Don't worry. This will make Pakistan stable. Uh, won't it?
From India Defence (thanks to Dav):
Lockheed Martin Corp was awarded a $498.2 million contract to supply F-16 aircraft to Pakistan, the U.S. Pentagon said on Monday, as Pakistani officials mulled whether to go ahead with a Jan. 8 election after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.Lockheed will sell 12 F-16C plus 6 F-16D planes to Pakistan under the contract, the Pentagon said in its daily list of defense contract awards. The U.S. Defense Department, which oversees sales of military weapons to foreign governments, did not say how soon the fighter jets would be delivered.
Pakistan has received about $10 billion in U.S. funding since 2001 because Washington views Pakistan as a key ally in President George W. Bush's campaign against terrorism....
And look at all we have to show for it!
F16's ?? I wouldn't be concerned. That was a good fighter in the 80's and early nineties. Break out the Top Gun videos. It's an obsolete fighter aircraft.
Some of my concerns include:
How the hell is Pakistan going to pay the bills for the purchase and the support ??
Oh - how much did the USA just give Mushy ?? Nothing to see here - move along.
Maybe some hotshot Paki pilot will strafe some Taliban and get Bin Laden with a richochet. A little air support couldn't hurt the troops that are supposed to be on our side despite the preponderance of ambushes and slaughters of troops that are "hunting" the misunderstanders of islam. I smell a rat fink bastard there.
Let's just hope the pilot doesn't misunderstand his religion and suddenly pass the psychological evaluations ( do they even have those?? ) just in time to make a bombing run on the good guys and then make a mad dash for the Iranian airfields near the border.
Nah - no chance of that happening right ??
I'm sure all the muslims involved have the best of intentions and can be trusted implicitly - after all - look at their track record of honesty and integrity. The sarcasm switch is stuck in the on position now. Can't make it stop. lol
"Pakistan has received about $10 billion in U.S. funding since 2001 because Washington views Pakistan as a key ally in President George W. Bush's campaign against terrorism...."
-- from a postoing above
This figure, used routinely by the press, which simply accepts what the Administration puts out, greatly undertates what has been given to Pakistan since 2001. Selig Harrison, a close student of Pakistan, almost a year ago calculated the actual aid to Pakistan up to that time as amounting to (if one includes, as of course one should, the cancellaton of Pakistani debts to the United States) at $27.5 billion. Since then many millions more have been added. Members of the Press, and others, before repeating the claim that Pakistanhas received "$10 billion" should read Harrison's article, and come to their own conclusions. My view is that the correct formulation would be that since 2001 Pakistan has received $30 billion dollars from the United States. It has become, during that time it was receiving such colossal amounts of aid, and has remained, the sanctuary of Bin Laden and of Ayman al-Zawahiri. It has remained the chief sanctuary and supporter of a revived Taliban. It has remained the chief inbucator of Islamic nuclear ambitions, with weapons which, we are supposed to believe, are being "secured" by "Pakistani"(!) forces. It has remained, and will remain, a malevolent supporter of terrorism and aggression against Kashmir, and the rest of India.
But what is $30 billion wasted, compared to the $60 billion wasted on malevolent meretricious Egypt? And what is $30 billion wasted on Pakistan, to do what it never would do, to become what it never will become (a real "ally" in the "war on terror" -- god, we are run by fools, and other fools listen to them and do not questio them), compared to the one trillion dollars, and counting, spent on Light-Unto-the-Nations Iraq, the one place where, so perfectly, the ethnic and and sectarian divisions within the Camp of Islam are offered up for exploitation, and we do what? -- we spend a trillion dollars to heal those fissures, to make Iraq hold together, and to prosper, in the hope -- the idiotic hope -- that somehow this will lessen the problem of Muslim demographic conquest and Da'wa in Western Europe, of Muslim attacks on southern Thailand, the southern Philippines, the southern Sudan, West Africa, everywhere -- no, actually those things are not connected, because the entire theme of the Adminstration is the reverse of E.M. Forster's famous epigraph.
