What is distinctly absent from this discussion is any mention of how the U.S. intends to persuade Pakistan to bolster its scant cooperation on rooting out jihadists in Pakistani territory to any meaningful level. All of the suggestions -- and that is how they come across -- have an abstract quality to them, as though it sure would be nice if Pakistan carried some of them out one of these days before an attack hatched on Pakistani soil causes massive casualties in the U.S., Europe, Australia, or elsewhere.
There are other issues, as well. One is evident in the continued use of the phrase "war on terror," which forces its users to settle for naming a tactic rather than the ideology that drives the enemy: Islamic jihad and its imperative of open-ended warfare to establish Islamic law and subjugate unbelievers accordingly. But that would raise additional questions about who our friends really are (and aren't), and how sure the U.S. can be of how "staunch" certain supposedly "staunch allies" are.
That would be difficult. Banning the term "jihad" is much easier.
"US asks Pakistan to live up to 'war on terror' commitment," by P. Parameswaran for Agence France-Presse, May 5:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States said Monday it wanted Pakistan to live up to its commitment of urgently bringing security under control in its remote tribal areas allegedly used as safe haven by Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
The call came amid worries in Washington that the new coalition government led by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, which is negotiating with a Taliban commander, may strike a deal with militants and undermine a long "war on terror" partnership.
Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte said Islamabad recognized that bringing the mountainous and unpoliced Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) under control was an urgent priority for Pakistan's own sake.
"But let me be clear: we will not be satisfied until all the violent extremism emanating from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas is brought under control," he said at a forum of the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy.
"It is unacceptable for extremists to use those areas to plan, train for, or execute attacks against Afghanistan, Pakistan, or the wider world," he said. "Their ongoing ability to do so is a barrier to lasting security, both regionally and internationally."
Negroponte said Pakistan's government "must bring the frontier area under its control as quickly as possible," pointing out that Washington was prepared to provide "appropriate assistance" in order to achieve that objective.
Gilani's government, formed after the backers of key war on terror ally President Pervez Musharraf were defeated in elections in February, has pledged to completely overhaul Islamabad's counter terrorism pursuit.
It has been trying to reach a peace deal with a Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud accused of masterminding the slaying of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December.
Warlord Mehsud declared a unilateral truce with security forces in the lawless tribal regions last month after officials said the government had drafted a peace agreement with Islamic militants.
But the militant halted talks last week because the government refused to withdraw its troops from his area.
Negroponte warned that Americans "don't want to see the tribal area being used as a platform for plotting and executing international terrorist activity against the West.
How do you deal with people who say one thing and do another? Can we really trust these people?
U.S. to Pakistan: Live up to 'war on terror' commitment. Please?
Pretty please with sugar and a couple billion $ on top?
Ah, Islam ... with enough billions of $, the West's bulwark between itself and the real barbarians, China and Russia.
The West is still trying to reclaim lost ground in the culture war:
"In 1972, the Kremlin decided to turn the whole Islamic world against Israel and the U.S. As KGB chairman Yury Andropov told me, a billion adversaries could inflict far greater damage on America than could a few millions. We needed to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world, and to turn this weapon of the emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States. No one within the American/Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe.
According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a waiting petri dish in which we could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought. Islamic anti-Semitism ran deep. The Muslims had a taste for nationalism, jingoism, and victimology. Their illiterate, oppressed mobs could be whipped up to a fever pitch."
"Russian Footprints", by Ion Mihai Pacepa
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjUzMGU4NTMyOTdkOTdmNTA1MWJlYjYyZDliODZkOGM=
You have them either at your feet or at your throat.
Mike-W,
I don't think the Russians are THAT good.
An interesting perspective, but no, not buying. The Jew-hatred is inbred in the 'Islamic world', the Russians have little to add to it.
"Negroponte warned that Americans "don't want to see the tribal area being used as a platform for plotting and executing international terrorist activity against the West."
oops, too late.
