Despite all the evidence establishing that elements within the Pakistani government have aided Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the U.S. is going to continue giving money to Pakistan and pretending that they're fighting against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. After all, the money will never run out, right? "US backs Pak's effort on war against terror," from the Press Trust Of India, July 29 (thanks to Slothy):
Washington: Notwithstanding the concerns, [sic] the US has about the continued links that some elements of ISI has with terrorist outfits like the al-Qaeda and Taliban, the Obama Administration has said that Islamabad in the last one year has made strategic shift in the war against terrorism."Pakistan has, in our view, made a strategic shift in the last year or more. It has taken aggressive action at considerable expense to Pakistan," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley, told reporters at his daily news conference.
"The Pakistani people are suffering as much if not more than any other people in the world from terrorism. But there is clearly more to be done," he said.
"Our joint concern here is to eliminate the safe havens that exist in the region and to prevent the emergence of new safe havens from which there can be the export of terrorism that can threaten US, Europe, or other parts of the world," Crowley said.
When asked about the comment made by British Prime Minister David Cameroon [sic], that his country would not tolerate export of terrorism by Pakistan, the State Department spokesman said US does not want to see the export of terror by any country.
"We are concerned about and have said many times that extremist element within the borders of Pakistan, in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, first and foremost, it represents a threat to Pakistan, it represents a threat to Afghanistan," Crowley said.
"As we have seen, extremists with links to these areas have made their way to Europe, have made their way to the United States. This is an important component of our relationship and our strategic dialogue with Pakistan, and we are both satisfied with the aggressive steps that Pakistan has taken in recent months at considerable expense to Pakistan," he said.
"As we've made clear, we want to see Pakistan stay on the offensive in combating these extremist elements. I know Pakistani officials in recent days have publicly stated their commitment to continue to do that," Crowley said....
Why on earth Americans are throwing away their hard earned money on undeserving countries? When American debts around the world runs to trillions of dollars,what is the necessity of providing dole money to undeserving countries like Pakistan and Egypt? These countries have proved to us again and again they are just cheating on us. What Obama gives out is not his money -It is the American tax payer's hard earned money.I am not an American,but I am wondering why American public allow this waste of billions of dollars,and just keep quiet.?
"Pakistan has, in our view, made a strategic shift in the last year or more. It has taken aggressive action at considerable expense to Pakistan," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley, told reporters at his daily news conference.
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"At considerable expense to Pakistan"—well, this isn't quite as bald as saying that Pakistan is "fighting the US War on Terror"—which you hear so often—but it's close.
More:
"The Pakistani people are suffering as much if not more than any other people in the world from terrorism. But there is clearly more to be done," he said.
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Well, yes—and yet, Pakistan seems very torn as to whether to consider such Jihad terrorists actual enemies—because Pakistan is itself a Jihad terror state, and shares many of the goals of the Jihad terrorists who are targeting their own citizens.
More:
"We are concerned about and have said many times that extremist element within the borders of Pakistan, in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, first and foremost, it represents a threat to Pakistan, it represents a threat to Afghanistan," Crowley said.
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And yet, Afghanistan's Karzai, in the wake of an almost certainly false charge that US forces accidentally killed over fifty women and children taking shelter in a safe house, lambasted the US for taking *any* action against Jihad terrorists in Afghan villages, claiming that all such Jihad terrorism actually takes place over the border in Pakistan.
Why would he make such a clearly ridiculous claim? Firstly, because he knows the US will likely be pulling out of—or at least drawing down in—Afghanistan soon, and wants to establish as good a relationship with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as he can manage, without completely alienating the Americans along the way.
Secondly, even "moderate" Karzai frankly—just like the Pakistanis—shares many of the same goals as his Jihad terrorist co-religionists.
And that last is *always* the rub for the West, looking for any sort of "partners" in the Muslim world in the war against Jihad terrorism.
"The Pakistani people are suffering as much if not more than any other people in the world from terrorism."
Muslims are the first victims of...Muslims.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2010/07/taliban-vermins.html
As long as there is Islam, terrorists will have safe havens.
While I am all supportive of the commenters' comments here and I too believe that Pakistan deserves to be destroyed, I remember an alternative theory given out by veteran Indian defense analyst K Subramanyam as to why US and India mollycoddle Pakistan.
He has theorized that Americans, perhaps in secret agreement with Indians, have decided that Pakistan needs to be humored so as to prevent Pakistani nuclear assets from falling in the hands of terrorists.
