To put it bluntly, this will not work out well.
Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday outside a large gathering of her supporters where a suicide bomber also killed at least 14, doctors and a spokesman for her party said.
While Bhutto appeared to have died from bullet wounds, it was not immediately clear if she was shot or if her wounds were caused by bomb shrapnel.
You think maybe if we didn’t keep dawdling while Al Qaeda grows stronger inside Pakistan, things would be more stable there.
You think maybe if we didn’t keep dawdling while Al Qaeda grows stronger inside Pakistan, things would be more stable there.
Sorry, Oliver, but this is a very simplistic view of what’s happening in Pakistan right now. You don’t even have a shred of proof that Bhutto’s assassination had to do with al Qaida, nor can you state why “we” can stabilize Pakistan in any way.
Pakistan is looking at a much scarier version of the political problems that led to the Ayatollah Khomeini’s rise in Iran–a growing economic gap between the rich and poor combined with a tenacious undercurrent of Islamic fundamentalism being touted as the answer to all problems. Our current foreign policy of “we know better than you and will force you to acknowledge that at gunpoint if necessary” will do nothing but strengthen the fundamentalist resolve to push back.
Our attempts to influence Iran led directly to Ahmedinajad. I’m sure that the usual gaggle will be around shortly to smack me upside the head for daring to say that anything America does is not pure and right at all times and in all situations. Go to, gaggle.
I’ve got to me2 Spider here. There’s a long history in Musharraf’s Pakistan of political opponents getting dead either directly by, or complicit with, Musharraf’s security forces.
And thanks to Shrubya’s “kill ‘em all” foreign policy, seen as so serious by our media, we have zero political capital to do a damn thing about it. Anythingt Shrub says is met by a big “Fuck off, pig!” from the rest of the world.
As if we need another instance of conservatives betraying America.
You don’t think that getting rid of Bin Laden in Pakistan would allow that country to be more stable? I do.
You didn’t say “getting rid of Bin Laden,” and regardless, al Qaida’s infrastructure has grown beyond Bin Laden. I still want to see Bin Laden captured or killed, if only to close the book on that chapter of our current state of war, but you do realize that Bin Laden alone isn’t “running” the chaos in Pakistan, right?
But no, it would not render Pakistan more stable. Bin Laden himself means less to the Pakistani people than the current state of poverty, tensions with India, rampant government corruption, and, beyond the borders, the seeming conquest of Muslim lands by Western superpowers. Remove al-Qaida from Pakistan…somehow…and you’ve still got an angry, discontented population being manipulated by either the promise of political power or the promise of salvation from radical clerics who in fact have no affiliation with al-Qaida.
Things didn’t get bad (anti-US wise) until we invaded Iraq.
Definitely. There was pro-Taliban sentiment in Pakistan after the invasion of Afghanistan, but this was mostly from the hardliners. After we invaded Iraq, the moderates jumped on board with the Bin Laden message–because he’d warned the Muslim world that the Christian West was out to invade the Islamic world and take it over, and suddenly his ravings made sense.
I wonder if the GOP candidates who are so gung-ho about saying ours is a “Christian Nation” think about how that plays outside of the campaign trail.
Something smells fishy here, though.
From Crooks & Liars:
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence, right? Both candidates in opposition to Musharif getting attacked the same day?
Damn those meddling kids!