Russia has alarming issues with Islam and demographics too . . .
Predicting a Majority-Muslim Russia
and
Motherless Russia - Muslims and Chinese Vie For Huge Assets of Dying Nation"
And that doesn't even begin to discuss the unintended consequences of Russia's neighbor, China which is beginning to witness unintended consequences of their own 1979 one-child policy.
Interesting times we live in.
Yes Please! Can you? A state created to have the homes for the Indian Muslims because they thought they would be persecuted in Hindu India was a lie. The real truth was after the end of the Mughal empire and seeing that Muslims had lost power in ruling the Hindu Infidels they could not be relegated to ordinary citizens and be ruled by kafirs. So the solution get their own land. Now this land is a hot spot for terror activities which has camps that train and send out Jihadists to continue the war ordained by Islam and the Koran. The war that has already inflicted deaths to millions upon millions of free peoples from India to the United States and free countries in between. This country has nuclear weapons that the Al Queda want to get a hold of. Wow the company we keep really speaks for it self. How can you call these countries your allies. The only thing they will consider to be allies is the UMMAH and Islam. Muslim countries will never be allies to democratic and Kafir nations. Moreover they will not even offer aid to their fellow UMMAH countries. They only objective is to spread this revolting ideology of Islam and destroy non Muslims.
While he was still lucid after 9/11, George W. Bush said to the world: if you're not with us, you're against us.
Pakistan is against us.
From above: It has been trying to reach a peace deal with a Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud accused of masterminding the slaying of former premier Benazir Bhutto in December.
That's the exact problem. They are trying to reach a 'peace deal', when they should be trying to arrest him.
"That's the exact problem. They are trying to reach a 'peace deal', when they should be trying to arrest him.
Posted by: duh_swami "
that't right! but it does show where their governments priorities lie...
negotiations with terrorists is one step away from surrender.
Top of the Day! Robert, Hugh, et al., ...
...
The day will come when the common Pakistani man and woman will read, watch and hear an American President pronounce to the United Nations General Assembly that our flag is on the Moon, and that we own the entire surface sphere of the Moon, AND YOU DO NOT! This said President then goes on to declare that we are taking active steps to install a colony on the planet Mars. As the President speaks a number of flunky, two-bit UN delegates are shocked! listening to the translated words of our brave, courageous President, and these outraged bureaucratic bums have stood up to shake a fist at our President as he (or she? hmmm? Hillary does have spunk ...) speaks and hurls obscene rhetorical objectives, and throwing half-empty paper cups of Poland Spring water towards the podium. And of course these toady UN delegates will quickly turn and walk out of the Assembly room in a huff. To this I say, "Good, go ..., and don't let the door hit you on the way out. Don't come back either, putz faces."
But these guys walking out are missing out on the best part. The President will unveil a brand new flag, the design of this flag portrays our declaration to the world that we own the entire surface sphere of the entire Moon AND the planet Mars. The President has this second national flag of ours held stretched out open and raised above his head, turning the flag so all members of the General Assembly can take a look at it. All the Islamist nation delegates have now risen from their chairs and hurling invectives, shaking fists, throwing paper cups at the podium, they all walk out in a huff. Again I say, "Good go ..., and don't let the door hit you guys on the way out. Don't come back either, putz faces." (:~}
Ok, this scenario will never happen in real life, but it could be made into a plot for a movie, a sitcom or soap opera that, if the Islamist knuckleheads think Fitna is terrible and offensive, have I got a lit cigarette put between your toes while you sleep, Mohammed. I'll have fun waiting for the Mohammeds in the world to wake up to the reality of the situation, and when they do come bolting out of bed we'll have something to talk about.
Silly bum-headed men of Islamoland, hello? Yeah, I did that. And I'm not done tormenting you and your ass of a religion.
I feel a little better now ...
"....Americans "don't want to see the tribal area being used as a platform for plotting and executing international terrorist activity against the West."
