Re: # 152 masadi {``...The US military is part and parcel of US imperialism, you cannot condemn imperialism while singing praises of the US military...``}

First, let me make it clear that no matter what other philosophic differences we may have, on the issue of ``US-based global imperialism`` we have far more commonality of ideas than we have disagreements. So any discussion I have with you on this topic is not an antagonistic one, but one amongst comrades.

I agree that the US military IS THE ULTIMATE INSTRUMENT of Global imperialism (US-baed) and therefore an integral part thereof. But my contention with zeemax was about his assertion of the US military personnel being COWARDS. All I said was that they were not cowards. And I said that their soldering ability was par excellence. Now what is soldering abaility? It is the ability to destroy the opponent with efficiency with minimal loss to self. I didn`t say they were an army saints, or holy men... no. A ``good`` soldier is not necessarily a ``good`` thing in humanitarian terms. He is a trained killer. And in terms of humanitarianism he is evil incarnate. But call them evil if you want, don`t call them cowards... because they are not.

Now we come to the question of individuals. Let`s take naPak fauj for example. Most of us will agree that the institution in its net historical effect on the country is an evil entity. Yet I know many, many individual human beings, who are (or have been) members of that (evil) organization, yet as people they are very moral, pious, honest, clean and principled. I am sure you know such individuals also. Similarly, I happen to know some individuals in the US military who, likewise, are honest and upright people. That`s all I was saying. It was a minor point, but one worth making.

...SR

Professionalization that leads to impersonal/indiscriminate killing of humans in `joystick` fashion as Zeemax has suggested, is quite worthless and not at all ``superior`` in anyway judging from humanitarian criteria. The US military is part and parcel of US imperialism, you cannot condemn imperialism while singing praises of the US military.

Re: # 135 zeemax {``...This army is only good for joystick bombing from the air, or shooting 2 month babies in their mother`s laps. When confronted with real `soldiers`, they`re most obliged to be `led` away rather than fight. Cowards ! ...``}


I must take very serious exception to this broad characterisation of the fighting men and women in the US military... If you had made this broad statement about the naPak fauj I would have agreed.

You know that I am a staunch critic and a vocal protester of the US imperialism, but I cannot disagree with this characterisation more.

I have known many US military people, at all levels from NCO to flag level, several of them very closely, and I can tell you that the average US military man is a far, FAR superior professional than anything you see in Pak-o-Hind or for that matter even in Western Europe. Give the devil his due. American military might is not just because of superior weaponry, its largely also superior, and I mean far superior, training and personnel development.

Having said that, I`ll grant you that the soldiers in Iraq are at a psychological disadvantage because most of them are not convinced that they are there for a just cause. This effects morale, no doubt, and its brings the worst out in people.

...SR

When President Bush arrived in Vienna for his one day Summit with Europe`s Heads of State, he faced questions from the European press he is entirely unused to receiving from the ``servile`` American press.

A European journalist asked a question about opinion polls which show that most Europeans now believe the US to be a greater menace than Iran or North Korea. ``It`s absurd, is my statement,`` Mr Bush snapped. ``We`ll defend ourselves. But we are working with our partners to spread peace and democracy around the world.`` It is well known to Europeans that the US has military bases all over the Middle East as well as all around the world. Europeans are reminded daily about the bases the US still has all over Europe. The US Armed Forces never left the Continent since D- Day on June 6, 1944 and the Europeans know this. It is in this context that we must try to understand the near spontaneous reaction by many Europeans to Mr Bush`s: ``We`ll defend ourselves.``

America`s standing has dived across Europe to post war depths. One reason for this is that the European press, including large parts of the British press, have engaged in much more in depth reporting about events in Iraq and across the broader Middle East than Americans back in the US ever get a look at. It follows from this that seeing the American President saying that the US is only defending itself would strike most Europeans as the height of absurdity.

The Departure Of The (No Longer) ``Willing``:

Japan has announced the withdrawal of its engineering troops from Iraq inside a month. Italy`s new foreign minister, Mr D`Alema, met US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice last week to discuss the Italian pullout by the end of the year, which means an end to Italian operations by September. Spain withdrew its 1,300 soldiers from Iraq back in 2004 after a change of government. The Netherlands, Ukraine, Nicaragua, the Philippines and Honduras have also pulled out. Only a few thousand coalition troops (mostly British) remain alongside some 130,000 US soldiers. Iraq is being left for the US to handle alone.

