Torkham to Wagah

Re: # 40

Q. Why did the chicken cross the road?


A `Beacuse it wanted to go to the other side of the road

TO the head less chicken:

Sometimes destiny stares you in the mirror and you are too blind or headless to see it. My suggestion is that you screw your head back on and pecome Proud Pakistani Chicken and represent the Aloo ka Paratha culture no matter where you are. Hope your lady hen and baby chickens are as travel crazy as you.

YOU`RE OBSSED WITH PAKISTAN. GET A LIFE

Thanks Sadna and Tahmed for participating in ongoing discussion on this topic. Perhaps, time will judge about the wisdom of either side of this debate. With or without war, Saddam must quit quickly for the sake of Iraq`s survival in line with its potentials.

Time for the headless chicken to say goodbye in a hurry!!!

20 Years of Solitude
by Headless Chicken

As the evening shadows lengthened on this winter night, preparations were underway for this Headless Chicken to be hanged upside down with two others over a boiling pot by a street vendor at Aabpara Market, Islamabad. Even his demise was to serve a segment of humanity who smoke cigarettes and drink this extra dilute chicken soup thinking to offset the effects of smoking on lungs.

As he started feeling the heat from steam rising from boling pot, the salient events of his life from the past 20 years were flashing in his memory. He remembered the day of his first date when he met his date behind the thorny berries bushes on the outskirts of Islamabad. It was love in the first sight and he squeezed her hand between his legs (chickens do not have hands). They vowed to love each other till death do us part and consumated marriage in split second over the bare Potowar land with only wild berries witnessing. As he turned aside, a big thorn stuck in his tigh and he started bleeding. He had no idea that his blood is dropping on a piece of land later to become the site of National Assembly, Senate and Supreme court buildings in Pakistani Capital. He, literally, had his blood in the foundations of democratic institutions of Pakistan.

Many years later, he saw construction of the buildings of democratic institutions undertaken by dictatorial Zia regime and felt like throwing up. Instead, he quietly got closer to an underconstructioin building and unrinated in its foundations. Again thorny berries bushes were the only witness.

Things changed quite a bit since he migrated to USA. Now instead of bushes watching his meditations and other solemn acts, by a sheer chance, he started witnessing Bushes making decisions about democracy in Pakistan. It saddened him and made him nostalgic to go back to the same wall and turn it into a wailing wall. More recently he had better ideas. The wall whose foundations were laid on his blood should be turned into a pilgrimage where faithfuls throw pebbles in symbolic gesture to hit satans.

The steam started making his juices dripping into the pot, tears started pouring out of his eyes with emotions and sadness of forseeing his fate in few hours. He shivered as he saw a man smoking K-2 approached the vendor and gave him an umpteen times folded one rupee bill for sharing the diluted headless chicken soup.

He started philosphical and religious thoughts once his lost all capabilities of normal rational being. He wished to revive the golden age of innocence and thorny berries bushes in his next incarnation. He started praying mostly in the languages he never understood and never desired to learn but he kept reading those revealed truths anyways. He went into trance and started speaking in tongue. The cognition attack followed and he wished to lsiten to either Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan before breathing his last. His last wish was granted when the vendor made a phone call on his cell phone to a Panjabi internet radio to play `AkhiaN udeekdiaN`.

His first love and now wife came with their only son to say final goodbye. He wanted his son to prosper and multiply but he planned to become martyr and die in Kashmir to make sure that his mother and father`s sins of pre-marital sex and conceiving him would be forgiven by god.

Sameer #69
``Rest of the world population was not expected to have any ifluence on US policies. ``
I agree war seems inevitable, but Germany and France have said they oppose war and Turkey is worried about giving too much help which it cannot ratify in Parliament and which may cause govt. MPs to defect.

At least from TV news media it appears the US govt and its public do not wish US to go it totally alone and people are advising Bush to be more persuasive than saying mindless stuff like `I am sick and tired etc`.

