Yes re Hudood. Nevertheless, the last night you could drink a legal beer in the Pindi Club was during Zulf Bhutto's reign...
Cheers,
Mike.
Rex--Islamic Law in Pakistan
Yes re Hudood. Nevertheless, the last night you could drink a legal beer in the Pindi Club was during Zulf Bhutto's reign...
Cheers,
Mike.
But makes it rather fun to drink the "special tea" in the Chinese restaurants.Originally Posted by Mike in Hilo
Cheers,
Joe
Just because you haven't been hit yet does NOT mean you're doing it right.
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." President Dwight D. Eisenhower
It pays to remember who sponsored Lashkar e-Toiba, Jaish al-Muhammad, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal which even prior to the Lal Masjid incident was "Talibanizing" the NWFP as well as Balochistan, and of course our good friends the Taliban. It certainly was not any of the civilian rulers of Pakistan, whether Nawaz Sharif or Benazir Bhutto. It was the Pakistani military who funded, sponsored, recruited, trained, and armed the militant groups which now wage war upon it and their own country.
I have been out surfing political side of the blogesphere and I was amazed to see some of the stuff that has been written about this woman. Over at HuffPo she has all but been canonized. She apparently was a brave martyr who gave her life for freedom, I'm not really sure whose freedom; Bush and Cheney somehow figure prominently in her death though it is unclear how or even why. I had no idea. Has anyone called Rome yet?
SFC W
Last edited by Uboat509; 12-31-2007 at 06:54 PM.
Regardless of what the libs at Huffington Post are saying, I would not view responses to Bhutto's assassination in solely partisan terms here. Liberal interventionists on the left and neoconservatives on the right are hard to distinguish between on this matter. The policies of actively interfering in the workings of other nations for the purpose of imposing democracy - policies promoted by both camps – have a direct connection to the assassination of Ms. Bhutto.
U.S. Brokered Bhutto's Return to Pakistan, By Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler. The Washington Post, December 28, 2007.
The return of Bhutto may have been more window dressing then substantive, but this window dressing would be necessary to remain congruent with our policies of spreading freedom and democracy.The turning point to get Musharraf on board was a September trip by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte to Islamabad. "He basically delivered a message to Musharraf that we would stand by him, but he needed a democratic facade on the government, and we thought Benazir was the right choice for that face," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and National Security Council staff member now at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy.
"Musharraf still detested her, and he came around reluctantly as he began to recognize this fall that his position was untenable," Riedel said. The Pakistani leader had two choices: Bhutto or former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Musharraf had overthrown in a 1999 military coup. "Musharraf took what he thought was the lesser of two evils," Riedel said.
The Realist persuasion, though less frequently heard from, offers an viable alternative to these policies. Here are two realist perspectives on the Bhutto matter worthreading:
Enough with Democracy!, By Robert Baer. Time, Dec. 27, 2007.
The common denominator between Pakistan, Gaza, Lebanon and Iraq is an ongoing war, wars without end, wars that poison democracy. The Bush Administration is particularly culpable in creating the chaos in Pakistan because it forced a premature reconciliation between President Musharraf and Bhutto; it forced Musharraf to lift martial law; it showered money on Musharraf to fight a war that was never popular in Pakistan. The Administration could not understand that it can't have both in Pakistan — a democracy and a war on terrorism.
The immediate reaction in the United Sates will be visceral: al-Qaeda killed Bhutto because she was too secular and too close to the United States, an agent of American imperialism. It will be of some comfort that the front lines of terrorism are thousands of miles away; that we are fighting "them" there rather than in lower Manhattan; that there are heroes like Bhutto ready to fight and die for democracy, moderation and rationality.
But this misses the point. The real problem in Pakistan undermining democracy is that it is a deeply divided, artificial country, created by the British for their expediency rather than for the Pakistanis. Independent Pakistan has always been dominated by a strong military. And democracy will only be nurtured when the wars on its border come to an end, whether in Afghanistan or Kashmir, and the need for the military to meddle in politics is removed. And never before.