Now this is the kind of hard-hitting 'super -power' language 4th rate Pakistan needs to hear from us.
I don't believe that President Bush was ever lucid. Rather, like a broken, mumbling, stuttering, dyslexic clock - he was right twice a day.
U.S. to Pakistan: Live up to 'war on terror' commitment. Please?
**********************************
Rinse, lather, repeat.
Since the fall of 2001 Pakistan has received, in direct aid, and in cancellation of debts, close to $30 billion (see Selig Harrison). However, the Administration -- and the press, that never bothers to investigate such things on its own -- keeps repeating that Pakistan has received about $10 billion. That would already be ten billiion dollars too much, but in fact, Pakisetan has received about thirty billion dollars too much. It has failed to take effective measures against Al Qaeda or the Taliban, and what's worse, has prevented American forces from doing so. It has failed to shut down madrasas in Pakistan that promote Jihad, and to replace them with schools that are deliberately secular. The ballyhooed business of "Turkish" schools misleads, because these schools are part of a network established by the Turkish millionaire Fethulleh Gulen, a tireless and shadowy promoter of Islam (who was allowed to live in the United States, from where he ran his Turkish operation, safe from secular Turkish authorities), whose schools promote Islam, and have nothing in commoon with those Turkish schools under the vigilant control of Kemalist, i.e. secularist, Turks.
Pakistan has pocketed the $30 billion. And what did we get for it? The Taliban is resurgent, and whenver Taliban leaders need to flee across the border into Pakistan or, in another mood, feel ready to leave Pakistan to make war on Infidels in Afghanistan, they do so. Who has been captured, who has been killed, what efforts have been made to lessen the appeal of violent Jihad, among Pakistanis in Pakistan -- or Pakistanis in the West -- by the government of Pakistan, in exchange for that $30 billion? What American FBI or CIA agent has been permitted even to talk to A. Q. Khan, to find out more about Pakistani proliferation-for-money efforts? He is off-limits to the security services of the United States, a country that has been giving Pakistan $30 billion, and also, through the preferential treatment given Pakistani textiles (including those child-labor-produced rugs, that Pakistani-Americans then so sweetly flog -- hey, that guy's son was in private school with my daughter, so he must be a good guy! -- to an unwary American clientele) keeping an economy that we could, if we wished, destroy in short order, not only afloat, but now thriving. American-Pakistani relations are a fifty-year history of the Pakistanis presenting themselves as trustwothy, stout-hearted, terry-thomas moustachioed generals, their Islam a "bulwark against Communism," their sandhurst sobriety such a contrast to Krishna Menon, to Jawaharlal Nehru, and all those other untrustworthy Fabians and New-Left-Book-Club subscribers in the Indian government. We have been, and are now, and it seems desire to continue to be, snookered by the government, and the generals, and the zamindars, and the Western-educated smooth-talking children of those generals and those zamindars, of Pakistan.
Nothing important has been achieved. American authoriite
That's the exact problem. They are trying to reach a 'peace deal', when they should be trying to arrest him.
Posted by: duh_swami
Arrest him? How about KILL him?
Hotspur,
Point taken. Whether it was a moment of lucidity or that time finally caught up with him, he was still right.
PMK... I understand your comment, butI would rather see him arrested than have him seen as a martyr, and I definitely don't want him getting any virgins. Once convicted, I would not trust a Paki prison to keep him. I would prefer that he be given life in the prison in Arizona, USA, where the prisoners sleep in tents and are forced to wear pink underwear. Life in humiliation, no virgins, pink underwear, haram food, Perry Como Christmas songs over loud speakers, and a bunch of hostile infidels as room mates...Can it get any worse than that?
Pakistan, in the immortal words of Churchill, "is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."
Yes I know, they let bin Laden go when we flushed him out of Afghanistan in 2001. They protect Dr. Khan from punishment for his crimes against humanity in the deed of egregiously irresponsible nuclear proliferation. These are only the most salient examples amongst many, of their furtherance of Islamic Jihad...
