But will he be able to rein in the jihadists who have so much power and influence in Pakistan, even at the highest levels of government? "Zardari says global terror Pakistan's priority," by Nahal Toosi for AP, September 4 (thanks to Mackie):
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan's presidential front-runner said in a newspaper column Thursday he stands with the U.S. against international terrorism, comments that appeared amid growing furor over an American-led cross-border attack in Pakistani territory.The raid in the South Waziristan tribal region was the first known foreign ground assault in Pakistan against a Taliban haven. The Pakistani government summoned the U.S. ambassador to protest the incursion, which officials said killed at least 15 people, including civilians.
An American official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of cross-border operations, confirmed to The Associated Press that U.S. troops conducted the raid Wednesday about a mile beyond the Afghan frontier.
The boldness of the thrust fed speculation about the intended target. But it was unclear whether any extremist leader was killed or captured in the operation, which occurred in one of the militant strongholds dotting a frontier region considered a likely hiding place for Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi condemned the attack in an impassioned speech to lawmakers Thursday, saying it "violated the sovereignty of Pakistan." He also said "no important terrorist or high-value target" was killed.
"Innocent citizens, including women and children, have been targeted," Qureshi said. The ministry's spokesman said officials had no indication U.S. forces captured anyone in the raid.
Pakistan's Senate and National Assembly passed resolutions Thursday condemning the attack. [...]
"We stand with the United States, Britain, Spain and others who have been attacked," wrote Zardari, whose wife was killed in a gun and suicide blast in December. "Fundamentally, however, the war we our fighting is our war. This battle is for Pakistan's soul."
A lawmaker from the chief opposition party, that of ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, on Thursday blasted the U.S. for the attack.
"The American war against terrorism has become a war against Pakistan, and the killing of people by them at Angoor Ada is a clear example of it," Zafar Ali Shah said....
The same rhetoric from the Pakis they are themselves supporters of Jihad and incidentally all the aid given to them goes to fighting US troops and India. They are not our friends nor will they ever be. It is a strange relationship. A country that has repeatedly lied, is Islamic with Sharia laws, has committed gross human rights violation its values are an anathema to the values of United States and free democratic countries.
September 2, 2008: Pakistan election tactics by Zardari reopen radical Islamic schools
-- Lal Masjid's Hafza madrassa and Fareedia madrassa
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article4656776.ece
-- Did PPP let terror-tainted madrassas off the hook? to get support for Zardari
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/World/Pakistan/Did_PPP_let_terror-tainted_madrassas_off_the_hook/articleshow/3438144.cms
-- Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI), a pro-Taliban group, Hafza madrassa support PPP's presidential candidate Asif Ali Zardari
-- August 30, 2008: Lal Masjid admin pledges support to Zardari -- also known as "Red Mosque"
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\08\30\story_30-8-2008_pg7_29
-- August 16, 2008: Fresh threat from Lal Masjid: 'Accept demands or face consequences'
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\08\16\story_16-8-2008_pg7_26
-- July 12, 2008: Extremists threaten Daily Aaj Kal -- after cartoon of Lal Masjid Jihad advocate
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\07\12\story_12-7-2008_pg1_6
-- July 9, 2008: Women 'vow to raise kids for holy war' -- burqa-clad women chanting slogans of "jihad is our way" at Red Mosque (Lal Masjid) "Our mujahideen laid down their lives for the enforcement of the Islamic system in Pakistan"
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23994931-23109,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7497339.stm
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\07\10\story_10-7-2008_pg1_5
August 26, 2008: JUI-F decision on 27th: Fazl
-- will support and second Zardari's nomination
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\08\26\story_26-8-2008_pg1_6
-- see also: JUI-F NWFP links Zardari's support to end of operation
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\08\25\story_25-8-2008_pg7_8
Jeffrey Imm's June 10 posting on Pakistan "Pakistan and the Growing Threat of a Sharia Mini-State"
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-articles/087.html
- addressing Zardari's charges that U.S. to blame for Jihad in Pakistan
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/may/29/it-is-time-for-reconciliation-zardari-says/
Boy I feel safe already. But then, better to have the Pak where you can keep a better eye on him. We all know what he would do behind you.
A liberal who is mugged turns conservative.
Zardari is saying he's behind the US NOW but what did he say just a few short months ago?
(from Jeffrey Imm's last link)
The U.S.-Pakistan relationship must be more than a military marriage of convenience. It must be based on shared values and mutual respect. If the West commits to a sustained plan of economic and social development for our Nation, helping us build an efficient economy, a school system that truly educates, and a health system that protects our people, the danger of terrorism and fanaticism within our borders will all but evaporate.
Where are the shared values?
Where is the respect?
As he said: Pakistan had a booming economy and international investment. It destroyed itself. Now Pakistan demands the West rebuild what Pakistanis destroyed. And he holds out the hope that IF this is done terrorism and fanaticism will "all but evaporate".
So now we're supposed to throw good money after bad on the promise of something that may never happen?
With friends like that, who needs enemies.
Actions speak louder than words.
