Wanted to hit LeT camps in Pakistan after 26/11 strike: Ex NSA
October 28, 2016  09:17
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When Mumbai was attacked on 26/11, Shivshankar Menon, the then Foreign Secretary who went on to become National Security Advisor to the UPA government, pressed for immediate military retaliation either against the LeT in Muridke, in Pakistans Punjab province, or their camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, or against the ISI, which was clearly complicit because it would have been emotionally satisfying.

At that point in 2008, Menon believed that a military retaliation would have gone a long way in erasing the shame of the incompetence that Indias police and security agencies displayed in the glare of the worlds television lights for full three days, reports The Indian Express.

On sober reflection and in hindsight the decision not to retaliate militarily and to concentrate on diplomatic, covert, and other means was the right one for that time and place, Menon writes in the chapter titled Restraint or Riposte: The Mumbai Attack and Cross-Border Terrorism from Pakistan in his book Choices: Inside the making of Indias Foreign Policy, released in the United States and United Kingdom.

The simple answer to why India did not immediately attack Pakistan is that after examining the options at the highest levels of government, the decision-makers concluded that more was to be gained from not attacking Pakistan than from attacking it, he writes.

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