``The United States can be successful in this war if and when it succeeds in convincing the majority of the people in the Muslim and Arab nations of the inherent superiority and universality of its ideas over those espoused by militant Islamic groups and is successful in equating its ideals of political constitutionalism and social equality, for example, with the ideals of egalitarianism, which exist within Islam, as a religion, itself. ``

That`s just it - it`s tough to convince the majority of people in this region of the ``inherent superiority and universality`` of western ideals. Many people may like Western values, but many don`t care for what they see as the ills of Westernization - a focus on the self above all else, greed as a primary virtue, the breakdown of the family unit, lack of a strong foundation of ethics, increasing societal fragmentation and alienation (just today I read an article about the increasing social fragmentation in the US), and so on.

``The greatest misfortune of the politics in the Arab and Muslim lands has been its inability to offer any leadership or a future to its people and historically speaking, there has been no leadership in the Arab-Muslim world capable of voicing the sentiments of its populations and nor has it been historically successful in realizing them in the last hundred years...Therefore, the United States should allow the Islamic world to see and experience what a tolerant, democratic and progressive society and free peoples of the world are capable of and it should let them experience this option.``

This is an argument that is commonly used to explain Islamic militantism, but I remain unconvinced of it. History is littered with examples of an oppressed people with no voice coming together when aggrieved and overthrowing the established order. What makes so many people, including the author here, so sure the Muslims in these repressive regimes are incapable of doing the same?

It`s not a popular point to make these days, but these regimes have stuck around for as long as they have because they have the tacit approval of at least a significant percentage of the population. Many people have tried to fit Muslims in the Western ideological box, and conclude that Muslims live the way they live in so many countries because they just don`t know a better way.

Many do know a better way, but prefer a more ``Islamic`` (if it may so be called) mode of existence. And that is because there *IS* a clash of civilizations, Islamic and Western cultures *are* inherently different. Not that I am claiming, however, that Arab muslims don`t want democracy, stability, peace and progress. I`m just saying that the specific variant of democracy and progress they want is very different from the Western mindset. Let`s keep in mind that the majority of the world`s muslims live in freedom - so muslims have already experienced what the ``free people of the world`` are capable of.

Now that the two cowards have had their heads handed to them after having been `led away`, the yankees are crying `desecration`.



Great ...

To All:

Thank you, for posting your comments to this article and though I would attempt to venture a reply to your comments, it would not be possible given the volume of comments, which have recorded. Some of you have agreed and some have disagreed and others have simply debated what they wished to discuss, irrespective of what was being suggested. Still, such is the nature of expression that one must bow before it and accept it.

The idea was not to prove a point as much as it was learn, from a perspective analysis, based on the comments on how a policy option would be greeted, where it to be implemented. The debate on this conflict, for a lack of a better defining term, cannot be limited into an intellectual niche, but it is possible and it is even a requirement given the sense of the times, to challenge the old accepted conventional wisdom behind this debate. Old orthodoxies have to be confronted and periodically asked to justify themselves, because the self-accepted truisms, which are not critically questioned and debated, often lead to a perpetuation of injustices.

Hamidm, some times it is better to be considered wrong when the end result ends in the right decision. :)

Ciao

#144, masadi {``#143, tahmed, people arent as dumb as you assume them to be. They can recognize by reading your posts that what you`re selling is dung, all dressed up to hide its ugliness.``}

Asadi Sahib,
Whether I totally agree with you or not, I must compliment you on your ability to recognize a hypocrite and a racist. In trying to ape the white man, this paindoo really believes that he owns a plantation down south full of dark-skinned people over whom he can decide in matters of life and death.

#143, {``Masadi: So I see you are now back to Rule 2 that I mentioned in #120 (encouraged no doubt with Salim`s gibberish). ``}

When this imposter can`t debate effectively, he just assumes that his opponents are uttering gibberish. He will keep quiet for a few days and then return with another ludicrous and nonsensical remark - finally establishing that in addition to being a hypocrite, a charlatan, and a bigot, he is foremost a fool.

#143, tahmed, people arent as dumb as you assume them to be. They can recognize by reading your posts that what you`re selling is dung, all dressed up to hide its ugliness. You can fool the blind who have lost their sense of smell, but not the seeing thinking folk.

Masadi: So I see you are now back to Rule 2 that I mentioned in #120 (encouraged no doubt with Salim`s gibberish). Strong words, and weak arguments are the mark of a loser - and in your post, it is a case of Hollow Insults and zero arguments.

tahmed writes in #140 <<< those like me who try to understand the facts in an unbiased manner. >>>

If your understanding of ``facts`` is unbiased then Jeffery Dahmer must be an angel in disguise. Hypocrite, slave of the US elite, idolator, oppressor of poor people around the globe, stay on the dung you call ``facts`` because that is where you belong.

masadi #139 {``It is because of people like you, the faithful slaves of the tyrants, that the vast majority of humanity suffers including Pakistanis. I would never like to be in your shoes when your maker judges you. ...On all counts you have been stumped, but you cling to falsehood like a fly clings to dung.``}

