#3
Looks to me like The Onion is making a bid for membership in the "Dead Fish Society". Those are the people targeted for revenge by Rahm Emanuel. this is a little too vicous for my tastes, but then, I'm such a delicate flower.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
04/15/2009 10:20 Comments ||
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#4
I can't remember the last time the press got lampooned this hard. They really don't get it. I was talking to a guy who is a sports reporter locally and he just doesn't understand why newspapers are folding and ad revenue is drying up and the paper is shrinking. I asked him if he thought the fact that news today is agenda driven and more opinion than fact had anything to do with it and he looked at me like I was speaking Mongolian. They do not get it and won't get it even standing in the unemployment line.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
04/15/2009 12:25 Comments ||
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By Ralph Peters Excerpt:
Can anyone in the Obama administration articulate what we intend to achieve in Afghanistan? The Bush folks couldn't. I doubt this bunch can either.
If our goal is to turn Afghanistan into a rule-of-law democracy, forget it. Iraq has an outside shot - it's a semi-modern society - although success is far from guaranteed. But a modernized Afghan state whose authority extends into every remote valley is an impossibility.
If, however, our goal is only to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a massive terrorist mother-ship, we can do that - and at a lower cost. But we'd have to have the guts to choose sides among factions and stop pretending that we're honest brokers.
The impending troop surge faces the danger of LBJ-era accounting: the recurring conclusion that just one more rise in troop levels will tip the scales. You wind up with half a million troops deployed and a local population that wants you gone yesterday.
Inherently, this one's a special-operations war. A sounder long-term approach would be fewer troops on the ground - and far less reliance on vulnerable supply routes through Pakistan. Regular combat units have a role to play, but as punitive strike forces, not a vast neighborhood watch (this is not Iraq).
Ditch the claptrap that we can't kill our way out of this: Well-focused killing, for decades, is our only chance - and Afghanistan's. And dump the feel-good platitudes. In the real world off-campus, good marksmanship trumps good will.
Posted by: ed ||
04/15/2009 10:04 ||
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#1
In a way its our first "Sci-Fi" war. It reminds me a little of Scalzi books and wars.
Posted by: Jack is Back! ||
04/15/2009 12:27 Comments ||
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#2
It was a terrible mistake to try to salvage *anything* from the old Afghan way of doing business, out of "cultural sensitivity". That is like refusing to vaccinate their children against polio out of "cultural sensitivity". Insanity.
Instead, we should have rounded up every intelligent and educated Afghan we could find, and put them to school to be trained how to run a modern government.
Then we should have written them a modern constitution and required that they follow it for 20 years before any modifications could be made.
Every unemployed adult, male or female, would be put to work doing *something* productive, with most of the men out in the countryside improving the national infrastructure. Their typical wage is so low, we could have done this for just $1B a year.
All children would be put in safe public schools near the provincial capitals and taught a secular, western education. The only bow to their culture would be that boys and girls would be taught separately until high school. Girls would wear ordinary clothes and headscarves.
#3
How do you deal with a roach infestation? Put on the lights and step on those scampering about?
Or dealing with their nesting places?
Failure to deal with the Pakistani military has its consequences.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/15/2009 14:15 Comments ||
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#4
If peace and security were achieved in Afghanistan, the first thing that would happen would be manifestations of sectarianism. Karzai's Pashtun-supremacism alienates minorities. Let's not forget that Pashtuns provided the rearbase for the 9-11 terrorists. Why Bush promoted Karzai - a Pashtun - is bewildering.
#5
Another thing we should have done was tried to get every Afghan living in the west some incentive to move back to share their knowledge and experience of how rule of law works.
#6
TOPIX/RUSSIA TODAY > RUSSIA: AFGHANISTAN-BASED TERRORISM IS A DIRECT THREAT TO ITS SECURITY + MINIMAL DETERRENCE [destruction]: THE NEW GLOBAL ALTERNATIVE NUCLEAR DOCTRINE [versus former Cold War "MUTUAL DESTRUCTION"]???
The President of Pakistan has warned that a "cancer" is eating away at his country, one which requires radical surgery. In fact, the patient needs three separate operations, each as risky as the next. The Islamist political parties, which have hardly ever been strong at the ballot box, sense victory through street-power and guns. The Pakistani Taliban and its Afghan and al‑Qaeda allies wish to destroy the state as part of their war against the infidel West. And the so-called Kashmir liberation groups are slowly widening their field of operations, as shown by recent attacks in Mumbai and on the Sri Lanka cricket team in Lahore.
