[NYTr] Calls for Intervention in Pakistan: Madness Compounding Madness

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Counterpunch - Jan 2, 2008
http://www.counterpunch.org/leupp01022008.html


Madness Compounding Madness:

Calls for Intervention in Pakistan

By GARY LEUPP

"Al-Qaeda is now as much a Pakistani phenomenon as it is an Arab or
foreign element," declares Najam Sethi, editor of Pakistan's Daily
Times. It is not just the Arabs, Uzbeks and other foreigners who fled
from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the wake of the U.S. invasion of late
2001. It draws in Pakistani tribesmen, Punjabis, Urdu speakers. What
was once a group foreigners (numbers unknown) enjoying Pashtun
hospitality under the Taliban in Afghanistan has struck roots in
neighboring Pakistan. It's hard to say whether or not Pakistan is now
its main base, since it is also reviving in regions of Afghanistan
quietly retaken by its Taliban hosts over the last couple years. But it
seems the people of the frontier provinces of Pakistan, with deep
ethnic and cultural ties to Afghanistan, are deeply upset about the
cowboy imperialism of the U.S. that has brought so much suffering to
the region. These provinces are often described as "lawless," since the
Pakistani state has never really brought them under central control and
has relied upon tribal leaders to maintain stability. But now they are
the most unstable areas in a country increasingly destabilized in the
aftermath of Benazir Bhutto's assassination.

For all this, we have to thank George W. Bush. Was his administration
unaware of the fact that Islamist militants driven from Afghanistan
would receive a welcome across the border? That both the Taliban and
al-Qaeda would find this zone a prime recruiting ground? That the
continuing occupation of Afghanistan and "counterinsurgency" war would
insure high sympathy for the Islamist forces? That the government of
Pervez Musharraf, caving into U.S. threats and cooperating with the
U.S. imperial project, would find itself weakened, ever more despised
by its people? That the dictator having seized power in a coup would
not seek, under stress, to further augment his power by such measures
as tampering with the judiciary and declaring martial law? That such
measures would only deepen the Pakistani crisis?

Did Bush, or the neocons surrounding him and whispering in his ears,
expect that the entire Afghan people would be grateful for the U.S.
bombing, occupation, restoration of the Northern Alliance and
installation of a powerless puppet in Kabul? That the neighboring
Pakistanis would share their joy and appreciation for the American
presence? That the Taliban would just disappear? That Pakistan's
military and Inter-Service Intelligence (having helped create the
Taliban and maintaining warm ties with it, but forced to sever ties
with it lest---as the Americans threatened---they be "bombed back to
the Stone Age") would following their about-face eagerly make war on
these former allies and coreligionists?

I cannot answer these questions. I'm inclined to think Bush may have
really thought he could get away with his invasion of Afghanistan (and
then Iraq) without producing all this blowback. I'm less inclined to
think that the bulk of the neocons (recognizing some differences among
them) were so naïve. Frankly, I don't think they care that much.
They're willing to generate infinite "create chaos" in the Muslim
world, repeating on Fox News with their affected learnedness, smug
impatience with conventional wisdom, and general contempt for the
"reality mode" that things are going well in the "war on terror." That
the U.S. needs to courageously, heroically take further action, such as
an attack on Iran, or strikes against targets in Pakistan, to produce
more chaos.

The recent NIE has apparently, to the deep chagrin of the neocons
praying for an Iran attack, reduced the likelihood that that attack
will occur. (I don't want to suggest we lower our guard against such an
eventuality, but plainly conflicts within the elite have stymied the
neocons' effort to produce regime change in Tehran during Bush's
presidency.) But now some of them are campaigning for intervention in
Pakistan to fight the Islamic extremism Bush policy itself daily
fosters. This is their madness at its peak. Pakistan is no Iraq, bled
for a decade by sanctions before invasion. Nor is it even Iran, hobbled
by limited sanctions grudgingly imposed by the world as a result of
U.S. arm-twisting. It's a country of 165 million people twice the size
of California, bordering India, China and Iran as well as Afghanistan.
Its military is the seventh largest in the world, and of course,
possesses nuclear weapons. The top brass, while secular and often
western-educated, has strong links to Islamists. Among the masses,
admiration for Osama bin Laden is high.

The editors of the New York Times, that "newspaper of record" that
brought us the massive fear-mongering disinformation campaign about
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, has following Bhutto's
assassination editorialized that the Bush administration needs to do
something about Pakistan. It has, the editors declare, the "option of
using American prestige and resources to fortify Pakistan's badly
battered democratic institutions. . . must now call for new rules to
assure a truly democratic vote"---as though the unelected U.S.
president has any business telling other countries how to conduct fair
elections. "The United States cannot afford to have Pakistan unravel
any further American policy must now be directed at building a strong
democracy in Pakistan." Is not the subtext here that if Musharraf
disappoints the administration, he should lose aid, and thus have less
ability to fight the bourgeoning Islamist forces in his country,
producing more unraveling, thus providing a pretext for U.S. military
action?

In a perhaps not unrelated development, neocon and chief Iraq War
propagandist Bill Kristol has been hired by the New York Times as a
columnist in 2008. He told Fox News last July, "I think the president's
going to have to take military action there over [in Pakistan] in the
next few weeks or months. Bush has to disrupt that [al-Qaeda]
sanctuary. I think, frankly, we won't even tell Musharraf. We'll do
what we have to do in Western Pakistan and Musharraf can say, 'Hey,
they didn't tell me.'" Notice how he leaves the Pakistani people and
their reaction to such "action" -- military aggression against a
sovereign state -- entirely out of the picture.

This is madness compounding madness, offered as respectable commentary
in the mainstream press.


[Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors:
The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial
Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is
also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on
Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached
at: gleupp at granite.tufts.edu ]