However, parallely America will keep trying to add more American boots on Pakistani territory and it will keep enhancing American ability to take out Pakistani nukes through special forces operations.
The day America, perhaps jointly with India, feels confident that Paki nukes can be neutralized, such an operation will be undertaken at an opportune moment. Once the Paki nukes are removed from the scene, Pakistan is easy prey for India and will not dare to harbor any kind of terrorists.
Such a strategy would make a lot of sense since both America and India are concerned about these nukes being used against millions of innocent citizens. After, God forbid, such a use of nukes, surely Pakistan will be obliterated. But one would want to prevent such a calamity while seeking to destroy Pakistan's terror networks.
I happen to be a perennial optimist and would not rule out such a strategy being followed by US and India. Who knows, maybe our strategic planners are not that dumb and cynical after all.
Sanjay
Vietnam, part 2.
The corrupt Saigon government(s), were huge factor in the United States withdrawal from Vietnam.
There are a lot of similarities between both situations.
Pakistan has become a conjoined twin of USA. US will continue supporting Pakistan inspite of all the revelations about ISI which is openly supporting Taliban and al Qaeda and helping them kill our troops.
Pakistanis are totally obsessed with destabilizing India and even attempt to take it over than helping USA. All this charade of helping US is only meant to take our billions of dollars which are than spent on arms to fight India. When Afghanistan was invaded in 2001 for sheltering al Qaeda and Taliban, then Pakistan can also be attacked now because they are precisely doing the same thin now as the Taliban was doing in Afghanistan.
US should just tell Pakistanis- their lying, cheating game is over now, either they take care of all these terrorists or else!!
Translation:
US State Department will sell USA out as long as the attacker puts on a nice face; even though the world knows that behind the nice face is the ugly-hydra.
"The Pakistani people are suffering as much if not more than any other people in the world from terrorism."
Don't make me laugh. They're suffering from terrorism because that is the environment "they" have created by following, and loving, their terrorist prophet. If the, overwhelming, vast, and, mind numbingly large majority of "moderated and peace loving" Muslims really did abhor their fellow Muslim's pathological obsession with becoming a shaheed for Allah, they would put a stop to it PDQ.
[Why on earth Americans are throwing away their hard earned money on undeserving countries?...]
I think George Friedman of Stratfor answers this question:
Quote:
“Since a stable Pakistan is more important to the United States than a victory in Afghanistan — which it wasn’t going to get anyway — the United States released pressure and increased aid. If Pakistan collapsed, then India would be the sole regional power, not something the United States wants”
Don't forget many porkies are sympsthetic to the terroists.
They think that the terroists are correct and that they are only defending themselves against the porkie army. An army which to them is controled by the zionist and americans.
As for the terrosist bombings of shitte mosques, have you seen any protests to these attrocities by the sunnis? I bet secretly they suppport those bombings as well as daily attrocities committed againt the M-d, the christians, and the hindus. So are the average sunni porkie feels they are being terrorized? no, only by the americans and the zionists.
Americans working with India against the Porkies? sheer fantasy. this has no basis in reality. Both countrie scan barly hold on to any secret alignments. you forget that there are porkies and muslims working in the state dept and other government agencies. the secret would have been exposed the moment the ink had dried.
Sadly and tragically but truly, it appears that a certain amount of carnage in form of the blood, flesh, guts and forever lost dreams of the most brave young American troops from the vast span of this blessed land, is considered as "acceptable" by our insensitive two-timing elected politicians, the "politicized for personal gains" armed forces' brass and their lobbyists pals, to keep their purposely mismanaged scandalous govermental machine well lubricated with the "priceless blood of our troops" be it unwittingly or not, at the hands of the insincere, duplicitous, "Jizya Leeches", the Pakistani "establishment" aka caliphate aka government and their many carefully controlled Islamic jihadi terrorist proxies.
When will our people and our so called leaders wake up to the fact that we are being duped by Pakistanis, who have Sharia/Islamic values, which are 100% diametrically opposite of ours?
Sons and daughters of America are paying the ultimate price and the taxpayers are being robbed blind while Obama, the military brass and the politicians look the other way and give Pakistan another free pass. Shame on them!
A number of months ago, when Robert posted a similar article on the duplicity of Paksitani's, I posited the question, 'What's the word for 'sucker' in urdu?'
I think it's safe to state, it's 'American'....