I am all for a wonderful liberation too, only I cannot romanticise it. Let me point out some contrasts here since you bring up Afghanistan.

a. The attacks in the US happened on Sept 11 and the US retaliated starting Oct 9-10th or so, within a month. For the Iraq attack, the deployment is taking more than 6 months and is not done yet. Iraq is a much more formidable military target than Afghanistan

b. In the case of Afghanistan, the fighting forces were nullified very quickly by
1. 1 phone call to a military chief
2. Some airlifts to move military personnel out
3. Bombing Kabul airport and destroying 1/2 dozen? fighter aircraft and a number of aerial bombings on antiaircraft batteries. No radars, even to speak of?
4. Still people spoke of Afghan `quagmire` until sometime end Nov? when the NAlliance took their first Taliban city, I forget which, soon after which Kabul fell. Part of this was because Afghan warlords are a loosely-knit often mutually antagonistic group of autonomous fighters who changed sides to the winners side as they always have.

5. After the latest Afghan war, there is world consensus/guilt about need to end strife and bring relief to the sufferings of Afghanistan. Its a totally impoverished country, there are no resources to control, its understood that only when peace and governance arrive, can the world powers then indulge in rivalry over pipeline contracts from Central Asia, nothing of interest to grab right now.

The contrast with Iraq:
1. The call to military chief worked because the Pakistani Army cannot rule its over its people while leading them to ruinous confrontation with the US. Its a difference in culture or sheer population, but this is not the case with Saddam Hussain. He keeps tight control over his army, and possible coup-makers and over his country. He has ruled over Iraq even through ruinous confrontation with the US, even survived the Gulf war.

2. Saddam has tight control over his Army and has on many occasions purged the Army of his opponents of different ethnicities and inclinations. So his Army has to fight to the death, or their former enemies will come after them. Falling into US hands when the US forces finally arrive is the least of their problems.

3. Needless to say Iraq is much better equipped militarily than the Taliban and which is a fully functioning state unlike Afghanistan. There was no infrastructure to bomb in Afghanistan, no raillines, electricity grid, powerplants, bridges, water supplies, ammunition depots, oil pipelines, oil wells, roads, nothing. Only some well-to-do localities in Kabul where Arabs and Taliban leaders were known to live and caves. There were no chemical and biological weapons.

4. US has no ready armed group like NA on the ground with clear objectives, except some Kurd groups? of ambiguous intentions. The US ground troops will have to sort out the chaos themselves on the ground. It will be extremely messy unlike the Afghan war lords who had tribal alliances, personal armies and local influence and can and could impose their will/peace on portions of the countryside. Once they decided to switch sides, they simply switched hats and Afghanistan was won. No such joy in Iraq.

5. No consensus on what is to happen to Iraq, who is to rule in Iraq. Every interested party in Iraq`s huge resources including Iraq`s neighbours, the US, Russia etc are greedily awaiting a chance to grab a share of control over these resources and each of these groups can create and maintain enough strife and political turmoil to further their interests.

Each of the above points of contrast is going to cost VERY heavily in civilian Iraqi lives compared to Afghan lives. How many? is the 64000 Iraqi question, which the US cannot be asked too often until war begins and every day thereafter.

sameerjb #69 you write ``. Iraq will soon be liberated from Saddam and his cronies. I hope to see Pakistan also liberated from military establishment with US help - without using US troops because to get rid of Musharraf and his cronies does not need to send in US troops. ``
Exactly how do you think US can or will help in getting rid of a man who presents pakistanis and the world with the following option: ``My Way or the Mullah Way``?

Ghalib Zaman:

``will bring Pakistan into the fold of civilised & honourable nations like Iran, Malaysia, North Korea, Cuba and New Zealand``

I love your definition of civilized and honorable nations. Starving North Koreans escaping to China..HAHA!! THAT IS SURELY CIVILIZED. Cuba. where girls sell themselves for a few dollars to german tourists to escape grinding poverty..yup...definitely honorable..Iran...where the Mullahs are despised and hated...and the younger generation is desperate to make good with the US..the NewZealanders would not be too happy at being in such august company.

Waisey, when you write of Leechurs, why don`t you include the Pathans?? They are known Homos and liberals have much love for queers. In fact if the Taliban had started wearing rainbow colored skirts and pranced around Kabul, the liberals would have bombed Afghanistan with dildos and KY Jelly :)

sadna #64: War appears imminent now. The time to debate its justification from US public point of view is fast running out if not already lapsed. Rest of the world population was not expected to have any ifluence on US policies. The decision to go into Iraq appears final with President Bush even hinting war crimes trials against those Iraqi generals who would try to resist hard costing Iraqi civilian casualties.

