India - US Relations and the Pittsburgh Pirates

There are Bad Guys that mean us serious harm, AKA Taliban, Al Queda. They're a religious movement, not a country, so they move, shift, evolve.

They're in Afganistan. We go into Afganistan and they move to Pakistan. They don't give the Pakis a hard time, they stay out of the way in isolated country, they even do some Robin Hood stuff for the locals. The Pakis won't engage because they're afraid of them, and maybe there's even some common ground with them.

Pakistan, the country that was shocked, shocked to find that their chief scientist was selling A-bomb plans around the world. We don't have a lot of traction with Pakistan; they want F16s, we sell them F16s, and we're really not completely in charge of our military-industrial complex anyway. The Pakis won't give us permission to go after the Bad Guys who are camped in their mountains.

Strategic alliance is often driven by, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Trouble is, we don't have too many enemy-enemy-friend linkups in this area. If this was LinkedIn, we'd have a network of 0.

But now, India is mad at Pakistan. India blames Pakistan for the Mumbai 9-11. And India is really very effective at being mad at Pakistan. These guys fight over Kashmir like France and Germany used to fight over Alsace-Lorraine.

Want a clue that the bad guys are concerned? They offered Pakistan a cease-fire if the Pakis wanted to send their troops to the Indian border.

India, world's third largest country, big land mass, lots of educated people, not Muslim. They're mad at somebody we're mad at. Could be an enemy-enemy-friend linkup. They could be our new greatest ally. All we need is a little push of friendship between the United States and India, a little spark.

Hmmm. What could capture the imagination of the Indian people and make them realize, hey- we're a lot like America! Former English colonies who threw off the yoke of Prince Charles! Bollywood, Hollywood! What else could bring us together in a new way?

Let's bring India's first two pro baseball players, right-hander Dinesh Kumar Patel, and left-hander Rinku Singh, to the United States! And they're not coming to play just anywhere, they're coming to play for... The Pittsburgh Pirates. The two new pitchers will report to the Pirates' spring training facility in Bradenton, Fla., in late January. They're not long-term baseball phenoms, they're the winners of an Indian TV baseball-throwing contest.

The Hinustan Times thinks it's pretty cool. So does the Indian Express, and the Times of India.

Our two new minor league pitchers, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, have a blog. It's worth reading. Lots of people in India are reading it.

This might work out much better than Siddharta Finch with the NY Mets. I'm just saying.