The U.S.-Pakistan relationship must be more than a military marriage of convenience. It must be based on shared values and mutual respect. If the West commits to a sustained plan of economic and social development for our Nation, helping us build an efficient economy, a school system that truly educates, and a health system that protects our people, the danger of terrorism and fanaticism within our borders will all but evaporate.
Since the 11 billion we've given them already has made so much progress in social development and building their economy. /sarc
Cut off aid and see how co-operative they get.
Is it time for the annual jizyah errrr...foreign aid payment allotments to be made?...
ONE more time, from Indophile and historical scholar, David McCutchion (1930-1972), writing just after the ghastly excesses of the Pakistan-Bangladesh war:
"What do I think of it all?
"Appalling...Pakistan should never have existed -- it has cost more lives than the whole of the British Empire in 200 years.
"What should I think of a culture that burns down the British Council library in Lahore because an English publisher printed a picture of Mahomet?
"Fanaticism plus Machiavellianism plus brutality equals Islamic Pakistan."
And from V S Naipaul, "Among the Believers", chapter on Pakistan entitled 'the disorder of the law': "Step by step, out of its Islamic striving, Pakistan had undone the rule of law it inherited from the British and replaced it with nothing."
And from an Australian commentator, writing in an Australian newspaper in 2008, after our current Foreign Minister had in his infinite naivety offered to Islamabad "a team of Australian counterinsurgency advisers":
"...burning money and man-power in the Pakistani furnace is not a useful contribution...".
However: since the Pakistanis appear to be so anxious to keep the jizya flowing, perhaps the screws should be applied.
The Pakistani government could be reminded, forcibly, in tones of icy fury, not only by the USA but by all other Western countries and certain Asian countries such as South Korea, and by Benedict XVI on behalf of all the world's Catholics, of that highly embarrassing episode of the two little Catholic minor girls who were recently abducted, most likely raped, and the elder (at all of 13) 'married' to the son of the Muslim thugs who grabbed her, and then declared to be 'converts' to Islam, never to be returned to their parents.
Two little girls, aged 10 and 13 according to their parents, who are still in the clutches of those who claim that they have 'converted'.
The Muslims have - by whatever methods, one can only imagine - compelled or bamboozled the 13 year old into saying that she is 17; but since she is a Catholic, I'd be prepared to bet that there are baptismal records that would back up the parents. Though we all know that under sharia, if it is a kafir's word against a Muslim's, whatever a Muslim says - no matter how cruel, mad, stupid and false - goes, and whatever a kafir says is automatically ruled out of court.
The Pakistani government should have its nose rubbed in this and , for good measure, in all the other similar cases, affecting Christian and Hindu and Sikh families within Pakistani - Muslim abductions, rapes, 'conversions' and forced 'marriages' of young girls, in which the Pakistani authorities from the lowest to the highest level have consistently sided, tacitly or openly, in a sickening display of arrogant contempt for anything resembling common human decency, with the abductors and rapists.
And it should be told, in no uncertain terms, that this or that coveted goodie will not be forthcoming unless and until Anila and Saba and all those other little girls and young women, snatched and 'disappeared' by Muslim pimps/slavers/kidnappers and denied contact with their families ever since, in the past ten years or so, are returned safe and sound; and permitted, with their families, to leave Pakistan for a safe and undisclosed haven elsewhere.
Keep up our sleeves the additional turn of the screw: that the very next time, say, a Hindu or Christian girl is seized and raped and 'converted', a Pakistan-associated mosque somewhere in the kafir lands will be shut down, permanently, and a Pakistani imam removed from the kafir lands, never to return.
Correction. On further reflection, the second last paragraph should read thusly:
The Pakistanis should be told that in response to this glaring evidence of an institutionalised contempt, in Pakistan, for the human rights of minorities and of women, and for religious freedom, and for common human decency, all military and economic aid from the West is hereby ended.
The final paragraph would then read:
They would also be told that as punishment for the seizure of Anila and Saba, and of [long list of other girls within Pakistan, Christian, Hindu and Sikh, who are known to have suffered similar fates] a whole bunch of Pakistan-related mosques in the kafir lands, two mosques corresponding to each kidnapped girl, are scheduled to be shut down, and their imams or sheikhs deported.
Essentially: set it up so they know that every time *they* attack non-Muslims within their own territory, they will automatically and inexorably lose yet another set of footholds in *our* territory.
Making aid contingent on returning 'hostages' would merely encourage more kidnappings. But a situation in which every time the Muslims attack dhimmis, they LOSE part of their beachhead in the lands of the kafir, might give them pause.
We have got to work out some way of simply NOT PLAYING the hostage game. That's where my second last paragraph in the above posting went wrong.
Brainstorming session - does anyone else have other suggestions?
Is it time for the annual jizyah errrr...foreign aid payment allotments to be made?...
Posted by: pulsar182 at September 4, 2008 8:34 PM
Which has been trippled:
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=382836
Ofcourse, this is not going from Al-Bush funds, so why not?
Is it time for the annual jizyah errrr...foreign aid payment allotments to be made?...
Posted by: pulsar182 at September 4, 2008 8:34 PM
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/index.php?sid=382836
Ofcourse, this is the money of the same fools who elected me.. he he he