But why did they give us Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Supposedly his (er ahem) 'cooperation' with interrogators has been useful in saving lives. Or has the wool been pulled over my eyes (yet again)?
I don't get it. Any help would be appreciated.
duh_swami,
Arresting him is no guarantee. The Italians let PLO (or was it Islamic Jihad?) terrorists go after we forced them to land at a NATO base back in the 1980s. This was after they had killed American civilians. It was at the height (then) of the jihad in Europe.
He won't be allowed to leave the country where he is caught, whether it is Pakistan or France. None of them will allow him to be extradited to the US, since we have the death penalty. (KSM was an exception. If he were captured today he wouldn't make it to GITMO.) GITMO has been discredited, despite its utility in preventing terrorists from escaping. It will be dismantled once Obama or Clinton takes over.
Life in humiliation sounds terrific but there are two things to consider:
1. It will never come to that, since there will be any number of human rights groups decrying the very humiliation you and I favor. His cell will be designed to prevent him facing the wrong way when he is on the bowl. There will be arrows pointing him toward Mecca. I wouldn't be surprised if bells (or some other noise) rang at the hours of prayer. He'll never serve a life term.
2. As a taxpayer, I object to paying for his upkeep and his halal (you know he'll get it or else we would be interfering with his freedom of religion) and his quran and his medical care for the next several decades.
Martyrdom is very elastic in Islam. Dead or alive, he's a martyr. If he's dead he'll be forgotten sooner rather than later. As long as he's alive he'll be like the blind sheikh: a symbol of American imperialism, tyranny, what have you. Even if he dies in prison it will be as a martyr. He's already killed for Allah, hasn't he? He'll die at the hands of the infidel. It won't matter that he dies in bed. He'll still be a martyr.
Isn't the saying: happy are those that kill and are killed for Allah? Being killed for Allah doesn't mean you have to have died in a battle.
"There are other issues, as well. One is evident in the continued use of the phrase "war on terror," which forces its users to settle for naming a tactic rather than the ideology that drives the enemy: Islamic jihad and its imperative of open-ended warfare to establish Islamic law and subjugate unbelievers accordingly...
Banning the term "jihad" is much easier."
In his book "World War IV" Norman Podhertz likens the use of the phrase "War on Terror" to using the prases "War on Blitzkreig" or "War on Kamakaze" to describe World War II. None of these are satisfactory in capturing the true nature of the war or the enemy. They name only weapons or methods used by the enemy - not the enemy itself, nor their goals, nor their motivations, nor the wider strategies employed.
PMK...ok I guess it's shoot on sight, but that means he get's the virgins...drat...
Negroponte warned that Americans "don't want to see the tribal area being used as a platform for plotting and executing international terrorist activity against the West".
== == == == == ==
... So we'll just avert our eyes, and throw more money and arms into Pakistan, and whine as their leadership aligns ever more closely with the jihadists...?
Sounds about right.
duh_swami,
He'll get them anyway (in his own mind anyway), so we might as well just save ourselves the time and trouble of caring for him. He doesn't deserve it.
Why should it matter to us what virgins or raisins he gets in the next life?
This is the way a country trying to lose a war talks.
Pussyfooting when they should be Predator droning.
You expect what? Pakistan to live up to its takya against Jihad? Dream on!
Musharaf conned the US for a few billion dollars! Why not? the US was waving its billions of dollars to any practicing Muslim skilled in the art or takya.
Move on please!
Sadly, even after seven years after 911 the US knows nothing about the enemy and its ideology and it does not even want to know that the enemy has an ideology (Jihad).
Unless the US brings back every US solder from Iraq and Afganistan and educate itself and the leaders about the enemy's ideology our troups are fighting there while blind folded.
Our leaders in Washington DC are blind folded but that is fine, at least they are home.
Please do not send our troups to fight while they are blind folded to fight a war they do not understand.
Educate them, enlighten them and watch them score victories.