OpEdNews » A DIFFICULT ALLY AND A DANGEROUS ENEMY

Tags for This Article:

Populum Tag Cloud Control Panel
	Fine tune your search to access content

Articles	Links
Diaries	Products
Events	All

All time
Last 6 mos
Last month
Last week
Last 24 hrs

From:
Month Day Year

To:
Month Day Year

Alphabet Popularity	Count ON Count OFF
This Level	Sub-levels

Tag(s): Diplomacy; Foreign Policy Failure Pakistan; Musharraf; Pakistan; Pakistan; Pervez Musharraf
Add to My Group

November 11, 2007 at 12:03:32

A DIFFICULT ALLY AND A DANGEROUS ENEMY

by Jim Freeman Page 1 of 1 page(s)

www.opednews.com

SAVE FAVORITES

VIEW FAVORITES

View Ratings | Rate It

Musharraf Goes Splat

By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, November 11, 2007; B07

Pakistan is an unusual country -- a nation capable of looking into the abyss, pausing briefly to consider its options and then jumping headfirst into darkness. The willingness to go splat has been the backbone of Pakistan's national survival strategy for its 60-year history.

Whether rattling nuclear rockets at a much more powerful India or allowing terrorist networks to use Pakistani territory to mount plots against Afghan, American and British targets, the country's leaders have raised political blackmail to a national and international art form. Oppose or ignore us at our -- and your -- peril is the unofficial national motto of Islamabad.

. . . Successive leaders, military and civilian, have encouraged or tolerated the world's most damaging spread of nuclear technology and international terrorism from Pakistani territory. They have encouraged or tolerated massive corruption at home, some of it funded by foreign aid from the United States and other countries frightened of the consequences of not providing it. They have also preferred to see Afghanistan engulfed in suicide bombings rather than become a stable neighbor . . .

--read entire editorial--

________________________________________________________________

Can't say that I always agree with Hoagland, but he seems spot-on with this analysis. I had to do a double-take on his "successive leaders" comment to know if he was talking about us or them--'us' certainly as neglectful as various Pakistani regimes.

I've worn out my keyboard ranting about our president's fixation on nuclear 'possibles' such as North Korea and Iran, while nuclear reality Pakistan has always been the least stable of the bunch. America is a self-styled arbiter of the world's morals, yet stunningly willing to snuggle up to the most vicious and tyrannical governments when it suits our short-term interest.

Maybe it's Wall Street, the quarterly report, consumer advertising or our willingness to reduce all issues to sound-bites that encourages our national allegiance to the short term.

Whatever the reason, one wonders how often and through how many decades we need be bit in the ankle before we learn. Diplomacy, like life itself, is a long term project and resistant to presidential terms--ours or theirs.

* For more in-depth articles by Jim on Washington at Work, check out Opinion-Columns.com

	Contact Author
	Contact Editor
	View Other Articles by Author

Bookmark this page: (what's this?)

(More...)

6 comments

Wanna be member of the anti-word police, author, columnist, activist and muckraker extraordinaire. Author of:Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building the Future for Black AmericaUrban Asylum: Politics, Lunatics and the Refrigerator Woman Contributing editor: (works in progress)Red, Black, Brown & Green: Ethnic People and the Move to Economic Self-Suficiency Screaming Doors (novel) Screaming Doors
M. DavisWanna be member of the anti-word police, author, columnist, activist and muckraker extraordinaire. Author of:Land, Legacy and Lynching: Building the Future for Black AmericaUrban Asylum: Politics, Lunatics and the Refrigerator Woman Contributing editor: (works in progress)Red, Black, Brown & Green: Ethnic People and the Move to Economic Self-Suficiency Screaming Doors (novel) Screaming Doors

The descendants of your murdered keyboards will get you

I've been known to kill a few keyboards, also. if you are a serial KB killer, I suggest you head to Big Lot/Odd Lots or the local Goodwill and pick up a few--around 5 bucks a pop.