Those of us who thought that it was possible to have a Pakistani national identity without ideological extremism have been disappointed again and again. It seems, in retrospect, that there was an inherent instability in pulling together the outer and more ungovernable regions of British India simply on the basis of religion.
Those of us who thought that it was possible to have a Pakistani national identity without ideological extremism have been disappointed again and again. It seems, in retrospect, that there was an inherent instability in pulling together the outer and more ungovernable regions of British India simply on the basis of religion. Throughout its history, Pakistan has been vulnerable to religious extremism. Unless co‑ordinated international action is taken as a matter of urgency, Pakistan may not survive.
So what needs to be done? First, it is absolutely vital that the international community assists in the rebuilding of confidence between India and Pakistan. This must include a guarantee from both sides, but particularly Pakistan, that all cross-border terrorism will cease and those planning it will be neutralised.
It is said that the previous President of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, was close to a deal with the Indians on Kashmir, but could not sell it to the army. The files must be dusted off in fact, it must be part of any agreement on military and economic aid that the army co-operates with its political masters in bringing peace and stability to Pakistan.
On the western and northern borders, as well, there must be assurance for any incoming regime in Afghanistan that Pakistan will not be host to any forces that seek to destabilise that country. This is also of huge interest to Nato forces operating inside Afghanistan. No solution to the conflict, however, can be morally acceptable if it protects Western interests from extremist attack but leaves women, children and minorities at the mercy of the Taliban's barbarity.
If Pakistan is to avoid playing host to a proxy war between Nato and the Taliban, it needs to take its security into its own hands. To do this, the role of the armed forces has to be re-oriented. Instead of structuring the military around Kashmir, and seeing India as the main enemy, counter-insurgency must have a much higher profile. It is good that a dedicated paramilitary force is being strengthened, with British assistance, in the North-Western Frontier Province, to resist Taliban advances and perhaps even pacify parts of the tribal areas. But the armed forces, as a whole, need to develop a security strategy that is coherent and national. Local terrorism, such as the recent raid on a police college, cannot be left to local forces alone.
This brings us to military intelligence. The Inter Services Intelligence agency was used by the West in the 1980s to channel large amounts of assistance to the mujahidin; as a result, elements within it have a significant relationship with Taliban leaders, and also Kashmiri militants whose organisations they helped to establish. But whatever the history, the ISI should be brought under control and the armed forces made accountable to the civilian government. Such reforms must be part of any agreement to enable Pakistan to deal with internal and external threats, not least in terms of safeguarding its nuclear facilities.
Yet it is not only military and diplomatic measures that are needed. One of the most significant failures of President Musharraf's time in office was the Council of Madrassas' refusal to co-operate with the government's programme of curriculum reform. This cannot be allowed to continue. An integrated education strategy is as important as a security one: generations of the poor cannot be allowed to become fodder for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. A revision of textbooks is also needed to root out teachings of hate against Christianity, Judaism, India and the West.
And while some of the harsh Islamic laws that affect women and religious minorities have been modified, others are still on the statute book. The notorious "Blasphemy Law" prescribes a mandatory death penalty for insulting the Prophet of Islam. It has been used to terrorise religious minorities and to curb even modest freedoms of expression and of belief. Those who declare themselves friends of Pakistan must help to get this law repealed. Many decent and devout Pakistani Muslims are already ashamed of it.
A moment of threat can also be a time of opportunity. It is time for Pakistan and its friends to grasp the opportunity, and deal comprehensively with the threats to its security that have bedevilled much of the country's 62-year history. These threats to Pakistan are now also threats to world order. It is in all of our interests that they are dealt with quickly and comprehensively.
Michael Nazir-Ali is Bishop of Rochester, was born and raised in Pakistan and was Bishop of Raiwind there.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/15/2009 15:45 ||
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#1
First, it is absolutely vital that the international community assists in the rebuilding of confidence between India and Pakistan. This must include a guarantee from both sides, but particularly Pakistan, that all cross-border terrorism will cease and those planning it will be neutralised.
so, step one is a non-starter. I stopped reading there
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/15/2009 20:45 Comments ||
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An article carried by The News ("An open letter to Gen Kayani"; April 14) by Harish Puri, a former Indian army colonel, raises a host of questions. (See here)
One question, up front, is obvious: would the free media of India have published similar advice to the Indian army chief by a Pakistani officer? The categorical answer is no.
