Sure, you are free to have your opinion and thoughts. But that rationale has no bearing on my opinions and thoughts. Since, the armed forces are so adamant at keeping the civilians out of the loop during such incidents, my opinions will be formed accordingly. If the leadership of this country has the same line of thinking then I guess having no expectations from the armed forces at all is the best solution here.
So, how about this-
From my perspective (this is coming from someone whose family member is a Wing Commander in the Air Force), if my family members or I join the armed forces and somehow a random jihadi manages to blow my body apart including lets say the death of those 1000 other soldiers you mentioned, should we expect no escalation to war? Whats the point of these deaths then? Will these armed forces escalate if and only if some criterion are fulfilled? Who sets these arbitrary numbers as redlines? Will 2000 deaths suffice? or 5000? Or next you are gonna say that since there is no objective to be achieved with war, we should let these deaths go. Imagine telling the families that their husband's/son's life is really not worthy enough to go to war. What is the incentive here to join the armed forces? You do realize the signal that you are giving to the civilians here?
I get your point that PA are irrational actors, but are you telling me that those 1000s of strategists still haven't found a way to humiliate PA? Alright, if revenge cannot be a motive then start capturing land for every death that occurs. Step by step start eating up POK for every terrorist attack they orchestrate. How about publicly displaying the dead body of every infiltrator? That must have a psychological effect on general pakistani populace. Start a propaganda campaign to show the pakistani civillians the dead bodies of their fellow countrymen laying on LOC. All we get is a pathetic video once in 2 years or so. The whole of Pakistan can't be irrational, right? How about letting modi go to a world stage like UNGA and start displaying thousands of photos/videos showing pakistani bodies littering the LOC
Since I am a civilian and I have no basis to give such lectures/sermons, I'll stop lecturing the armed forces on what to do and how to do it. Enough people are already being paid to devise such strategies. But the least I expect the whole *censored*ing system to do, is to avenge those deaths somehow and present some tangible proof of the same. But even that is too much to ask while being branded a traitor.
The fact is that we are a nation that is larger than pakistan by a magnitude of several times and we still couldn't make it too expensive for them to sponsor terrorism in India. If we have failed at deterring them then its our complacency not theirs. Your explanation that that they are irrational and its not our fault, seems to me, is the result of same warped mindset. If we are still willing to take a sucker punch to our faces and not willing to retaliate, we really can't blame them if they keep punching us again and again. Which self respecting nation would let the death of 1000 soldiers slide like that?(paraphrasing you)
Somehow, my extremely subjective and pessimistic opinion is that, what we blame the PA for, is the same problem we have. After all, armed forces are comprised of humans, and humans everywhere have the same weaknesses. Nobody is innocent. After reading the incidents about IB being complicit with kashmiri politicians for milking the central govt., maybe just maybe, some higher ups in our chain of command have vested interests in keeping this shitshow in a status quo. I hope to god that this isn't so.
rant over /s.
