| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Khan Meets Dems (WaPo columnist endorses yet another pro-Taliban Pakistani opposition member) |
| 2008-01-28 |
| It's fascinating how Democrats aren't choosy about sidling up to America's enemies - it seems that any old enemy will do. Today’s Washington Post features an op-ed on the upcoming Pakistani elections by Jackson Diehl entitled, "No More Coups." The piece slams Musharraf and praises the efforts of a visiting delegation of Pakistani politicians that prominently includes former cricket star Imran Khan. Khan heads what Diehl calls "his own small centrist party." According to Diehl, Khan said that Majority Leader Harry Reid and Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden were particularly responsive to his anti-Musharraf message. So as head of a "centrist" party, what does Imran Khan see as the best policy for his country? To find out, read "How to save Pakistan," Khan’s own Op-Ed piece in the Guardian. I discussed this opinion piece by Khan in "The Best We Can Expect?" where I noted that Khan actually wants to break Pakistan’s strategic relationship with the United States, withdraw Pakistan’s army from the tribal areas, abandon patrols on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, and force America and NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan altogether. (Not a word about any of this from Diehl, of course.) You can glean some of this from Khan’s Guardian essay, but in fact that piece omits some important passages from the original version published in Pakistan. In the original version of Khan’s op-ed, he blames "the threat of extremism" on "policies that serve foreign interests" (i.e. U.S. interests) and goes on to say that no civilized society ought to allow its army to be "used so mercilessly against its own citizens" (i.e. the Taliban). Khan then adds: "The more the General [Musharraf] bows to Washington’s desire to ‘do more’...and the more innocent Pakistani blood is shed under the garb of fighting the war on terror or curbing extremism, the more Pakistan moves toward becoming a failed state." (So Pakistan’s decades-long problems of state-building are America’s fault.) In short, Imran Khan opposes the war on terror and would remove all military pressure from the Islamist sanctuaries in Pakistan’s northwest. Just days ago, terrorists trained and dispatched to Europe by Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud were captured before springing a wave of attacks across the continent. And just now Baitullah Mehsud and his Taliban forces are the targets of a significant offensive by the Pakistan’s army in South Waziristan (as I report here and here). We may want Musharraf to allow American troops to join the fight, but Imran Khan would do far less than Musharraf. Khan would never have launched the Pakistani offensive in the first place. In fact, Kahn would shut down the war on terror in Pakistan (and Afghanistan) altogether. Yet even now, Khan is being praised in the Washington Post as a "centrist" and catered to by Democratic leaders in Congress. The truth we don’t want to face is that the Pakistani people are, shall we say, unenthusiastic about fighting the terrorists in their own country. Electing politicians like Imran Khan will lose us the war on terror, not solve it. Kahn’s notion that the likes of Baitullah Mehsud and his followers are "innocent blood" is absurd. Pakistan is harboring a substantial military force dedicated to the destruction of the United States and the West. That gives us every right to be involved. In fact, it gives us a right to invade, which we’ve prudently declined to do only because we have been able to establish a level of cooperation with the government of Pakistan. Yet we are at war with the Islamists taking refuge in Pakistan, and we had best not forget that. Americans–including the Democratic leadership in the Senate–might want to keep this in mind when consorting with the likes of Imran Khan. |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |
| #6 Imran's Khan's ex-wife Jemima (daughter of Sir James Goldsmith) relates a story... she noticed their son playing with a one armed "Action Man". She asked what happened to the doll. Her son replied "daddy said he was caught stealing".. Imran's idea of humor... |
| Posted by: john frum 2008-01-28 19:42 |
| #5 Oh big whoop, she was a pol. Her last admin she was very careful not to offend the military, which made sense given their strength. Sure she was from an old feudal family. And sure, her party had been socialist (so had Tony Blairs, Ehud Baraks, etc) She wasnt advocating socialist policies now, and she was as good a chance as any to move Pakistan away from feudalism. Well maybe Khan was more so, but hes definitely antiUS as quoted above. Perv certainly wasnt democratizing Pakistan - you can dream that he'll liberalize it to make it ready for democracy, a la Pinochet, but that seriously misreads the Pakistani street. Bhutto for whatever selfish political reasons had thrown in her lot with the West and against the Islamists. |
| Posted by: Dopey Flotle8127 2008-01-28 15:24 |
| #4 As far as I can tell, Ms. Bhutto was a happy feudalist who used the language popular in the international circles in which she moved when not actively ruling her holdings. She used whoever advanced her personal agenda -- socialists, internationalists, Islamists, and democratizers alike. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-01-28 14:53 |
| #3 DF: but see, thats why Bhuttos death was SUCH a disaster = there isnt anyone left whos both pro-US AND has real support on the ground in Pakistan. My impression is that Bhutto was a corrupt socialist who drove the economy into the ground the last time she was prime minister. This is why the liberal media loved her - her socialist ideology. The same ideology that made Islamism attractive by comparison. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-01-28 14:16 |
| #2 but see, thats why Bhuttos death was SUCH a disaster = there isnt anyone left whos both pro-US AND has real support on the ground in Pakistan. Perv, Sharif, Khan - theyre ALL bad choices. |
| Posted by: Dopey Flotle8127 2008-01-28 13:39 |
| #1 I think the liberal media is a sucker for well-spoken anti-Americans from exotic countries. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2008-01-28 13:31 |