Why?
There are several reasons. India has managed to develop, and credit is due her on that score, a sense of nationalism that not just binds its various institutions, civil and military, in the formation of the state but also draws its civil society into that nexus, at least those sections that matter in the initial evolution of such a consensus. This helps India in behaving as a unitary actor in formulating and pushing policies, especially those catalogued under the generic rubric of national security.
In theory, all states can do it. The issue of consensus has to do with the broader acceptance of those policies.
Please note that this consensus has a horrible flipside: it tends to develop internal structural constraints over time that can deny a state flexibility of response, but that is another topic; neither does this consensus in India involve, by any stretch, everyone who holds an Indian passport. But, to the extent of whether the state can express itself with one voice on most, if not all, issues, India has evolved such a consensus and is in the process of pulling in even those who currently remain on the periphery or are outside it.
To this end the state has used multiple means: relatively stable political institutions and processes; respect for the constitution; a sound higher judiciary; a professional military that accepts civilian supremacy; growing economic clout; an expanding middle class; and, lest anyone ignore the most important fact, ruthless coercion when necessary and against those groups that defy the Indian state.
That the Indian state has always been a hard-as-nails state compared to a much softer Pakistan is because it has been a democracy and has managed to develop a coercive majoritarian consensus for the exercise not just of its external sovereignty but, more importantly, its internal writ.
Therefore, if a Pakistani officer were to write an open letter to the Indian army chief on, say how that army should behave in Kashmir and inform him on how the Indian army should leave behind its memories of the 1962 debacle, it would be trashed by any Indian editor without a second thought.
The point is not to argue that we must emulate what an Indian editor would do but to raise some questions about why such an article should find place in a Pakistani newspaper.
First, is it important to debate the point and thrust of such an article, an exercise to determine whether printing it would serve any purpose -- and by purpose let us assume here that we mean changing the institutional direction of the Pakistan Army which, as the article states, is supposed to be perfidious both in relation to its neighbours and internally?
This is an important question because institutional perfidy of Pakistan Army is exactly what the underlying message of this article is. The argument is clever, combine as it does the concerns of civil society in Pakistan about the Army's role with India's concern over the role of the Pakistan Army vis-à-vis itself.
This message the Indian colonel conveys by highlighting the fact that the Pakistan Army has been an irresponsible outfit both internally and externally. While it was defeated by India, that defeat came in the face of its brutalities in the erstwhile East Pakistan. But even as it (Pakistan Army) ruthlessly operated against the Bengalis, it has cowed in the face of the ferocious Taliban. It is interesting how he throws in bits about the Pakistan Army's professionalism. This he does not to contradict his other negative assertions about the Pakistan Army but to strengthen the overall argument about the latter's perfidy.
Deconstruct this discourse to see how he appeals to the liberal minds in Pakistan. Are we, as editors, required to do this exercise of deconstruction? I think we are.
As editors we can always say that newspapers can print all sorts of viewpoints. Fair enough. But can, or should, this general acceptance of all viewpoints prevent us from establishing certain standards both in terms of judging the quality of an article as well as the broader implications of printing it.
Let me be a little more specific.
To argue that newspapers must print everything, and here I am assuming that the quality of what is being printed is not disputed, implies that in our professional capacity we are only faithful to our craft; that nothing matters beyond that. Do we always act in and through such purity of form, even assuming that we can?
The answer is no. When General Pervez Musharraf (retd) sacked the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the media took up that cause and many of us acted more as citizens of Pakistan than "pure" journalists. Indeed, we used the power we wield as journalists in the service of what we thought was in the interest of civil society with us being members of that over and above our professional calling as journalists.
Drawing the personal-professional line, as I have often stated, is difficult even in societies that are not disjointed. In such a one as ours, it is almost impossible.
But then it also proves my point that purity of form is difficult to maintain and as editors we cannot dismiss the context in which we print something and, more importantly, afford to ignore the implications of what we print. Not just that, we keep crossing the line between being citizens and professional journalists.
