It makes sense, sort of, but again it comes down to the fact that we can’t afford not to support the Paks, given the current situation both in regards terrorism and the overall status of things on the subcontinent. And they know it, so tying aid to cooperation benchmarks would be tough, as we’d be bluffing.
There was an interview on NPR the other day, IIRC, with a journalist who observed that as bad as things are in Pakistan, there’s room for things to get much worse if, worst-case scenario, the gov’t collapses. A nuclear-armed country of 170M people, the majority of whom are hostile towards the U.S. and/or India, becoming a failed state? Yeah, that’ll go real well. So it’s kinda like better the devil you know than the worse devil who is to come. OTOH, that’s basically been our Mideast policy for the last half-century and look how well that’s paid off…
A reasonable point, which to me suggests our diplomatic relations should be based on more than just guns & terrorists.
I’ve always figured our aid to Pakistan is basically a bribe to keep them from screwing around with their nukes. Any additional outcomes are just a happy bonus!
I have repeatedly asserted that our war in Afghanistan is much more about Pakistan than Afghanistan.
It’s fun to pretend that’s all one article.
That’s truly epic :)
The West has mostly been pretending that Pakistan is on “our” side, well, at least the government (by our side I mean the USA, of course).
But that’s kinda hard to keep going now. OTOH, Saudi Arabia is still a staunch ally of the US, right? Never mind where the 911 terrorists came from…
Different strokes and all that.
Chomsky’s reaction is so Chomskian, it hurts.
http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/noam_chomsky_my_reaction_to_os/
Good Godwin, Noam.
Good grief, why does anyone even read Chomsky? Yeah, I guess now we’ll never know if Bin Ladin had anything to do with 9/11 (or the Cole bombing, or any of the other Al Quaida terror attacks.) He was a patsy, I tell ya, a patsy. Don’t forget that BUSH is the real criminal here, Bin Ladin is just an innocent Muslim cleric trying to live his life in peace, watching old Lucy re-runs on his old TV (and the poor guy couldn’t even get DirectTV, since he had no phone or internet connections.)
What a posturing asshole.
Chomsky has, in the past, been a pretty insightful critic of the status quo, with some rather useful interpretations of things. I think by this point though he’s become wrapped up in his own bitterness to the extent that he warbles on in rather embarrassing ways.
The short version is that Chomsky feels that the mission to kill/capture Osama bin Laden was not legal under international law, and there is no good evidence (that is publicly available) Osama was involved in 9/11.
That doesn’t seem like a totally out to lunch position to take. Chomsky may have different opinions about how important those things are in this particular situation, but his stance seems to be fundamentally that the rule of law should always prevail.
Well, aside from the fact that Bin Laden claimed responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. A confession is a pretty huge piece of evidence.
I don’t think anyone does… especially his pseudo-intellectual fans.
He confessed only in 2004, after a few years of outright denial. In the particular context of a terrorist attack, that’s pretty unusual since typically terrorists are the first to announce their responsibility. Confessions can be useful pieces of evidence, but I think there are good questions as to whether Bin Laden would have had motives to claim responsibility whether or not he did it. This isn’t to say I have serious doubts that he planned 9/11- based on the public record it is at least clear he knew of the attacks well in advance - but Chomsky is right to point out that the public really has no basis on which to judge his guilt, other than the assurances of government.
e: just to be clear, I am personally confident Bin Laden was responsible to significant degree for 9/11.
Legally speaking I don’t think you can convict anyone on a confession alone unless you live in a police state. A confession is not evidence of anything except the fact that someone is willing to make a confession.
Not a terribly reliable confession. In my opinion though, as a facilitator and fermentor of terrorism, his taking credit for the attacks even if it was just bluster is a good enough reason to take him out, and given Pakistan’s lack of cooperation and probably collusion in harbouring him, breaking international law to kill him seems justified to me.
So I favour expedience, whereas Noam Chomsky favours unwavering adherence to principle. Unrealistic, but admirable imho.
This debate took an interesting nasty turn earlier when Bill the Dung was waving his Fuck Yeah flag violently in my face. However its becoming clear that intent will now be regarded as a all go for termination. Was it so, shrug, it won’t matter now.
When I think of this I remember the movie ‘Munich’, how Israel’s vicious circle of killings gave them more vicious enemies, and make no mistake, this wasn’t the last word in this, just like 9/11 wasn’t the start of anything, just the high water mark of a tragic history.