Once US troops enter Iraq from any point to close in ob Baghdad, the resistance will collapsed more quickly than Taliban`s collapse becasue, sooner one local commander surrenders better chances for better treatment in post-Saddam Iraq. If and when US troop actually enter Baghdad, the cheering from the crowd might match the cheering from French and Italians during the final phase of second world war. What a sigh a relief it would be to see Iraqi people becoming part of the world community again with opportunities to propser and not just survive as they have been forced to for the last 20 years, since Saddam went mad and invaded Iran. The miseries of Iraqi people are soon to be over with the end of Saddam dictatorship.

The case for invading Iraq or any other country on the basis of 11 year old UN security council resolutioin is unjustifiable. The whole exercise of basing it on destruction or recovery of the weapons of mass destruction is phony. Basically it was a decision to get rid of Saddam and the justificatioin was created to this end. Since I supported the decision of getting rid of Saddam and calculated better days ahead for Iraqi people as well as desis as a result of getting rid of Saddam, the justification for war, though phony, was accepted as a sacrifice for the sake of greater good. It does not mean that by supporting this war under peculiar circumstances becoming pro-war or conservative.

I really see this a jihad on behalf of iraqi people who are not in a position to wage it easily. Iraq will soon be liberated from Saddam and his cronies. I hope to see Pakistan also liberated from military establishment with US help - without using US troops because to get rid of Musharraf and his cronies does not need to send in US troops.

Ghalib Zaman #66 Your are too kind. I must note that before anything else I am an ``avowed, open and proud`` human being. And trying sometimes to be a good human as well. And that to me is all that matters. This includes not condemning people because they (to quote you) went to ``missionary,cantonement,and colonial school``, or because of any other generalization. Whether I am a muslim or a hindu or a christian is a matter of detail and not important.
I learnt all this from the Quran, and for that reason I am very comfortable with being a muslim.

ali87 #65 I am not sure I understand your point. I do see one specific question you have, namely: ``Have you made any effort in getting them out of the dictatorships of the many tinpots they live under. ``
I am pleased to say a resounding yes to your question: Please review my efforts on this board to convince my good (but admittedly a bit confused) friends on chowk that it would be good for the people of Iraq if the US were to step in and get rid of Saddam. Assuming you agree with me that Saddam fits your definition of a tinpot dictator, surely you should give me a standing ovation for my efforts. And instead of thousands of Iraqis seeking asylum in the US, and UK and Australia, you will have these countries provide home service to would be asylum seekers as they introduce a civilized government in Iraq (as they are doing in Afghanistan after the taliban apes were chased out).

#65:ali87

(not directed at tAhmed32---an avowed,open and proud muslim)

Good!
The brainwashing by the missionary,cantonement,and colonial school system is so much that the ignorants can never be convinced that they are not capable of using their minds.

If Jinnah had not attended the Sindh Madressa till grade 10 he would have become a margarine muslim as well.

The education system was geared to create employees , post seekers, jobbers & jobbery title-seekers, so-many-work under me kind of mindsets, parrhay likhhays, chewing-gum over paans, burgers over niharees, amreeki-lookalikes rather than Pakistanee-lookalikes.

Great changes are afoot. Unless the westoxicated muslims are given the boot by US & UK and the time of reckoning is clearly laid out and these guys are asked on paper ``Are you with us or them`` only then the problem will go away.

Those who return thus humiliated/honoured ( take your pick) will bring about a revolution which will bring Pakistan into the fold of civilised & honourable nations like Iran, Malaysia, North Korea, Cuba and New Zealand.

Until then stating a clear mindset reduces the effects of past brainwashing at the Jack & Jill school system.

#53 by tahmed32 on January 20, 2003 8:59am PT

What most people like you dont understand is the position of people who oppose US policies. You take the easy way out and point to the governance of the Govt of US. The people who are anti american in many places around in the world are least bothered about how tahmed32s in america are treated. They focus rather on how US polices affect their countries. Which does not mean that they agree with every tinpot dictator in the world. Why should sounding out agains US policies which hurt you first begin with acknowlegement of how US treats the tahmeds32 inside US. Is it the contention of the likes of you that they some how have to tame down their oppostion to polices that affect their lives drastically because tahmed32s of the world have found a safe haven?

Most likely the only thing tahmed32s and the Ilk have ever done is make their lives comfortable so on what basis do you ask for understanding? Have you made any effort in getting them out of the dictatorships of the many tinpots they live under. What were you doing when the us sponsered Jihadists were taking on the USSR. Now when the affects of their actions start affecting the comfortable life of tahmed32s you have suddenly awoken from the slumber only to critizise those who protest another attempt to order their life for the beinfit of outsiders.

