Filibuster CartoonsTitle: Pakistan's track record (click to view)
Date: May 7, 2011
Now that much of the giddy euphoria over the murder of Osama Bin Laden has started to melt away, attention is shifting to what exactly the world's most wanted terrorist was doing before he died, and more importantly,
where.
By now, we all know that Bin Laden was killed in an opulent and well-guarded mansion in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, which, as we also all know, is a wealthy and important community containing, among other things, the "Pakistani equivalent of West Point." In recent days, the White House has also clarified that no, they didn't cooperate with — or even inform — the Pakistani government or army before the US Navy SEALs staged their daring helicopter raid on the Bin Laden compound, despite the fact that this technicality means the raid was actually an outright invasion of sorts.
Added up, the circumstances paint a dire picture of a wary America who no longer trusts, or even respects, its nominal Pakistani ally, and with evidently good reason. Though the official Pakistani line is that "no one knew" that Osama was living two hours from their capital in a city swarming with enlisted and retired soldiers, such an explanation reveals more about what Pakistanis
care to know, rather than what they actually do. I heard a good line the other day where someone speculated as to how much more focused Pakistan's attention would have been if, say, a gang of
Indian plotters had been rumoured to be squatting in the Bin Laden fortress.
US intelligence has long suspected — and indeed, known — that substantial, powerful sectors of the Pakistani ruling establishment are sympathetic to radical Islamism of the Al-Qaeda flavor, and that these sympathizers, in the military, intelligence agencies, and local government, actively conspire to internally sabotage that sorts of anti-terrorism maneuvers that Pakistan routinely claims to be engaged in. Indeed, it seems fears of sabotage more than anything else explain why America was so disinterested in cooperating with Pakistani forces in staging the Bin Laden raid, even though the alternative — unilateral action — violated Pakistan's sovereignty, and, as some have argued, possibly international law as well.
Of course, if we accept the premise that Pakistan has become the sort of thing international studies majors dub a "failed state," then perhaps Pakistan doesn't really have any viable sovereignty left to violate in the first place. Maybe the country is simply so chaotic and poorly-governed at this point that unilateral dips across the Afghan border are really the only practical way to fight terrorist plots in the region, and that Pakistan, like world peace, would be a great idea of anyone actually tried it.
If President Obama and company do draw that sort of conclusion, it will obviously be very difficult to justify the continuation of the roughly $3 billion-a-year Pakistan receives care of the United States taxpayer. Actually, I'd be curious to know what "base" standard of value-for-money governs these sorts of arrangements in the first place. Since 2002, Pakistan has received over $18 billion US in all, and in exchange... well, I guess they
could have crowned Osama their king or something. Maybe we should be thankful for that? Watching former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf on FOX the other night, this was basically his defense. Pakistan never gets credit for all the terrorists we're
not sheltering he said lamely, citing the familiar "things could be worse" mantra of many-a faulty US-backed despot.
But at what point does the line separating "bad" from "worse" become so hazy as to be virtually meaningless? If Pakistan is already doing every single thing on the "War on Terror ally" checklist aggressively and deliberately wrong, then why bother to pay for the service?
CKA Super Elite 
CKA Super Elite 
