Oh that crazy, wacky Pakistan
From the New York Times:
Five young Muslim American men from the Washington suburbs who disappeared late last month were detained in Pakistan on Wednesday in a police raid on a house linked to a militant group, American and Pakistani officials said.
One of the men had left behind an 11-minute video calling for the defense of Muslims in conflicts with the West and suggesting that “young Muslims have to do something,” said one person who had seen the video, describing it as a farewell of sorts. Another person who viewed it called the video “disturbing,” though he said it was not a martyrdom video of the kind sometimes made by extremists planning suicide attacks.
A story like this makes me wonder how many other groups of young Muslim American men have traveled to Pakistan who weren’t stupid enough to leave a disturbing video behind when they left the United States.
No other place in the world is more dangerous to the United States than Pakistan. It’s the place Muslim terrorists go before they try to start trouble. The 911 terrorists all flew into Pakistan before traveling to Afghanistan. When they traveled to the United States, they all flew in from Pakistan. Pakistan was one of the few countries that recognized that Taliban as official government of Afghanistan.
Not only does Pakistan have nuclear weapons technology, the Pakistani scientist that developed Pakistan’s nuclear program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, reportedly worked with North Korea and other nations, assisting them in developing nuclear weapon technology.
Obama to send ‘about’ 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan
Look like President Obama is going to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Maybe.
From CBS News:
Tonight, after months of conferences with top advisors, President Obama has settled on a new strategy for Afghanistan. CBS News correspondent David Martin reports that the president will send a lot more troops and plans to keep a large force there, long term.
The president still has more meetings scheduled on Afghanistan, but informed sources tell CBS News he intends to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal most, if not all, the additional troops he is asking for.
McChrystal wanted 40,000 and the president has tentatively decided to send four combat brigades plus thousands more support troops. A senior officer says “that’s close to what [McChrystal] asked for.” All the president’s military advisers have recommended sending more troops.
So when does Obama become more of a “war president” than George W. Bush? Bush enjoyed refering to himself as the war president, but Obama already has more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush did, even during the Iraq surge.
I’m not sure what the point in this is. More troops to Afghanistan isn’t going to fix anything. At the end of the day, Afghanistan will always be Afghanistan. It’s an awful place filled with awful people. Invading Afghanistan may have made sense ten years ago, back when al Qaeda used it as a training base and before the terror attacks on 9-11. Now, al Qaeda is in neighboring Pakistan.
I just don’t see the point. Military force should only be used when there is a clear, obtainable military objective to be archived. Is that possible when it comes to Afghanistan?
I think not.
Health care reform is scarier than terrorism
Republican Representative Virginia Foxx from the fifth district of North Carolina spoke on the House floor and said that we have more to fear from health care reform than we do terrorists. Watch it:
If she said that not having access to quality, affordable health care was more of a threat than some radical Islamic fundamentalist hiding in a cave in Pakistan, I might actually agree with her. She didn’t say that. She’s not telling people to be afraid of not having access to quality health care, she is telling people to be afraid of health care reform because it will somehow infringe on our freedoms.
I don’t really understand people that actually encourage others to be scared. As an elected official, she really should be doing the complete opposite.
Eight years after 9-11, the Taliban is still making threats
Baitullah Mehsud, the 35-year-old leader of the Pakistan Taliban threatened to launch an attack on Washington that would “amaze everyone in the world”. I don’t understand how eight years after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, the Taliban is still in any position to make threats.
It boggles the mind.
What have we been doing all these years? Osama bin Laden is still at large. The Taliban was allowed to flourish and expand into neighboring Pakistan. Eight years later and they are making threats.
Pakistan behind trouble in India?
I’m not sure this is of any suprise to anyone, but officials in India are coming to the conclusion that Pakistan may be behind the terror attacks in Mumbai. From The Times of India:
While initial reports from India suggested the Mumbai carnage was a localised attack by militant malcontents in India because of the “Deccan Mujaheddin” decoy that was used to claim responsibility, evidence cited by Indian army and security experts based on phone intercepts, nature of weaponry, mode of entry by sea etc., has quickly focused the attention on Pakistan.
I’ll admit that when I first heard that the attacks were being carried out by Islamic terrorists, I immediately thought Pakistan was involved. Mostly that’s because I know that India and Pakistan don’t get along. I’m also somewhat of a religious bigot and when I hear that something blew up and people were killed, I think that Muslims and not Southern Baptists or Mormons were involved.
I’m not saying that all Muslims are terrorists. I’m only saying that most terrorists are Muslim.
Pakistan under emergancy rule
Pakistan’s president dictator Pervez Musharraf has declared emergency rule and suspended the country’s constitution. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was about to rule on the legality of General/president dictator Musharraf’s recent election victory. The court was to decide whether General/president dictator Musharraf was even eligible to run for re-election while remaining the army chief.
Evidently things weren’t looking too good for president dictator Musharraf.
Chief Justice Chaudhry and eight other judges refused to endorse the emergency order, declaring it unconstitutional. President dictator Musharraf responded by dismissing Chief Justice Chaudhry and replacing him with Supreme Court judge Abdul Hameed Dogar, one of president dictator Musharraf’s supporters.
The al-Qaida in Iraq is not the real al-Qaida
Our illustrious president spoke last night on the television about his most favorite subject – the Iraq war. From his speech:
Anbar province is a good example of how our strategy is working. Last year, an intelligence report concluded that Anbar had been lost to al-Qaida. Some cited this report as evidence that we had failed in Iraq and should cut our losses and pull out. Instead, we kept the pressure on the terrorists. The local people were suffering under the Taliban-like rule of al-Qaida, and they were sick of it. So they asked us for help.
The al-Qaida he should be worried about is the al-Qaida in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is the real al-Qaida. That is the al-Qaida that attacked the United States on 9-11. The al-Qaida in Iraq? They just call themselves that to give themselves some cheap terrorist credibility. Everyone knows that al-Qaida attacked the United States six years ago and Bush has failed to bring them to justice. Bush has failed to make them pay. Bush and his inability to make al-Qaida pay turn them into the terrorist organization that every two bit terrorist wants to be apart of.
Just because they call themselves al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida. The al-Qaida in Iraq is as much al-Qaida as American skinheads are Nazis. Sure, they may have a photo of Hitler in their mom’s basement, but that doesn’t mean they are the same bunch that fought Patton’s Third Army in the Battle of the Bulge. Those were real Nazis. They weren’t pretending to be Nazis.
Just because someone identifies themselves as a Nazi on their MySpace page doesn’t mean they are a Nazi. Just because someone in Iraq says they are al-Qaida doesn’t make them al-Qaida.
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