That UK also had democracy more representative and rule of law while it colonised the many countries is similar to the US actions and your arugments.

sameerJB #63
I was arguing about how an American loyal to the US must think and evaluate the merits of an Iraq war, including its human cost. In a democracy, (opposite of what happens in an autocracy), its not anti-state for the public to exercise their judgement independent of their govt, its their constitutional DUTY to do so.

My posts were about how Americans loyal to the US and its longterm interests must think, because thats the argument you have been using, that what is good for the US has to be good for others. I was pointing out that war with Iraq is not necessarily good for the US and its public like past foreign policy choices of the US govt. have not been good for Americans. THe greatness of US and its success doesnot derive from solely the govt`s military muscle it derives directly from its productive public, and their political awareness, which is sleeping wrt Bush`s Iraq adventure. I was only trying to wake you good citizens up to your responsibilities to maintain this greatness of the US , instead of taking it for granted and finding one day its all gone :).

From India`s point of view, a war in W. Asia is bad because war always badly effects the Indian economy, either from a first order effect such as the petrol bill shooting up and eating up FE reserves and more severe second order effect of global economy taking a hit. Also, sorry to mention the K factor, but US inattention to S. Asia and preoccupation with Iraq will be the excuse for top people of a neighbouring country stepping up violence you-know-where, which is also not good for India.

I would guess the same adverse effects of war will hit Pakistan too, economy, bad business climate, worsening relations with India. From an Indian, Pakistani, third world perspective, the Iraq war is bad and the US putting itself and its economy and that of the region in harms way without making a good enough case is bad, thats my opinion.

Since you ask I speak with `identity`, as a `Hindu` as an `Indian` as a `citizen of world`, I donot think the US govt is being asked enough questions about their objectives and the culmination they seek for Iraq and Iraqis with this war. I fear the futile waste of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and enough US lives simply for an oil company`s bottomline(which is likely to get huge US taxpayer subsidies disguised as `reconstruction aid` to help it set up shop in Iraq anyway) and on that sole count I will continue to oppose the war.

Sadna #57: You made a good anti-American case by selectively listing worongs within the US government, public, media, foreign policy, think tanks, pentagon ans so on. An equally or stronger case can be made by selectively listings rights within all these arenas.

Second point is that you presented the case unconditional, under the blue sky case whereas I have been continously arguing for looking at it conditionally, either American, Southasian American, South Asian, Muslim etc but for any first timer at chowk, your post gives no idea of your South Asianness. Does Indianness only matter when debating India-Pakistan affairs? I have been trying to discuss its effect on India and Pakistan whereas antiwar gang is maninly fighting a moral war like fundamentalists, without taking into account the downside of it on various groups of people.

I think Iraq is very weakened state due to several years of sanctions on any new military equipment buying. The small arms of Iraqi military will not require extensive aerial bombardment as was the case in the Gulf war of 1991. The northern Iraq is already out of Uraqi hands with US military presence. Southern Shia Iraq would not like to take up on both US and Saddam simultaneously. They will prefer to get rid of Saddam first and worry about anti-Americanism later. I forsee about 100-200 US casualties at the most. But the option for Saddam to avoid war is still there. He should better see the writing on the wall and relinquish power. If President Bush is such an evil, why offer him the best reason to go ahead.

roohi Ji: I think your point of vendetta was true in the earlier stage. Since then, momemtum has created its own logic both for and against. That might have been a seed but it is now grown to `lal suha handwaNa` (ripe watermelon) of a problem. I would say same to Saminshah Ji that the current situation is well passed the discussion of what is wrong with the thinking of American public, government and foreign policy. How to deal with this ripe watermelon? Those matters can be discussed even in the absence of current volatile situation.

WAR PROFITS,

Kuwait war was the first profitable war, funded by various countries including japan, and at the end of the war, the US profit was aroud 4 billion dollars. It is widely believed that kuwaitis are still paying, in dollars for the cost of their liberation along with saudis for the troops stationed in their country.

It is more than likely that at the end of war, Iraquis will be given a bill for their ``freedom``.

Sadna,
Have you read `Political Fictions` by Joan Didion? If not, I think you would enjoy it enormously...