When President Obama took the oath of office on January 20th, I think I'd have been one of the few people around the world who actually felt sad for President Bush. For all his faults and misunderestimations, President Bush transformed Indo-US ties for the better. Never, after JFK had offered military help during the 1962 war, had any US president taken such an interest in India. Be it the nuclear deal, the de-hyphenation of India and Pakistan, or outsourcing, President Bush's actions were in India's interest (and America's too). His attack on Afghanistan gave us breathing space on Kashmir (remember, in the late 90s, most of the terrorists in Kashmir were Taliban-trained ones). He used America's power to undo the same nuclear apartheid that his predecessors created, one that was created with the sole purpose of containing India. G Parthasarathy, who was in the Indian embassy in the US when the NSG was created, gushingly said after the NSG vote that he hadn't expected to see that day during his lifetime.
So, thank you, President Bush, and good luck with those memoirs.