The theme of this Administration is not to connect example after example of Jihad worldwide, but to ignore most of it, to pretend it has nothing to do with Islam. The motto of this Administration in dealing with Islam is "Only Dis-connect." And so they have. And that Disconnet is there for all to see.
February 27, 2007
Fitzgerald: What have we got for that $27.5 billion?
Selig Harrison notes something that almost no one knows, not in Congress, not in the press, and not, it seems, many others: that since 9/11/2001 the Bush Administration has given Pakistan the equivalent of $27.5 billion dollars. That makes Pakistan, after Iraq, the largest recipient per annum of American aid. The next time someone begins to squawk to you about "all that aid to Israel" -- an unshakeable ally in the war of self-defense against the Jihad, as of course it must be, given it is also the victim of the earliest, and best publicized, of the Lesser Jihads begun after World War II (along with that against Hindus in Kashmir), remember this. Growing Muslim wealth and power has, of course, made for dozens of Lesser Jihads, all of which should be correctly seen as local manifestations of the same impulse arising out of the texts, teachings, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam.
27.5 billion dollars from America to Pakistan? For what, exactly? What has been the great achievement? How is Al-Qaeda doing in Pakistan? Why, it is doing just fine, thank you. An occasional pretend pinprick, nothing serious, a handful of people possibly killed, often the wrong people. Much huff-and-puffing for the endlessly -- at least until now -- gullible Americans, who have decades of trusting faith in those fine Pakistani generals, those terry-thomased mustachioed ramrod-straight graduates of Sandhurst. Or at least that was how those American generals who for decades preferred them to the Indians, to Nehru and Menon and Mrs. Gandhi, saw them. And by the way, wasn't Islam a "bulwark against Communism"? And wasn't Saudi Arabia, just like Pakistan, the true-bluest friend America could ever have? What, me worry?
Someone in Congress, and someone running for office, and many in the press, should be asking this question: what have we got for that $27.5 billion tossed off to Pakistan? Years ago, with American military money, the Pakistani ISI funded "Doctor" A. Q. Khan in his little project, the results of which are by now well-known in Pakistan itself and also in those countries it helped, such as North Korea and Iran. But it doesn't stop, does it? Right now the Americans are supplying Pakistan with F-16s, capable of doing all kinds of damage, carrying all kinds of weapons. Why? How long do the endlessly credulous or terminally confused (about Islam, about everything having to do with Islam) get to run things? When will someone start pulling the dimwitted from their well-appointed sinecures in the "intelligence" services, and allow for a takeover by those who are well-versed in the doctrines and practice of Islam, who cannot or will not be fooled -- not by Musharraf, not by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, not by kinglet Abdullah of Jordan, not by Mubarak, not by any Sunnis, and not by any Shi'a akin to those -- Chalabi, Allawi, Kanan Makiya, Rend al-Rahim -- who managed to assure the Americans that once they deposed Saddam Hussein all manner of things would be well?
What have we got for that $27.5 billion? Al-Qaeda is not "on the run" in Pakistan, and for that matter, the Taliban are not "on the run" in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda was never damaged very much by the Pakistani forces. How could those forces, deeply Islamic (see General Malik's book on Jihad), have acted against those who are the brave paladins of Islam? Oh, a few cosmetic operations, designed to keep the Americans happy and supplying that money, cancelling those debts, sending those F-16s and all the other goodies that the army wants -- that's okay. That's understandable. But nothing real need be done. Musharraf could hardly believe it himself, but it turns out to be just as the Arabs always said -- you can get away with anything with the Americans. They're the dream customers in the souk. They'll never get it. They'll never understand. So keep on fooling them. Keep on buying time. Keep on pocketing that aid and those planes. And of course, watch as the Taliban come back, as they have, in Afghanistan. Watch, as they have, the Al-Qaeda forces regroup -- still under the same effective management -- after the Americans have spent, in the last five years, all over the world, close to a trillion dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, in continued Jizyah-aid to Egypt, Jordan, "the Palestinians," and in hugely expensive "Homeland Security" measures. Yet those measures never seem to include anything that might make Americans the slightest bit more aware of the doctrines of the belief-system of Islam that underlie the need for that Homeland Security, or, supposedly, for all those incredible aid packages and expenses in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and all the other places where "hearts and minds" are to be won through the expenditure of Infidel money, money, money.
