30 Jun 2008
Hugh Fitzgerald
And the $30 billion lavished on Pakistan since 9/11/2001? Economc aid, military aid, debt forgiveness, all intended to buy, or at least to rent for a long time, Pakistani cooperation?
Don't believe the press reports, dutifully repeating a sum about one-third that size, because once you add debt forgiveness and other amounts the government has carefully not counted. For more on this see the calculations made a year ago by the specialist on Pakistan Selig Harrison.
30 Jun 2008
Special Guest
I'm no apologist for the Bush Administration, far from it. And make no mistake, they have compounded mistakes with ever more egregious mistakes.
But what the Times will never acknowledge is that the inability to eradicate "extremism" in Dar al-Islam is not the responsibility of the Bush Administration, or any other dhimmi. Talibanism has not been eradicated, or even weakened, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (and Decapistan and HellHoleCrapistan and all the other 'stans) because it is not "Talibanism" we are resisting, it is Islam. It is a 1400 year old religion, the second largest religion in the world, practiced by over a billion people. Islam mandates the "extremist" behavior that the Taliban carry out in the name of their religion. We see equally despicable groups in Iran, India, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Somalia, Russian Caucases, Malaysia, and elsewhere. A Taliban by any other name smells just as foul. They each have their own name, their own supposedly "nationalist struggle", but in fact they are all just Muslims, carrying out the unambiguous instructions of their Allah: to strive against the unbelievers wherever they find them.
The kufirs, today's kufirs specifically, have made many mistakes. But the only people responsible for the rise of Islam (and therefore Islamic violence and intolerance) are the people who practice it. We cannot continue turning a religious attack on all kufirs into a playground for partisan political skirmishes.
The Times should keep the focus where it belongs, though in the tradition of Walter Duranty, they will never allow it to go there in the first place.