One can never have too few keyboards or condoms in these terrible times/

I have sense learned not to have any kinds of liquids within arm's reach of the KB and, to from time to time, turn the sucker upside down and pound on it a few times--that loosens the cookie and cracker crums, assorted bits of hair and generally displaces the few critters who are bold enough to try using my KB as their flop house.

by M. Davis (43 articles, 2 quicklinks, 14 diaries, 152 comments) on Sunday, November 11, 2007 at 6:51:50 PM

57Yo m I'm a "been there, done that! Bought the tee shirt,to hide the scars!" type of person Ive workedï¿½many jobs fromï¿½a chicken slaughterer to managing a branch of a multinational and many jobs in between.Raised in colonial PNG Left School 16,Grad Hi school 22 Night School, University 36ï¿½ BBus (majored in Psyche and Marketing), Dip Comp prog and project Mmnt.at 50 I've been in 48 different community org ,23 on board with 18 prez or deputy prez.First social campaign at 17 for the aborigine...

to see more of bio, click on member name
Andris57Yo m I'm a "been there, done that! Bought the tee shirt,to hide the scars!" type of person Ive workedï¿½many jobs fromï¿½a chicken slaughterer to managing a branch of a multinational and many jobs in between.Raised in colonial PNG Left School 16,Grad Hi school 22 Night School, University 36ï¿½ BBus (majored in Psyche and Marketing), Dip Comp prog and project Mmnt.at 50 I've been in 48 different community org ,23 on board with 18 prez or deputy prez.First social campaign at 17 for the aborigine...

to see more of bio, click on member name

Pakistan

Pakistan's problems are complex as they are fundemental.

Tribal, cultural, regional and religious connections make for a country that to the outside looks like 10lb of cooked spaghetti syle alliances. A veritable pit of vipers. The underlying issue remains the abject poverty of the vast majority of the people who subscibe to the old ways in order to survive and give their lives meaning. The minority (ruling class) on the other hand seem to be totally employed in their own web of unconscientable ,insatiable greed and corruption .

The help it needs is not military its needs to raise the standing of the average people.

But given the vested interests and desparation rying to create a coherant stable country here will be like tring to knit a vest in 'razor wire' with tooth picks. But we must do something. If there is to be a nuclear armageddon it is most likely going to be from the overarmed and (saving)face sensitive east.

by Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 531 comments) on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 1:51:47 AM

Jim Freeman's op-ed pieces and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The New York Review, The Jon Stewart Daily Show and a number of magazines.
Jim FreemanJim Freeman's op-ed pieces and commentaries have appeared in The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, International Herald-Tribune, CNN, The New York Review, The Jon Stewart Daily Show and a number of magazines.

There is so much irony

in your comment, it took me a moment to realize you were writing about Pakistan and not the U.S.

by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 51 quicklinks, 220 diaries, 382 comments) on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 10:02:34 AM

tsk tsk

Jim

I hadn't thought of it that way before. Possibly true but didn't your mum tell you to play nice? :-)

PS if you don't laugh at the state of things you'd cry. I lament that most of what we've learnt since the 60's about society is that not much has changed we're only more aware of it today. Most are starving while the priveledged are implacably divided and simply want to indulge threatening to blow everyone up.

by Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 531 comments) on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 1:58:07 PM

Since the 60s is pretty conservative

when we're constantly reminded of pre-Christian quotes from Roman and Greek times that nail our humanity as not having changed all that much.

I agree with you, but I wonder if we are collectively better aware or only selectively.

Best--

by Jim Freeman (108 articles, 51 quicklinks, 220 diaries, 382 comments) on Monday, November 12, 2007 at 4:43:04 PM

Absolutely

I had a 'far side" tee shirt with a picture of a student asking "to be excused because his brain was full now!" I think theres a lot of this. There's so many things that crowd our minds and demand attention today.

Everything have to be simple dramatic spectacular to get through the sensory overload.

In the past there was still the same issues of humanity and ethical caring governmet et al but we were minus the 21st century 'noise'. I mean that in the sense of white noise the background noise that drowns out even the most horrific events.
Regards

by Andris (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 531 comments) on Tuesday, November 13, 2007 at 7:42:42 AM