Masadi,
I must compliment you on your keen sense of perception - you have figured out this hypocritical octogenarian perfectly. While not taking sides in your lively debate, I must concede that you are at least focused, determined, and sincerely believe in your faith. This scoundrel, on the other hand, has the audacity to preach Islam, Muslim unity, and modernity while he wanks off his mantra of prejudice, bigotry, and racism in the dark closet of his indecent mind. Imagine a man who vehemently defends (in fact he has mentioned ``over my dead body``) the illegal, cruel, unjust, and miserly act of the Paki Punjoo-dominated Government of Pakistan in not repatriating Muslim Paki citizens ``stranded`` in Bangladesh. He finds it convenient to brush off these unfortunate Pakis as ``Biharis,`` somehow justifying in his perverted and racist mind that cruelty against dark-skinned ``Biharis`` is justified. This bastard of Aryan descent and European features with Alexander`s fine homosexual genes is going to speak about the true meaning of Islam. Is there no shame left among Paki Punjoos? Can`t you put this miserable man in his place before he hurts Islam, Pakistan, and humanity?

masadi #139 What you say would make a fine Friday afternoon sermon in Mansoora. Like the rest of your posts, it studiously fails to acknowledge the simple, specific thing I have been bringing to your attention.

As for what the Almighty Maker has to say about this discussion (assuming he has been following your illuminating posts, leaving aside His other tasks like keeping the planets from colliding into one another, ensuring that the Planck Constant assigned to this universe is not monkeyed with by the likes of you, ensuring peace among those little green men in galaxies far, far away), I think my friend that it is you who need to be concerned with.

RBM (Read the Blessed Manual)!! Learn about what happens to individuals like you who give Friday afternoon sermons pretending to be God`s spokesmen vs. those like me who try to understand the facts in an unbiased manner. Then get your act together.

#137, tahmed, most people are not as dumb as you think them to be, they can read your posts and my replies and arrive at the obvious conclusion that you have no point, the only purpose behind your post was to worship the colonial elite, you never miss an opportunity to do. It is quite obvious where you unconditional submission lies. It is because of people like you, the faithful slaves of the tyrants, that the vast majority of humanity suffers including Pakistanis. I would never like to be in your shoes when your maker judges you. Not only did these tyrannous elite take the barbarous trade in flesh to new levels, linked it with religiously inspired racism, ``the curse of Ham``, and took it to levels of inhumanity never before seen, when they ended it they did it for economic reasons, not moral ones and did nothing to alleviate the effects of this slavery, and as far as opposition goes, those in the West that were vested in this also opposed it tooth and nail. On all counts you have been stumped, but you cling to falsehood like a fly clings to dung.

strategic depth..in reverse..zeemax..your buddies are taking over parts of Pakistan..soon you will be able to live in an environment where everyone is a believer in your kooky conspiracy theories..

Visitors to the conflict zone describe soldiers as being largely confined to their outposts.

In Tribal Pakistan, a Tide of Militancy

Influence of Taliban Said to Be Spreading Beyond Border Areas Near Afghanistan

By Pamela Constable

Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 20, 2006; Page A11


PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- In North Waziristan, barbers are ordered not to shave off beards, and thieves have been swiftly beheaded. In Swat, television sets and VCRs have been burned in public. In Dir, religious groups openly recruit teenagers to fight U.S. forces in Afghanistan. In the Khyber area, armed squads have burst into rooming houses, forcing people to pledge to obey Islamic law.

A tide of Islamic militancy is spreading across and beyond the semiautonomous tribal areas of northwest Pakistan that hug the Afghan border, despite the deployment of some 70,000 Pakistani army troops there, according to a variety of people with close family, professional or political ties to the tribal regions.

Senior army officers in this provincial capital say they are making steady progress in pacifying the restive tribal belt and reining in religious extremists, who U.S. and Afghan authorities say have fomented much of the violence that has led to more than 500 deaths in Afghanistan in the past two months.
``We have them on the defensive now,`` Lt. Gen. Mohammed Hamid Khan, commander of the 11th Army Corps, said in an interview. ``The miscreants have gone into their shells, and things have cooled down tremendously.`` Khan said the army had shifted from mass raids to ``snap operations`` based on intelligence and now controls key towns once in the hands of militants.

But other observers say the army`s aggressive efforts since 2004 have backfired, alienating the populace with heavy-handed tactics and undermining the traditional authority of tribal elders and officials. They say the local Taliban movement, which has close ethnic and theological links to the Taliban across the border in Afghanistan, has won new supporters and been able to carve out enclaves of alternative power.

