Arrogant U.S. Misses the Message From Pakistan’s People

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091027_arrogant_us_misses_the_message_from_pakistans_people/?ln

Arrogant U.S. Misses the Message From Pakistan’s People


Posted on Oct 27, 2009

By William Pfaff

There has always been in American foreign policy circles a virus called arrogance, caused by the hereditary assumption that Americans know better than others. Surprisingly, this does not always prove the case, but the condition seems highly resistant to treatment, even by experience.

There seems a high probability that the disease has struck Obama administration policy circles dealing with Pakistan. (We will leave aside the case of American relations with Afghanistan.) This administration came to office with a conviction that the Afghanistan problem is a problem because it actually is a Pakistan problem, Pakistan being a large country possessing nuclear weapons and a great many Pashtuns, who are the people from whom Taliban are recruited.

Afghanistan is a country with one-sixth Pakistan’s population, with a great many Pashtuns too, harboring only a 100 or so members of al-Qaida (if we are to believe the American national security adviser, Gen. James Jones) whereas popular opinion in Washington is that Pakistan is rife with them, and the country on its way to becoming a “breeding ground” for terrorists who wish to invade the West, blow it up with nuclear weapons obtained from Pakistani stocks, and establish a new global terrorist caliphate amid the ruins.

It is unknown whether Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, visiting Pakistan this week, shares so alarmed a view, but she will hear a lot about the damage American pressures are doing to Pakistan, and how fearful the Pakistan populace is, not of the Taliban and al-Qaida, but of the United States.

According to a New York Times article this week, from Jane Perlez in Islamabad, the new fighting there against Islamists “has pleased the Americans, but it left large parts of Pakistan under siege, as militants once sequestered in the country’s tribal areas take their war to Pakistan’s cities. Many Pakistanis blame the United States for the country’s rising instability.”


A recent and serious poll found that 11 percent of the Pakistani respondents say that al-Qaida is the greatest threat to Pakistan today, 18 percent said India, and 59 percent said the United States. This was in August, before the most recent offensives of the Pakistan army against the Islamists in Waziristan and the Swat Valley, and the retaliatory city bombings that subsequently have taken place.
A vocal part of the Pakistan population clearly doesn’t want the United States in the country, and it doesn’t even want the aid the United States is sending. A notorious fact in the past has been that civilian and popular opposition to the U.S. was based on the assumption that American aid was meant to keep military governments in place and buy military cooperation with American policy.


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I think that's what's going to happen in South Asia.

Further, our dollar is going to collapse, and we will have to engage in a very painful withdrawal from that region, leaving it worse off than when we entered it.

I mean, I don't wish for this to happen, but Obama is not a strong leader, and he's going to approve whatever the Pentagon wants to do.

we just don't get it...

9/11 --> Afghanistan --> IRAQ --> North Korea (oops, too scary) --> IRAN (oops, too many figured it out) --> Afghanistan --> Pakistan (AAHH, found one folks will fall for....)

and on and on and on....

:wtf:

We must incinerate them. Pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army - until they love us.

If our invasions provoke "instability" what other rational response can there be but escalation? Escalation upon escalation: we know what's best for them and only want them to want it like we want it for them. If they would just decide to love us this could all stop tomorrow. They'll see we are the kindest bravest warmest most wonderful country in the whole world.

Obama sends more troops in? I'm just wandering what to expect you to do for the man keeping his word?

But, I don't owe any fealty to the party when it pursues policies that I differ with. That's why they have different names on ballots.

around and help with other issues after losing this argument.

It was a given that regardless of who got elected that this would be happening in the primary...unless you are one of those who believed that Dennis K, was really running for President.

Just so the politicians and generals can avoid being embarrassed by having to acknowledge another lost war.

The sooner you get use to that the better.

And, then weep crocodile tears in front of it as a justification for the next bit of insanity.

And a good but not adequate tribute to those who have fought and died so you could spend your days on the internet typing about how such a lost cause this all is.

that those 22 Americans died in the last two days so I could type on the internet.
BTW, do you want to buy a bridge?

:rofl:

cannon fodder in it.:rofl:

A free republic type response.

Why do people against the war hate America?

"I'm going to go and die so that those folks can have the internet."

Good lord, you really are naive.

Maybe I could wrap my car in them. Or maybe I'll give some money to a good charity to support the troops?

http://www.homesforvets.com/

I would ask you to contribute but I doubt you would. Don't want to feed the war machine and all that.

I was a "troop". How about you?

in Afghanistan right now. Of coarse you are welcome to disbelieve that as I am welcome to disbelieve that you ever served.

Well, from the way you glorify the military and war, it's obvious that you, sure as hell, never spent much time in a barracks or a trench.

is going on more than anyone on the internet, and they are all for a surge. So who should I trust? Them or you? I think I will stand with them.

They're very trustworthy sources for what happens in needless wars.

"War would end if the dead could return." - Stanley Baldwin

"There are not fifty ways of fighting, there's only one, and that's to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases."

Andre Malraux

When Barack says so? Or what?

pulling out. You know kinda like we did in Iraq.

??

will continue to but they thought they could handle it now and we respected there wishes and started pulling out. Both the current and possible Presidents to be of Afghanistan welcome more US troops. I believe we owe Afghanistan anything they ask for.

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men (and women) who refuse military service." Albert Einstein

"It is our duty still to endeavor to avoid war; but if it shall actually take place, no matter by whom brought on, we must defend ourselves. If our house be on fire, without inquiring whether it was fired from within or without, we must try to extinguish it."
Thomas Jefferson

.. no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy."
--Chief Justice Robert L. Jackson, at Nuremberg, August 12, 1945

"leaving the party" and "supporting the current Democratic administration."

Obviously. :eyes:

This is one of the reasons why I have never been a supporter. Because, when he "keeps his word," he's wrong.

The hate us for our Empire by the point of a gun. US Get OUT!!!

for the people of Pakistan and we are trying to assist them and build their trust. This will take time. It is some of the military and the Taiban who are spreading the lies and making the people fearful.
We have got to be able to monitor our enemies and we want Pakistan on our side.
Personally, I think some people are buying into the ruse being pushed by the military who does not want its government to control what it is doing. These articles do nothing but undermine our efforts to build allies and rid the world of the power now held by terrorist groups in Pakistan.