Diplomacy or dhimmitude? Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald discusses Pakistan and its relationship with the U.S.:
For decades Pakistan has been the spoiled child of American diplomacy. Infuriated by Krishna Menon and what was seen as Bandung-conferencing Indian diplomats (who often did deserve our scorn), the Americans made the mistake of thinking that “Islam is a bulwark against Communism.” That was all they knew, and all they needed to know, about Islam. And besides, those mustachioed Pakistani generals, ramrod-straight backs, seemingly straightforward in speech, were such splendid fellows — you know, the same impression that Musharraf, the meretricious Musharraf, gives. We just can’t quite comprehend how deeply dyed by a culture of nonsense and lies and taqiyya that comes with mother’s milk, so that even those who seem to Westerners to be most full of rectitude are offering up some version (from mild to hot and spicy) of their refusal to come clean with the Infidels about Islam and what it inculcates, and how it shapes the attitudes, pervades the atmosphere, and is instinct in everything, that we find in Muslim societies such as Pakistan.
Pakistan is a particularly grim place. It has Islam and nothing but Islam. It is a country whose people define themselves solely by Islam. If, in Malaysia, or in Indonesia, one can find communities of non-Muslims and some awareness of a pre-Islamic or non-Islamic world, that helps to introduce a slight syncretistic note. In Pakistan, while those non-Muslim communities are there, the relaxation and syncretism are not. Pakistan is full of people who have taken Arab names. Many of them — all those Sayeeds — seem to think they are descendants of the Prophet or his tribe or of other 7th century Arabs, and the ridiculous results are there for all to see. Meanwhile, their real origins — descendants of Hindus who could stand the Muslim oppression of non-Muslims no longer — are ignored or treated with contempt.
For decades Pakistan received great amounts of American military aid. There was money, training, and equipment, including top-of-the-line planes. During the war in Afghanistan, Pakistan was both the conduit for and recipient of a great deal more aid, and helped to establish the view that the Soviet Union was the sole problem, and nice Mr. Bin Laden and his friends and family all part of the “solution.” And meanwhile, the Pakistani ISI (a wholly-owned subsidiary of those same rectitudinous generals) was doing all kinds of things. It was funding, and encouraging, and rewarding, Dr. A. Q. Khan, who worked busily aday, stealing nuclear secrets here, getting equipment there, and who has endangered the United States more than anyone else — including Bin Laden. And it was allowing those madrassa students who metastasized quite naturally into the murderous Taliban to grow and grow and grow.
And what has happened since 9/11? It’s the mixture as before. Pakistan is “our friend” and “our ally.” Pakistani debts have been cancelled. Pakistani goods are now flowing into the United States, while American military equipment flows — free of charge — into the hands of the splendid, trustworthy, mustachioed General Musharraf and his splendid fellows, each more trustworthy, more mustachioed, and more “moderately” Muslim than the last.
That is our policy. It is based on not understanding of Islam and not being able to recognize that every Muslim who does not come clean about Islam is himself part of that unending problem. Musharraf is not our friend, and can never be. Pakistan is not our friend, and can never be.
After CENTO, after the billions in aid and diplomatic support over the years, after the exchanges of our officers, after the opening up of our markets, after the cancellation of debts, after the bribe after bribe to get the Pakistanis to collaborate, Pakistan is still not our friend. Oh sure, they collaborate with us, carefully calibrating the exact amount of highly-visible “collaboration” they will offer, never to really damage their friends, but just enough to keep the Americans happy.
Not everyone in the State Department is a fool. Not everyone in the government, or in the press, on right and left, is a fool. But a great many people are.
The Revolution started with the phrase “No taxation without representation.” Perhaps not a stirring phrase, but it stirs me.
Now we hapless Infidels are being taxed, against our wills, to pay jizya to various Muslim states. Not all of them ask it of Americans alone. Libya, for example, has told Italy that it will only collaborate on the problem of illegal immigration into Italy from boats leaving Libyan shores if the Italian government agrees to build, at its own expense, a coastal highway that runs along the whole length of Libya’s coast. So far Italy has rejected this absurd suggestion.
And the American government, if it has its wits about it, will reject these continuing transparent and disgusting attempts to do two things: to extract even more aid out of us, the Infidels, on behalf of Muslims (despite the fact that the beneficiaries of the largest transfer of wealth in human history, the OPEC oligopoly, consists almost entirely of Arab and Muslim states) and to continue to insist, against all the evidence, and to the great harm of Infidels who continue to be misled, that “poverty” is the problem that explains Muslim misdeeds, Muslim hysteria, Muslim malevolence toward all Infidels, when all of it can so easiy be explained by reference to the texts, tenets, attitudes of Islam.
Here’s a motto for today, tomorrow, forever:
“No To The Jizyah-Tax — We May Be Infidels But We Are Not Dhimmis”
A bit of a mouthful even for the bumpersticker on a widebody, but perhaps our bumpers can make a little room, and tuck that sentiment on, or into, their Procrustean metallic beds.