Even the timing was propitious for India, yet we fumbled. In 1962, China had just experienced four years of decreasing foodgrain production and a major famine. Chinese supply lines to the Indo-Tibet border were stretched thin, and could have been disrupted from the air. If only the Indian political and military leadership had not been criminally negligent—which is why the Henderson-Brooks Report on the war has been suppressed, for it would implicate too many in high places—India could have won.
The end results would have been dramatic: Tibet would have been liberated; Indians would not have been...

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