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| India-Pakistan | ||
| What audacious arrogance! | ||
| 2009-07-22 | ||
| By Shireen M Mazari Some of us had said it all along: Obama would be little better than Bush for Pakistan -- regardless of how he may be for the rest of the world. And so far we have seen nothing to prove us wrong! It is not just the recycled politicians he has surrounded himself with, it is also the old-wine-in-new-bottles' policies he is dishing out. The sheer arrogance of the US political mindset seems to cross all party lines. Therefore it should not have been surprising to find Obama try and suddenly seek the moral high ground over the issue of the Taliban releasing the video of their American military prisoner. Obama thundered away that releasing the video was against all norms of international law and that it revealed the barbarity of the Taliban. What a farce! So the US has rediscovered international law again, but what about the prisoners displayed in shackles at Guantanamo Bay? Was that not against all international law and even minimal civilised behaviour? What about renditions and the prisoners suffocated to death in airless containers? What about the Bagram base prisoners? In fact what about Abu Ghraib and the growing privatisation of security by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan which allowed the firm Blackwater to give vent to all its seemingly pent-up psychotic anger against Muslims since 9/11? Were, and are, these activities on the part of the US state not against all international law? And then there are the US drone attacks on Pakistani territory which is as clear a violation of the principle of state sovereignty as ever there was -- unless the US has declared war against this hapless country? Or is Obama remembering international law selectively? Yes, certainly parading prisoners of military conflict is against the laws of war but the US has set new standards of abuse of these laws in all the instances mentioned above so why should it expect the Taliban to observe the moral high ground in the Afghan conflict where many Pushtuns see the US as an occupying force regardless of what some foreign-based Pushtun origin analysts may state! As a child I remember the memorable words in the book, "The Water Babies": do as you would be done by. Perhaps it should be compulsory reading for all Americans aspiring to become politicians.
Clearly the Americans are suffering from an overdose of arrogance, especially when it comes to Pakistan and Afghanistan and no one exemplifies it better than Holbrooke who shows no interest in learning anything about Pakistan or its people, but comes over far too frequently to push our compliant leaders into doing US bidding or simply to show the imperial colours. While Hillary Clinton happily agrees to sell all manner of hi-tech offensive weapons systems to India as well as agreeing to two nuclear power plants' sites to built by US firms, we are being short changed again by the US even as our soldiers are being compelled into the quagmire of FATA to match the US/NATO mess up in Afghanistan. However, we have no one but our leaders to blame for their continuing subservience to the US. It seems the only thing they ever seem to learn is the arrogance displayed by Washington, so that even as they bow before Yankee diktat, they treat their own nation with an arrogant disdain. This seems to have little to do with whether we are being ruled by a dictator or a democrat -- especially in the post-9/11 environment. Musharraf's blustering was attributed to his "commando" fixation, but what about our present set of democratically-elected rulers? We have a president who sees the country as his personal fiefdom exemplified by his constant use of the word "I" and "My" -- especially when going around with the begging bowl. Worse still, the presidency and the capital have become more like party headquarters with no one paying much attention to norms and rules of conduct. Perhaps the most absurd is the unanimously elected prime minister who is inflicting burden upon economic burden on the people he is representing -- simply in order to please foreign entities like the IMF. Is this why we are desperately seeking loans from this notorious body -- to break our own nation's back? The most recent incident is that of the immoral inflated GST on POL products where the dealers, the oil companies and the government make money -- but the ordinary Pakistani is crippled. The prime minister declares, "I want to make history" in a most arrogant fashion; but does he realise he is making history already? Never have we seen such huge increases in indirect taxation; never before have we seen such huge raises in the money for legislators; never before have we seen such brazen side-stepping of rules and institutional norms and procedures -- especially in terms of appointments. The most glaring are in the diplomatic field, but tales of similar diktat in other fields' also abound. Our leaders are also continuing to make history in kowtowing before the US that began after 9/11, so that we now have US personnel supervising all our policies on the pretext that they need to see how their aid money is being spent! This is apart from the covert operations US personnel are involved in within Pakistani territory -- all being supervised by the dubious General McChrystal in Afghanistan. Are the deaths of our soldiers in FATA and the mayhem brought to this country post-9/11 not a sufficiently visible quid pro quo for the Yankee paymasters? As if all that was not enough, the US insists on "training" our military in the art of counterinsurgency -- a field in which their own record is hardly commendable -- whether one looks at Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam! Incidentally, the arrogance of McChrystal seems to know no bounds as he goes about his "win them over or kill them" approach! Perhaps he ought to revisit the recent history of what happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan! As I write this, I sit with my children in Istanbul looking at the wonderful Bosphorus gleaming a seductive blue, witnessing my daughter Imaan turn sixteen. Here in Turkey with its intense history of empires rising and crumbling, the ephemeral nature of power in the universal construct is almost palpable in the environment, but how many remember this when actually in power? Perhaps if the successive rulers of the powerful and the weak realised this, we would witness a little less of the dangerous temerity and arrogance that presently has the power wielders in its grip!
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| Posted by:john frum |
| #9 The U.S. breeds evil citizens. (sarcasm) Our very own Obama also kill flies when they pester him. object width="425" height="344"> |
| Posted by: GirlThursday 2009-07-22 18:02 |
| #8 Isn't she the broad that used to run the honeytraps for the ISI? Yep. The one and only Dr Shireen Mazari. |
| Posted by: john frum 2009-07-22 16:15 |
| #7 You claiming them as your own, are you, hon? |
| Posted by: mojo 2009-07-22 10:28 |
| #6 but what about the prisoners displayed in shackles at Guantanamo Bay? You mean those murderous thugs, who should have been killed on sight, but we're too kind to murder as they did? |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2009-07-22 09:19 |
| #5 So the US has rediscovered international law again, but what about the prisoners displayed in shackles at Guantanamo Bay? You mean the international law [Geneva Convention] that stipulates that combatants must adhere to standards to be entitled to the protection of the law and that most of the individuals in Gitmo do not qualify and should have been just shot on the field of battle? Or the ones who violate the basic tenet not to us civilians as shields? /rhetorical questions. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-07-22 08:52 |
| #4 memorable words in the book, "The Water Babies": do as you would be done by. I'm thnking that phrase has a substantially earlier origin - Jesus in the book of Luke used something like that a couple of thousand years ago and he seems to have picked it up from Leviticus (Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD), perhaps a couple of thousand years earlier still. Mazari's recommendation to read Kinglsey's words is not bad advice. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-07-22 08:08 |
| #3 Isn't she the broad that used to run the honeytraps for the ISI? |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-07-22 00:41 |
| #2 For a moment I thought he was using a redneck term, The Waterhead Babies. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-07-22 00:35 |
| #1 Notice she is in Turkey where her daughter runs less risk of being "married" and raped before execution. |
| Posted by: tipover 2009-07-22 00:35 |