Bush's best-laid plans: The Bhutto assassination demonstrates anew the folly of the administration's efforts to manage history, By Andrew J. Bacevich. The Los Angeles Times, December 30, 2007.
At the beginning of his second term, Bush spoke confidently of the United States sponsoring a global democratic revolution "with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world." Ever since that hopeful moment, developments across the greater Middle East -- above all, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and on the West Bank -- have exposed the very real limits of U.S. wisdom and power.
Now the virtual impotence of the U.S. in the face of the crisis enveloping Pakistan -- along with its complicity in creating that crisis -- ought to discredit once and for all any notions of America fixing the world's ills.
Bush dreamed of managing history. It turns out that he cannot even manage Pakistan. Thus does the Author of Liberty mock the pretensions of those who presume to understand his intentions and to interpret his will.
I was on huffington post last week and I was afraid they were going to take away my conservative curmudgeons card.
Sam Liles
Selil Blog
Don't forget to duck Secret Squirrel
The scholarship of teaching and learning results in equal hatred from latte leftists and cappuccino conservatives.
All opinions are mine and may or may not reflect those of my employer depending on the chance it might affect funding, politics, or the setting of the sun. As such these are my opinions you can get your own.
The Economist, 3 Jan 08: Pakistan: A Country on the Brink
....It is Pakistan's particular misfortune that its progress tends to be measured against exaggerated doomsday prophecies. Three are most popular. The first, which is as old as Pakistan itself, decrees that the place will fragment (history is not encouraging: born of partition in 1947, the country lost its eastern component in 1971). The other two are more recent. One is that Pakistan, like neighbouring Iran, will fall to Islamists—perhaps even of Mr Mehsud's vicious kind. A related fear is that terrorists will get hold of the country's nuclear arsenal. All three nightmares are very unlikely in the short term, but may be increasingly possible.
To be clear, Pakistan is bitterly divided. Punjab dominates the economy and the army. In other parts of the country military rule—which Pakistanis have known for over half their history—is considered Punjabi rule. Every decade or so, in Sindh, Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), Punjabi troops are dispatched to quash an insurgency. The army is currently attempting this task in both Baluchistan and NWFP, on several fronts. NWFP has always been so rebellious that no Pakistani government has dared to call it by its logical name, Pushtunistan, for fear of rallying the Pushtun tribesmen who live there. But the army is still quite strong enough to prevent any chunk of Pakistan from splitting off.
The other prophecies are more sobering—given the current security crisis on the Afghan frontier, and a history of institutional Islamism within the army itself. The American-backed campaign in north-western Pakistan has gone badly. It has almost certainly spawned much more radicalism and terror than it has ended. Baker Atyani, head of the al-Arabiya television office in Islamabad, says he receives two or three videotapes every week from local and foreign jihadist groups along the frontier—many more than he can broadcast. Clearly, Pakistan has a long-term problem with militancy. And the prevalence of jihadist sympathies within the army also remains a concern. For whatever reason, many soldiers on the frontier are demoralised: at least several hundred have surrendered to untrained bandits. Nonetheless, despite these concerns, a strong majority of Pakistanis remain moderate.....
UK offers help for investigation
Been off-line for three days and have picked up that Pakistan has accepted an offer from the UK, for the Metropolitan Police to assist the investigation. The Met often get such calls, in terrorism and other cases. One piece of BBC film footage showed the actual scene had been washed clean, with a firehose, which led President Musharraf to comment it was not what he had ordered.
Scene management is one of the standard investigation tactics, which the Met has great experience of - so that is probably lost. Second comes acquiring all possible still & video footage (including un-broadcast) and that will take time. The comes interviewing all possible witnesses, preferably id'd at the time by those attending the scene - unlikely I fear.
The UK has just upgraded the post of a CTLO in Islamabad (Counter-Terrorist Liasion Officer), one hopes his advice has already been given to the Pakistani authorities and he is ex-Met.
From this armchair a very long uphill struggle and then there's the politics!
davidbfpo
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