fantasy

The NYT bizarrely suggested that India’s restraint post 26/11 brought peace for 17 years. This is such a laughable claim. Just a few years after 26/11, the 2010 German Bakery attack happened. Over the years, Mumbai in 2011, Hyderabad in 2013, Pathankot and Uri in 2016 and Pulwama in 2019 were targeted by Pakistan sponsored terrorism. The idea that not retaliating somehow created peace is not analysis, it is wilful ignorance.

Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi rose to power in 2014, he attempted to bring peace between India and Pakistan, which failed. After Uri and Pulwama, India struck Pakistan’s terror camps, following which there was silence for some time. Notably, post abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, which was condemned by Pakistan, incidents of terror attacks and stone pelting drastically dropped in the Valley.

Pakistan does not like peace. It is a fact. This is why every few years it drinks some Thums Up and decides to do something “toofani”. However, India’s strategy has changed and when it hits back, Pakistan runs to find shelter, like it did this time by running to the United States seeking mediation for ceasefire.

NYT either does not understand what has been going on between India and Pakistan or it chose to ignore it. By not acting post 26/11, India bled quietly, with no strategic gain, as terrorists kept striking. The same Menon they quote today was part of that silence.

Comparing India with Pakistan is dishonest

In its classic style, the NYT placed India and Pakistan on the same moral and strategic pedestal. The only way to describe it is purely lazy journalism. It is deliberate misinformation aimed at confusing the readers. India is a democracy with rising global influence. On the other hand, Pakistan is a crumbling state run by unelected generals and radical proxies. Moreover, the way it runs around with a “katora” in its hands seeking bailouts is yet another example why it stands nowhere close to India. However, NYT’s correspondents, instead of discussing how Pakistan’s military establishment openly breeds terrorism as a state policy, decided to spend a lot of time blaming “Hindu nationalism”.

The Modi government is not like its predecessors. The situation has shifted away from the appeasement driven paralysis. It has shown that India will not absorb terrorism as a fact of life. If you kill Indians, there will be consequences, and not just on Twitter or in UN speeches. As PM Modi clearly said, nuclear blackmail is not going to work.

Operation Sindoor was not a reckless decision

If NYT is to be believed, Operation Sindoor will sound like a reckless decision. But in reality, it did not have much effect on India but destroyed the reputation of Pakistan and its weapon suppliers Turkey and China. In India, businesses remained open during the day with blackouts in some border states. Life carried on. There was no panic buying. There were no complete shutdowns.

In contrast, Pakistan had to eventually shut down its airspace and scramble for damage control. Reports suggest it is planning to shift its military establishments from where it controls all operations, as the current ones were hit by India without much resistance from Pakistan’s air defence system.

India does not want war. Operation Sindoor was not a reckless war. It was a calibrated response with clear objectives. Every major country faces threats and distractions. That does not mean you let your people be bombed and keep chanting peace.

Nuclear fear is not strategy

The NYT also played the nuclear card. It suggested India cannot act against Pakistan because it might escalate. This cowardice is what let Pakistan build its entire asymmetric terror model. Every time it feels there is a threat in response to its terror activities, the leaders and military chiefs of Pakistan start threatening, “We are a nuclear nation,” with an unsteady voice masked with false courage. The Modi government has rightly called the bluff. Retaliation does not mean escalation, and targeted strikes do not mean nuclear war.

Ajit Doval’s doctrine is not warmongering, it is deterrence with clarity. If you sponsor terror, you will bleed. Not through big wars, but through strategic, invisible cuts, and sometimes, visible ones like Operation Sindoor.

The NYT article is not analysis, it is spin. It is an attempt to lecture a democracy for defending itself, glorify passivity as wisdom, and subtly suggest that India is no better than a terror exporting failed state. It is dishonest, insulting and exactly the kind of narrative that lets Pakistan hide behind nuclear excuses while exporting death. Moreover, the West must not forget how many wars it has initiated and is still fighting worldwide. And yes, please remind us, the Indians, how many wars the United States, the biggest military power in the world, has won since 1947. What happened in the Korean war, the Vietnam war and the war in Afghanistan?

Let the West moralise from the comfort of distance. We choose to fight back.

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