``Things are starting to spin out of control,`` one Western diplomat in Islamabad said of the tribal areas, which have historically been deeply conservative. ``In some areas, it`s beginning to look like they are setting up a government within a government.``

The tribal areas are off-limits to foreign visitors, including journalists, except for periodic, brief helicopter visits with military authorities. But in recent interviews here, tribal lawyers, educators and politicians with knowledge of events in the areas described growing fundamentalist influence and intimidation that is spilling beyond the sparsely inhabited tribal zones and edging closer to settled, government-run localities.

In the past six months, they said, dozens of tribal elders and officials have been killed, including an uncle of the current provincial chief minister. Fundamentalist clerics have freely used FM radio stations to preach holy war and set up public recruiting offices in towns such as Dir and Bannu just outside the tribal areas. Music stores have been shut down and thieves executed before crowds.

``North and South Waziristan are in the grip of Talibanization`` and all of the seven federally administered tribal agencies ``can come under its grip, too,`` said Afrasiab Khattak, a human rights activist and official of the secular Awami National Party. ``The army has put up an honest fight, but it has failed, and the government has failed. The traditional system has been made ineffective, and the Taliban have moved into the vacuum.``

One university instructor, who comes from South Waziristan, said that when he visited a year ago the area was blanketed with army troops, but that when he went back several months ago for a funeral, not a uniformed soldier was in sight while armed men in Taliban-style turbans patrolled in trucks. He asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation.

``The situation is not what the government says,`` he said. ``The Taliban are totally in control. The people welcome them and the youths idolize them. There is no government, only the security forces who kill people. The Taliban settle disputes and deliver justice on the spot. The tribal areas are becoming nurseries for the Taliban, and the army can`t stop it.``

Last week, the discovery that a journalist in North Waziristan had been assassinated generated expressions of alarm and protests in multiple cities. Hayatullah Khan, who had been missing since December after reporting that the United States appeared to have staged a missile attack on Pakistani soil, was found shot in the head and handcuffed. Officials blamed religious extremists, but Khan`s relatives and others said they suspected Pakistani intelligence agencies were behind his killing.

Many government critics here accuse the intelligence services of fomenting religious extremism in the tribal areas as a means of keeping Afghanistan unstable and vulnerable to Pakistani control. Senior Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai, have also made such claims, which Pakistani officials deny.
``In my view, stability for Afghanistan is the best thing for Pakistan,`` said Hamid Khan, the army corps commander. ``All the turmoil there affects us; we get the refugees, the criminals, the drugs, the weapons. The miscreants have much safer sanctuaries on that side than on ours. If we want strategic depth, better we should have good relations than instability.``

The Pakistani army has suffered numerous casualties since it entered the tribal areas two years ago under pressure from Washington to crack down on Islamic radicals. There have been repeated bloody clashes with tribal militiamen and, more recently, a spate of roadside bombings and one suicide bombing that targeted an army convoy. Visitors to the conflict zone describe soldiers as being largely confined to their outposts.
Until recently, most religious violence was limited to North and South Waziristan, the poorest and most isolated of the tribal areas, where Islamic fervor has always been strong. Although a recent truce has calmed South Waziristan, the fundamentalist fervor now seems to be erupting in other parts of the region.

In Swat, a peaceful agricultural valley, Islamic preachers persuaded people to hand over their television sets in May and burned stacks of them in public. In the Khyber Agency, a prosperous commercial area that straddles a major highway into Afghanistan, armed followers of an Islamic preacher burst into shops and lodging houses in early June, demanding at gunpoint that people pledge to follow Islamic law. In the ensuing clashes with another religious militia, several dozen people were killed.

``There are elements that have decided to create Taliban enclaves and to `Waziristanize` the other tribal agencies,`` said Khattak, the human rights activist. ``The government says it is taking action, but it is not. The source of the problem is here, not in Afghanistan. If such a bloody drama can happen in Khyber, it can happen anywhere.``

Even in Peshawar, a huge city with a landscaped military district and a modern university, support for the revived Taliban movement is evident among students and worshipers at numerous mosques. Secular politicians say the militant fervor is being encouraged by the Islamic political parties that dominate the provincial government.

On a recent Friday, men emerging from prayer services said they were upset about army attacks on civilians in tribal areas and worried that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would enter Pakistan as well. One man, an English teacher, said the U.S. forces were ``savages and barbarians`` while the Taliban were ``religious scholars and sincere people.``

Another man with a black turban and bushy beard proudly identified himself as a former Taliban member who had fought in the capture of Kabul in 1996. Today, he said, the same conditions of lawlessness and immorality have returned on both sides of the border, demanding new action.

``Under the Taliban there was peace, there was order, there was justice. Now our people are facing cruelty, injustice and crime. It has all come back, and it cannot be allowed to continue,`` said Wahidullah, 32, who runs a religious academy for boys. ``If I didn`t have other responsibilities now, I would love to join the fight again.``