In this specific case, we have another problem too. Could this article also find place in Jang or its contents run on GEO? While there is nothing to prevent the editors of The News from acting independently of sister organisations within their group, the question becomes pertinent in relation to broader policy.
It is difficult to accept being subjected to two extremes from the same conglomerate. For instance, while the article by the Indian colonel castigates the Pakistan Army for standing by and allowing Swat to go under, the group's other media outlets have been congratulating the nation for the parliament having taken the correct decision on Swat.
Here we also get into another problem: how can we talk about democracy and civilian supremacy while goading the Army, even if indirectly, into violating the constitutional compact, given what the ANP has been insisting on and how the political actors have been behaving in relation to counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism efforts?
In fact, regardless of whether Charlie's aunt and I accept that, much of the media has actually created the conditions under which Pakistanis reject the idea of a threat perception from the extremists and have decided, through parliament, to take a political course of action on Swat -- surrender rather than fight it out.
The point is, none of these questions is being debated even as we, in the media, subject the nation to extremes. It is difficult to accept that our trade presupposes a free for all.
Ejaz Haider is Consulting Editor of The Friday Times and Op-Ed Editor of Daily Times
Posted by: john frum ||
04/15/2009 08:28 ||
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So Senator Kerry has come to do the usual doublespeak to the Pakistani people through its already confused leadership! Like the other US leaders before him, his understanding of Pakistan ran skin deep at best as he tried to justify the drones by declaring that terrorism existed in Pakistan before these attacks. Oh what a revelation Senator; but we all know qualitative difference between the pre- and post-9/11 status of terrorism in Pakistan. And, while some elitist part time residents and drawing room analysts (the very group that they seem to decry) of the capital may see drones as merely red herrings, the fact is that drones have killed almost 900 innocent Pakistanis between 2006 and 2009 and only 10 Al Qaeda targets. The growing instability in the country as well as the IDPs from the drone-hit areas are testimony to the fact that drones create space for future militants; as well as to the fact that the military option has not only failed to stabilise the area but also failed to deny space to the militants. And, no one buys the Pakistani state's whining to the US against the drones as authentic anymore since, if the leadership was truly opposed to these drone attacks, they would simply claim back Bandari air base. Remember also that perception is at least as critical as the reality.
Senator Kerry also talked about his cosponsored bill relating to aid to Pakistan that will be introduced or may have been introduced in the US Senate through its Foreign Relations Committee. He declared that there would be no conditionalities and he feigned because I refuse to believe that a seasoned Senator like Kerry would be so ill-informed on the issue especially when he knew he was travelling to Pakistan total ignorance about the Pakistan Enduring Assistance and Cooperation Enhancement Act of 2009 already introduced into the House of Representatives by Representative Howard Berman, Democrat from California. The bill, if passed as is, would be as humiliating for Pakistan as the US-bulldozed Platt Amendment of 1903 was for Cuba.
There have already been some comments of this Act in the Pakistani press and some of the clauses are so insulting that any self respecting Pakistani government would begin voicing its outright rejection of any aid tied to these conditions but there is a deafening silence from our leaders and their diplomatic reps in the US. As for the billions we spend on lobbyists, apparently Ambassador Haqqani has rendered them ineffective.
Coming back to the Berman bill's clauses, there is a truly absurd India-specific clause J which requires Pakistan "not to support any person or group that conducts violence, sabotage, or other activities meant to instil fear in India". This assumes that the Pakistan is indulging in such activities which in itself are unacceptable. Or is the US going to get a similar undertaking from India given the dangerous games RAW is playing within Pakistan? In any event, is Berman truly ignorant as many US legislators are about foreign affairs about the existence of a bilateral Pakistan-India anti-terror agreement or is he simply playing to the Indian lobby? Either way, for Pakistan the message is clear.
Clause K is equally humiliating, with a barely veiled effort to target Dr AQ Khan again. It seeks access for US investigators to "individuals suspected of engaging in worldwide proliferation of nuclear materials," and requires Pakistan to "restrict such individuals from travel or any other activity that could result in further proliferation". Berman would have been more useful to his country if he had sought to clarify the US role in proliferation to Israel or to seek more light on the nuclear agreements India signed with Iraq and Iran! In any event, the US has to get over its trauma of Dr A Q Khan and Pakistan's nuclear capability, just as it finally seems to be getting over its Iranian revolution trauma!
