Surprise, surprise! Pakistani spy agency helps terrorists…news from the Middle East…
I don’t like to gloat, especially in these circumstances, but I told you so. The U.S. government, through the loose lips of Mr. Mullins, has finally spoken the words—Pakistan is playing a duplicitous role in the war against terrorism. This was no secret, at least not for me. All the evidence was there. Every sane person on the planet knew this was happening, but no one in officialdom would or could admit to it. Why do you think we went after OBL without telling the Pakistanis? Why do you think they shouted “foul” at not being told? The claim that the spy agency is helping terrorists is no surprise. What is a surprise is that the Afghan government is so weak that the spy agency’s bloody fist can strike all the way to Kabul and the U.S embassy.
There are various reasons for the two-faced behavior of the Pakistani government. The most important one, of course, is that they are no longer in control. Muslim fundamentalists control Pakistan. They do it stealthily so that their government can continue receiving all that aid from the stupid Americans. Pakistan has no oil like the duplicitous Saudis, so they can’t just thumb their nose at the U.S. The Saudis openly support their madrasas; the Pakistanis secretly support their radicals. It amounts to the same thing: bad news for the U.S.
There is another reason for the Pakistanis to support terrorist elements. They are ruthless killers that are useful as shock troops against India. The earlier terrorist attacks in India were clear evidence for this. Moreover, in a war between Pakistan and India, Pakistanis fear that the U.S. will take the side of India. We tend to do stupid things like that too.
I’m 100% certain that we shouldn’t take any sides in the Middle East. Let’s consider Palestine. Turkey seems to want more influence in the region by supporting Palestine and criticizing Israel; Palestine’s U.N. plea for statehood is questionable, given that they still refuse to recognize Israel; Syria’s dictator, a firm supporter of Palestine and detractor of Israel (hard to be a supporter when you get your ass kicked in a stupid war) has shown his true colors; and Muslim radicals, the only Libyans that seem to have their act together, are busily making Libya into a Muslim state sympathetic to al Qaeda, and we know what side they’re on respect to Israel and Palestine.
Iran’s President has announced that it wasn’t planes that brought down the two WTC towers but the U.S. dynamiting its own buildings. He’s also denied the Holocaust ever happened, a slap at Jews, Israelis, and the rest of the world (not enough people go after Turkey, though, for the Armenian holocaust—maybe that’s why they don’t like Israel?). He also released the other two hikers as a “humanitarian action.” BS to the nth degree! They’re out on bail for 1 million U.S. dollars (who paid for that?), but I call it ransom. Fighting continues in many Arab countries, Sunnis killing Shi’ites and Shi’Ites killing Sunnis, Talibans killing Americans and Afghans, and everyone killing Jews.
Afghanistan can’t seem to get its act together. Added to the extensive corruption in the Karzai government, a corruption that is out of control (the opium poppy is an evil, political flower), we can now add stupidity. They (we?) are stupid to have believed the Taliban want peace (with weighty Pakistan behind them, financed by Americans, why would they?)—result: one dead spokesman for peace. Two weeks earlier the President was killed. The attack on the U.S. embassy was well orchestrated, an embarrassment to American politics, and now the attack within the Kabul CIA HQ. All this points to a fundamental question.
What the hell are we doing in the Middle East? Warring tribes, multiple ethnicities, and centuries-old hatreds are not going to change via anything we can do. I’ve written about humanity’s social singularity in fiction (my recent novel Survivors of the Chaos has this as a main theme) where social problems become so complex that human beings are incapable of solving them. The Middle East is a prime example. It is a region of fundamentalist attitudes (see my novel Soldiers of God for a general perspective on fundamentalism) that is not going to change. We have no business there. We certainly have no business choosing sides.
Moreover, the issue of the Middle East is having a negative influence on American politics and the stability of our country. Jews in Wiener’s district are mad enough at Mr. Obama that they went against a long tradition of progressive thought to elect another GOP sycophant beholding to Wall Street and big corporations, when just across the East River a protest is going on against Wall Street (some of the protest signs go right to the heart of the matter, by the way). The excuse of the Wiener district Jews and many others across the U.S.: Obama is not pro-Israel enough! Excuse me, my Jewish friends, but when will you start putting America’s interests above Israel’s? Are you Israelis or are you Americans? Other ethnicities have jumped into the great American melting pot and done well. Many Jews apparently haven’t.
How does Mr. Obama react? He is a card-carrying masochist, so he puts himself between a rock and a hard place by threatening to veto the Palestinian statehood petition in the U.N., thinking that will get back the Jewish vote. That vote traditionally has gone for the Dem. Wiener’s district’s results show that cannot be taken for granted, so our President now panders to that sector. Come on, Mr. Obama, getting a second term is not worth giving up your principles! However, a piece of advice: American Middle East policy should be a hands-off policy. There are too many enemies and too many duplicitous regimes. Israel is no better than Pakistan—it’s spy agency Mossad has meddled in American affairs for years, as the Pollard case clearly showed. Mossad is no better and no worse than Pakistan’s ISI.
There are so many potential enemies and potential friends in the Middle East that the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend foreign policy cannot possibly work, no matter how good Chelsea Clinton thinks her mother is at being Secretary of State. It is high time that we let Israel and India fight their own fights (same thing goes for Europe, for that matter). You can’t even make all the interested parties talk to each other, let alone talk about peace. War and bad feelings are endemic to the Middle East. It’s like getting involved in a fight between multiple gangs—a no-win, tragical situation that makes the body count at the end of Hamlet a picnic in comparison.
Sure, Israel is surrounded and India is vulnerable, but they also have nukes (just admit it’s so, Mr. Netanyahu). Every major population center in the Arab and Persian world is within easy reach. I’m not condoning saber rattling with nuclear weapons and am firmly against nuclear proliferation—we don’t even know how to take care of our own! All I’m saying is that the Middle East is too complicated. Yet our politicians are stupid enough to try to find a solution when there is none that we can unilaterally impose. All the interested parties there have to look for the solution. Me, I’m not interested!
Mr. Netanyahu threw down the gauntlet to Mr. Abbas. “We’re both in New York—let’s talk.” Mr. Abbas stupidly thinks he’ll achieve peace via a U.N. declaration without recognizing Israel, so he went home to enjoy being worshipped as a national hero. Mr. Netanyahu stupidly thinks he has the upper hand, confident that the bellicose right-wing element of Israeli society has a firm hold on Israeli politics, so the building of settlements in the West Bank territory still continues. Stupidity abounds in the Middle East. We don’t need to add to it.
And so it goes…
