Pakistan: The War of Drones

lol...thats some ahle-zabaan stereotype zee ! expect a very polite fan club on your website now :)

Tahmed you got me at democracy being the best of all bad systems but to justify hitler or modi's sins just because they were democratically elected strikes me as ridiculous. Mush should be criticised for his sins but Zardari shouldnt get a free pass from you either. I completely object to that.

Zee i agree 100%. Its not about afghanistan. But just because they were killed it doesnt mean they were right. As you know i do not condone the murder of the ninjabis but i do think they should have been gassed with nitrous oxide and then straight jacketed. They had no buisness demanding that the govt should let them speak for other pakis and insist on imposing rules in Pakistan that most pakistanis do not want. That was not a rational position. And starting an endless cycle of revenge based on that is even more indefensible.

Extreme violent fundo radicals are a functionally powerless parasitic minority which contributes nothing to pakistan and destroys the very people they hide behind.

HP writes "As soon as the new civilian government takes over, it should ask the army to go after these criminals and their hideouts and not stop until they are eliminated completely!"

So the civilians should play the army's game (which they are going to do), that wont solve any problems we face and neither will it extract the system from the army who is dominating it. This farce is what feeds these thugs, you want to feed them more hoping that it might eventually get a heart attack and die....can't take that risk because the history of Pakistan Army/US feeding off the people in this manner is all to clear for all to see. Like I said you need to put aside your hatred of the mullah for the time being and think hard about this one with a cool mind, otherwise you end up pushing the US/Pakistan Army line hook,line and sinker...

In #146 read "that it might eventually get a heart attack and die...." as

that they might eventually get a heart attack and die....

dash

You and chaltahai make good points but consider a basic problem.

Your and Chaltahai's answers depend (fully, in as much as I understand) on your ability to IDENTITY various "sidekicks," "his likes" and "jihadis."

Yet, IF you or anybody else could do so then in the scenario I sketched (entirely unrealistic, you may argue), you wouldn't be dead in the first place. What's worse, some of 'his sidekicks' and 'likes' and 'buddies' may be your buddies too and STILL going to the movies and the games with you.

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Pavo, who knows a few things about what the West is (and you are) up against, wrote somewhere that the West (and you) will be destroyed by Human Rights (the very thing the the West (and you, probably) consider West's greatest stregnth and weapon.

To get a broader perspective, you migth want to think about what Iqbal was all about.

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Please don't think of these as my personal views. I am merely presenting important arguments from different sides. We should know and appreciate these arguments as dispassionately as possible.

There are three stable states for Pakistan:

1. Pakistani state goes after Jihadis/Islamists/Criminals and totally destroys (as HP would prefer).

2. Jihadis/Islamists/Criminals go after Pakistani state and destroy it and rebuild anew a state they entirely dominate.

3. Jihadis/Islamists/Criminals and Pakistani state re-gain and re-establish the alignment they had prior to 9/11.

Romair,

Pakistani neutrality on gwot makes sense, from Pakistan's pov.

But on a practical basis, how is this possible?

If Spain was harboring Taliban & Al-Qeeda, if their leaders were seen in Madrid & Barcelona? do you think Spain could "declare" neutrality?

How the heck can you say you're neutral when the "bad guys" are in your country?

Big bad America- democrat or republican will never allow it. There are numerous ways the US & Western allies can make Pakistan's life miserable. Are you willing to pay that price?

tahmed, #117

Beautiful post. Aapke muhn me ghee shakkar...

Asadi,
I will respond to your posts later.

Re: # 145 clif

Well, Cliff Honey - it's paki-eat-paki world out there... or paki-kill-paki, if you will... but nothing surprising really, - pakis killing pakis,happens all the time...

the current kill-frenzy may have been spurred by the US stick - but it was bound to happen, sooner or later... after all - jihad has been almost an industry in pakiland, and a very "successful" one, in various ways... But now that the external "market" is kind of "squeezed" at this time - the "industry" is expanding on the home base...

Enjoy the fruits of your labor... :)

"somewhere that the West (and you) will be destroyed by Human Rights (the very thing the the West (and you, probably) consider West's greatest strength and weapon."
Is turning into the enemy worth defeating it? The West's commitment to "human rights" outside its own borders is flakey at best.

Re: # 149 kaal

Brilliant!!!

Re: # 149 kaal

Brilliant!!!

Shankar, the kind of cooperation, through acts of commission and omission, romair is suggesting requires that -

1. The external world does not lean too heavily on Pakistan, and

2. Both Pakistani state and Jihadis/Islamists/Criminals offer each other basic respect, and don't try to step on each others' toes.

Instead of autonomous state and autonomous Jihad one would have controlled state and controlled jihad.

It can be done, once again, but it would require some really sharp minds now, sharper than the ones in charge prior to 9/11.

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che, yeah, that is a problem. That's why IMO, Pavo can be quite confident that even if the West figures out the problem, West will NOT be able to prevent the weapon of Human Rights from destroying it.

There is no anti-dote to it, che, so long as the West (or any other enemy) is made of normal human beings - imperfect, greedy, suspcious, biased, and so forth.

"That's why IMO, Pavo can be quite confident that even if the West figures out the problem, West will NOT be able to prevent the weapon of Human Rights from destroying it."

Kaal, I think the West has figured out the problem and has chosen to act on it to some extent but it doesn't see a need to go all out as the islamofascists are perceived more of as an annoyance rather than existential threat. It has gone all out when it needed to i.e. Hiroshima

re #150
...great post!

Mr. Hoodbhoy, perfect analysis.

Pakistan does not exist in a vacuum to decide for itself how cooperative or accomodating its going to be with the jihadis. There is the outside world; all it wants to know is: is terror being EXPORTED out of Pakistan are not. If terror is not exported you can love your jihadis as you want, no one will care.

che, when Pavo mentions Human Rights as West's inescapable path of self destruction he probably does not mean human rights on Guantanamo Bay, but in the United States itself, or the European Mainland itself.

Once I argued that Pakistani liberals' challenges are greater in the sense that there is no Tora Bora "out there" to bomb into oblivion. No Hiroshima now for the US now, and no Tora Bora for Pakistan.

(Although I do understand some Pakistanis, unfortunately, IMO, have written off NWFP people as inherently ciriminal and flies to be 'swatted').