The hand of the Indian lobbyists is all over this Bill including in Clause H which requires Pakistan not to provide any support (could also include political and moral since it is open-ended), "direction, guidance to, or acquiescence in the activities of any person or group that engages in any degree in acts of violence or intimidation against civilians, civilian groups or governmental entities" target being the indigenous freedom struggle in Indian-Occupied Kashmir. Of course, given how the US is intimidating civilians in FATA with the drone attacks, shouldn't our government tell the US this may include them also! If only our leaders had such guts and gumption but all we see them do is fawn and fall all over the US regardless of the impact it has on the country.
Clause I focuses on the Taliban but again with the onus on the Pakistan government, with the underlying insinuation being that it is the Taliban's survival and nurturing is all at the hands of the Pakistani state this despite the fact that the Pakistani state has lost thousands of its personnel in fighting these forces. If Pakistan's detractors would study history they would realise that asymmetric conflicts for hearts and minds are never won through military means but who can talk sense to a super power that is still subject to irrational behaviour as a result of 9/11 so much so that it has also forgotten that the perpetrators of 9/11 were rich, westernised Arabs living in Europe and the US.
The Berman bill's title itself with the acronym PEACE is a cruel joke on the people of Pakistan and now Senator Kerry has been trying to tell us that his bill will have no conditionalities. That is nothing but a pack of lies; in any case it is irrelevant because now that an earlier bill relating to aid to Pakistan has been introduced in the House, Kerry's bill in the Senate, along with the Berman bill, will eventually go before a conference committee of Congress comprising equal members from the House and the Senate's relevant committees and one bill will be moulded from the two. Given the effective Indian lobbying and the animus that prevails in the US political circles against the nuclear Muslim state of Pakistan, the conditionalities of the Berman bill will not be removed certainly not all of them. Yet, from Pakistan's perspective, even one of the present conditionalities makes the aid bill humiliating and unacceptable to any nationalist, self-respecting leadership endowed with courage and a sense of history.
Does our leadership fit that bill? Certainly not so far but perhaps a greater reliance on parliament may give them some courage. After all, President Zardari also turned to the same parliament that he had been ignoring in the context of the issue of terrorism, to gain courage on Swat. But Parliament cannot be used selectively and one hopes it will now be more assertive of its powers.
Meanwhile, the US has begun to send drones into Swat to undermine an agreement that has parliament's sanction. The detractors of the peace agreement should realise that while the agreement was certainly signed from a position of weakness, once it is enforced action can be taken against the criminals violating women through acts of flogging and destroying education through burning of schools. After all, amongst the "secret" 14 conditions, are conditions that the Taliban will not prevent women from working or studying, will cooperate in the anti-polio drive, will desist from attacking barber and music shops, will denounce suicide attacks and so on. Given the paucity of the writ of the state, such an agreement, if enforced, can being peace to the local people especially with the army withdrawing and the Taliban agreeing not to display weapons in public and accepting a ban on raising militias. This is not the end of the problem but merely a beginning.
If the state wants to have a better negotiating position it needs to provide security and justice to the people while dialoguing and negotiating with all Pakistani stakeholders backed by, but not unleashed, coercive power of the state. This is the only way to isolate diehard militants. This is also a beginning to deny space for future militants, but that also requires the "adopt a madressah" approach mentioned last week, to go to the roots of the problem. The term Af-Pak has made us a "legitimate" war zone for the Americans with all that that implies. Unless we create space between ourselves and the US, we cannot move to reclaim the lost space of the moderate majority that is the Pakistani nation.
The writer is a defence analyst.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/15/2009 07:43 ||
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#1
... the fact is that drones have killed almost 900 innocent Pakistanis between 2006 and 2009 and only 10 Al Qaeda targets.
I LOL'd when I read that. I think Mr. Mazari pulled those numbers out of someplace dark and smelly ... now that I think of it, that description fits much of Pakistan.
She used to be in charge of a 'think tank' funded by the ISI. One of her 'researchers', the lovely Maria Kiyani, was involved in a honeypot operation against Brigadier Andrew Durcan, the British Defense Attache to Islamabad.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/15/2009 9:33 Comments ||
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#3
How many times will we be fooled by the US?
As many times as needed.
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