The Greatest Trick

In the film noir classic The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey's character reprises Baudelaire to describe the genius of the arch-villain Keyser Soze: The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

Having read this NRO review of National Geographic's Inside 9/11, we are compelled to reprise the same idea in a different context: The greatest trick Kashmiri separatists ever pulled was convincing the world India oppresses them.

How else can we explain the following lumping together of democratic India with autocratic Russia & China by Michael Scheuer (ex-CIA, responsible for hunting down bin Laden):

The beginning of winning this war is for the president to tell the American people that the motivation behind our enemy's actions has to do with our actions in the Islamic world, not who we are ... Our unqualified support for Israel, our ability until recently to keep oil prices low, our occupation of the three holiest places in Islam (the Arabian peninsula, Iraq, and Jerusalem), our support for countries that oppress Muslims (China, India, Russia), our support of Arab police states over the last 30 years in Saudi Arabia, in Jordan, Algeria, Egypt.

Then, the (rightfully skeptical) reviewer Catherine Seipp retorts with this helpful (!) stunner:

China, India and Russia may oppress Muslims, but not compared to Muslim countries like Iraq under Saddam Hussein, which for some reason al Qaeda never complained about.

Hello?! India oppresses Muslims? How in God's name have we let this absurd impression to gain ground? The answer is not hard to find. It is our ridiculous liberal defensiveness about Kashmir that's caused this. The day India proudly asserts its moral validity to rule Kashmir is the day we can begin correcting this horribly erroneous record.