The hideousness of it all will not end until the smug bearers of Stupidity have their goddess publicly exposed, and themselves smitten in public debate. And if they try to raise themselves up from the ground with still more idiocy, then let them be smitten again. They are a menace. They are causing tremendous squandering and waste with their miscomprehension, their willful ignorance, their trustingness, their cruel waste of men, money, materiel. Smite them again, show up the hollowness of their phrases ("cut and run" for example), the shallowness of their analysis, the obtuseness of their understanding.
[Posted by Hugh at February 27, 2007]
I had originally included in the piece posted above the following, which for some reason I cut out when the posting was elevated to article status:
Here is an article from March 7, 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, and before Pakistan became our "staunch ally" in the subsequent "war on terror." Worth reading, worth having people in the Pentagon, State Department, and Congress read again and again:
“CIA worked in tandem with Pak to create Taliban”
LONDON: The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) worked in tandem with Pakistan to create the "monster" that is today Afghanistan' s ruling Taliban, a leading US expert on South Asia said here.
"I warned them that we were creating a monster," Selig Harrison from the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars said at the conference here last week on "Terrorism and Regional Security: Managing the Challenges in Asia."
Harrison said: "The CIA made a historic mistake in encouraging Islamic groups from all over the world to come to Afghanistan. " The US provided $3 billion for building up these Islamic groups, and it accepted Pakistan's demand that they should decide how this money should be spent, Harrison said.
Harrison, who spoke before the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues was launched, told the gathering of security experts that he had meetings with CIA leaders at the time when Islamic forces were being strengthened in Afghanistan.
"They told me these people were fanatical, and the more fierce they were the more fiercely they would fight the Soviets," he said. "I warned them that we were creating a monster."
.......
Another Harrison piece, from May 26, 2006, on the need to change Pakistani behavior in Baluchistan, a place that, like Kurdistan, deserves at the very least autonomy -- and better, from our point of view, would be complete independence:
Selig Harrison says no US aid to Pakistan till it stops military activity in Baluchistan
by Priscilla Huff
Washington: Noted American expert on South Asian Affairs, Selig Harrison, has urged the Bush Administration to withhold U.S. aid to Islamabad until Pakistan ceases military activity in Baluchistan.
Speaking at a seminar organised by the United States Institute of Peace, Harrison, who is the director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, said: "In my view, future US military and economic aid to Islamabad should be withheld until Musharraf (Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf) stops his military repression of Baluchistan and enters into serious negotiations with Baloch leaders.”
Harrison expressed the view that “Pakistan is likely to become increasingly ungovernable in the absence of a political settlement with the Baloch."
He warned that continued military confrontation in Baluchistan could well intensify the long-simmering ethnic unrest in neighbouring Sindh and involving a variety of anti-Musharraf groups around Pakistan.
But despite the serious international implications the Baloch issue has not found mainstream attention in Washington…
Aren't we at war with Islam?
Last time I checked, Pakistan seceded from India because Muslims in India could not tolerate being ruled by Hindus. That would make Pakistan an Islamic state.
Bin Forgotten and his cronies keep reminding us that we are at war with Islam.
Why arm our opponents?
Google who authorizes these kinds of shipments/sales.... I bet you come up with our old friend Gordon England.
If the Paki's don't buy them from us, they will buy equavalent fighters from another supplier. Russia?
We could easily install a chip or a subroutine that would render them unflyable with a few keystrokes from the Pentagon.