Ken - you wrote (and I've searched the thread a couple times and don't see it right now but it was there, it's there I tell you! ) that Pakistan looks after their interest just as the US does.

The words you used and the way you put them together created an equivalency it seemed to me but I'm not entirely fair on this subject around here. (Doesn't help when I scan a thread and can't find the quotes now does it? Maybe I'm just nuts....)

Anyway, I apologize for assuming an intent that wasn't there.

I read the use of words like "merely" and "rightfully so" (Pakistan looks after its own interests, rightfully so) as approval or at least a "benign understanding".

At any rate, there is no point engaging me on this topic because I've got knee jerk qualities, major knee jerk, on the subject. The emotional well is poisoned on this subject, I'm not fair on it, it's better to ignore me.

During the Cold War, and as a younger person, it was painful, personally painful, to watch many people forget the US' anti-colonial and revolutionary history and to lose all feeling for a people struggling toward something other than colonialism simply because it was outside a Western context and because their choices with regard to the Soviet Union were, IMO, often foolish.

The well is emotionally poisoned and it won't be unpoisoned. It's not your fault, it's not anyone's fault, it's just what happened.

And I loathed the Soviet Union. My book shelves have plenty of Soviet dissident books on them. To read about those camps or the security states and what it did to the people!

But other people mattered, too. I agree with everything Bob says about self-representation.

Anyway, I apologize. You are experienced enough and savvy enough people to know what is happening. You've worked with various diaspora and other nationals. You know sometimes it's all uphill because of trust issues.

I am sorry.