Over at PJMedia I discuss John Kerry’s howlingly false statements about Pakistan helping us find Osama bin Laden:
Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported last Thursday, no doubt with some relief, that during his confirmation hearing for his nomination as secretary of State, Senator John Kerry declared that he opposed cutting American aid to Pakistan, which he saw as a –˜dramatic, draconian and sledge-hammer” measure. Senator Kerry also said that Pakistan’s role in leading the United States to Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad had not been sufficiently appreciated.”
Who is Kerry kidding? The Pakistani government didn’t help the U.S. find bin Laden. In fact, they were enraged that they had not been filled in on the details of the hunt, which was a wise decision in light of the jihadist ties of the ISI, the Pakistani spy service.
How enraged were they? Let’s recall how events unfolded in May 2011, just after bin Laden was killed. The day his killing became known, May 2, 2011, 800 Pakistanis held a rally in Quetta, proclaiming:
Bin Laden was the hero of the Muslim world and after his martyrdom he has won the title of great mujahed.
But that was only 800 people. The vast majority of Pakistanis rejected the views of this tiny minority of extremists, right? Wrong. By just over a week after bin Laden’s death, 100,000 Osama bin Laden posters had been sold in Pakistan. Two weeks after his death, 4,000 bin Laden supporters rallied in Lahore to protest the killing of bin Laden, chanting “America is the worst enemy of humanity!” A nationwide poll conducted at that time found 51 percent of Pakistanis saying that they felt grief over bin Laden’s death.
Of course, none of this means that the Pakistani government didn’t help the U.S. find bin Laden, even if its cooperation was unpopular with its own people. However, that wasn’t the case, either. The CIA confirmed just after the raid that Pakistani officials had not been informed about it for fear that they would “jeopardize the mission.” This fear appeared to be amply justified when Pakistani Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir gave the U.S. a warning: “There shall not be any doubt that any repetition of such an act [i.e., the bin Laden raid] will have disastrous consequences.”
A Pakistani opposition leader, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, lamented: “This is the biggest tragedy in the history of Pakistan after the fall of East Pakistan in 1971.” He added: “Heads should roll.” There were prayers for bin Laden in Pakistan’s National Assembly. The nation’s parliament condemned the raid and even threatened the U.S. with sanctions.
Does John Kerry really not know any of this, or does he just hope that we don’t? His appointment represents a continuation of policies that have failed again and again, and seem to be immune to evaluation in light of how they have played out on the world stage. There is at this point no reason whatsoever for the U.S. to continue to send billions of taxpayer dollars to Pakistan…..