The Pakistani government is not going to change it's policy of treating the vast majority, as one Pakistanian on Frontline was quoted as saying,"like insects in a gutter." A few showcase projects that might even favor the elite, won't change a thing. There are maybe 20 or so million idle hands and minds out there ready to fill the void with actions that will give them the chance of something better than their lot on earth. Batter up!
Let me first say that I don’t agree with this policy of paying billions of our tax payer dollars to governments that use portions of that aid to kill our wonderful soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. I would like to attempt to give you a brief glimpse into what is called “strategic thinking” and how this guides U.S. foreign policy. Our govt “played” both Iran and Iraq against each other as it suited our “strategic” needs. Both Iran and Iraq were threats to the Middle East status quo.
America’s interests were (are) two-fold. 1, protect our vital energy interests (oil), and 2, maintain our strong support of the only truly open and democratic country in all of that region; Israel. When Iran was to powerful, we aided Iraq with money, intelligence (mostly via satellite photos and wire intercepts of communications) and pressure via the United Nations. The same was true of when Iraq began to emerge as a threat to the region’s stability.
When we invaded Iraq and took out the evil Hussein’s (Saddam and his two sons) we believed (unfortunately) that the Iraqi people would be so happy to be freed of Saddam’s evil tyranny that they would welcome us with open arms and quickly become a U.S.A. loving, Democratic-lite democracy. We not only failed in that incredibly optimistic prediction but we actually ensured our own failure in the first year following the invasion by allowing the puppet Iraqi govt to instill Sharia Law as the “highest” law of the nations new Constitution. We made the exact same mistake with Afghanistan and now both these countries “liberated” by primarily U.S. forces don’t allow religious leaders from faiths other than Islam into their countries; all because our “leaders” have failed to understand (even now) the so called “Religion of Peace.”
But back to Strategic thinking and U.S. foreign policy; Iraq happens to be majority Shiite Muslim, just like Iran. By failing to apply realistic “strategic” thinking our foreign policy has now allowed Iraq to teeter (and I believe ultimately to succumb) to becoming an Iranian satellite state. In other words we have destabilized the region through this action and the fact that the current U.S. administration has clearly established the fact that they will not stand in the way of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. This fact alone bodes no good for the Middle East future, or that of the worlds, for decades to come.
As bad as we have allowed the situation to become in the Middle East, we have also committed the same error with regards to Afghanistan. With India on the Pakistani eastern border and Afghanistan on its western border, it was only natural that Pakistan, looking out for its own best national security interests, aided (through its ISI agency) in establishing the Taliban in Afghanistan, in order to secure its own western borders.
Past U.S. policy has been to play Pakistan against India to maintain regional stability in that region of the world as well. The Pakistani national interests haven’t changed and for the better part of the past ten years they have had to play a very careful balancing act between appearing to appease the powerful U.S. and maintaining good relations with the Taliban. After all, the Pakistani govt has always known that the U.S. was not interested in securing and “keeping” Afghanistan and that it was just a matter of time before we would leave. The current administration told them so with a scheduled withdraw date for all U.S. forces by mid-2011.
Most American’s would be surprised that India has long distrusted the U.S. and so it has allied and “played” off its largest regional neighbors, Russia and China. It is no coincidence that after pumping nearly 20 billion dollars into Pakistan that they have suddenly been reinvigorated in the pursuit of modernizing their nuclear capabilities and placing ever more modernized military hardware on the Pakistani-India borders, especially the disputed Kashmir region. Again, the American govt’s past missteps have created a much more volatile situation than had existed prior to 9/11.
Wasn’t our stated goals for militarily “taking out” both governments post 9/11, supposed to have been the War on Terror? Specifically, to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a staging base for Islamic terrorists, and the implied threat of the same from Iraq, who was also supposed to have WMD capabilities? Yet today we have Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Kosovo and Pakistan to worry about splinter al-Qaeda like Islamic terror groups to worry about?
Not to mention the modest estimate of 1.3 Trillion dollars of our nation’s wealth forever lost, with literally nothing to show for it? Iraq sold its oil drilling/shipping interests to numerous countries but not one of them were American. Opium prices are very low due to the incredibly large shipments coming out of the poppy fields of Afghanistan, most of which is financing the Taliban and other Islamic terror groups. China just signed a deal to build roads, dams, and mining rights with Afghanistan and we all know what President Karzai thinks of the current administration. Add to this our current and unprecedented rocky relationship with Israel and it doesn’t take a genius to see the grief that will visit this world in the current and not too distant future. Strategic thinking seems to have become a thing of the past...