NY Times' Asian Ego Trip

(Partially plagiarized from this NY Times Editorial. Please read both carefully.)

There is a lot of good an editor can do in writing an editorial: provide insights that enhance understanding, shore up a shaky viewpoint, simplify issues in complex parts of the debate. Unfortunately, the New York Times editor didn't do any of those good things in his just-completed editorial on Pakistan and India and may have done some real harm.

The spectacularly misconceived editorial may have inflicted serious damage to constructive debate in two vital areas, namely, mobilizing international opinion against the spread of nuclear weapons and encouraging President Bush to take more effective action against Pakistan and Al Qaeda fighters operating from its territory.

The editorial that the editor concluded with arrogant ignorance threatens to blast an ink-blot-size hole through common sense. It would have been bad enough on its own, and disastrously ill timed, because it undercuts some of the most powerful arguments New York Times can make to try to galvanize international opposition to Pakistan's terrorist adventurism.

But the most immediate damage was done on the editor's next topic, India. Washington is trying to persuade the world to defy outdated objections and move more aggressively to bring India into the non-proliferation mainstream. This is no small issue because India is an emerging global power with a nuclear program that operated from its own soil.

Its just baffling why the editor traveled halfway across the page to consume one of his most important assets - and embarass himself. India and Pakistan have different histories. Pakistan put the "life" into proliferation, while India refused to do the same. When Pakistani generals decided to play nuclear mischief worldwide, AQ Khan felt obliged to follow suit.

So when the editor decided to carve out an exception to customary common sense for himself, it should have been obvious that his intelligent readers would refuse the same privilege, and that the editor would be embarassed by the readers explicit refusal to do it.

The editor was right to say no to Pakistan. It would be an unthinkably bad idea to grant a loophole to a country whose top nuclear scientist helped transfer nuclear technology to leading rogue states. But equating India to Pakistan in an ill-informed argument that lets readers accelerate their disappoinment makes no sense either.

The editor should have just spared the ink.