MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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In Pakistan, Death by Drone Turns a Villain Into a Martyr
By artappraiser on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 2:11am |By Declan Walsh, New York Times, Nov. 3/4, 2013
LONDON — In life, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Public Enemy No. 1: a ruthless figure who devoted his career to bloodshed and mayhem, whom Pakistani pundits occasionally accused of being a pawn of Indian, or even American, intelligence.
But after his death, it seems, Pakistani hearts have grown fonder.
Since missiles fired by American drones killed Mr. Mehsud in his vehicle on Friday, Pakistan’s political leaders have reacted with unusual vehemence. The interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, denounced the strike as sabotage of incipient government peace talks with the Taliban. Media commentators fulminated about American treachery. And the former cricket star Imran Khan, now a politician, renewed his threats to block NATO military supply lines through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa — a province his Tehreek-e-Insaf party controls — with a parliamentary vote scheduled for Monday.
Virtually nobody openly welcomed the demise of Mr. Mehsud, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians. To some American security analysts, the furious reaction was another sign of the perversity and ingratitude that they say have scarred Pakistan’s relationship with the United States [....]
URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/04/world/asia/in-pakistan-death-by-drone-turns-a-villain-into-a-martyr.html?hp&_r=0
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Comments
The syndrome was already being noted Nov. 1, evidenced in this Tweet I ran across:
by artappraiser on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 2:13am
Some knowledgeable Pakistanis might be cynical about the outrage because they know about this drone-friendly government report out only a few days ago:
by artappraiser on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 2:24am
We apparently had a special hard on for Hakimullah, on account of he engineered the Khost bombing that took out 7 (seven!) cia ops at one blow. I am not particularly consoled by the demeanor of his replacement.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1053612/pakistani-taliban-meeting-chooses-khan-said-sajna-as-new-chief.
As I said elsewhere, when, with reference to a Pashtun, the words "battle hardened" are used, we are talking plenty hard.
by jollyroger on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 9:25am
Lovely, not even a madrassah boy, just a ruthless ignorant warrior:
“Sajna has no basic education, conventional or religious, but he is battle-hardened and has experience of fighting in Afghanistan,” an official had said earlier.
The article cites competition for the spot and disagreement about whether he should be the one. I do hope they are willing to battle each other over it.
by artappraiser on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 4:03pm
If I was trying to decide who to bet on in a ground war in that part of the world and there was a person available who had passed all the Darwinian tests of actual combat for years on end by participating in and surviving real combat, and in the process had developed a following of men who had done the same, I would bet on that person even if "a ruthless ignorant warrior" was an otherwise apt description. I would bet on him over any ten college educated American generals you could name if they were limited to only ten times the firepower available to the ignorant warrior.
by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 4:56pm
In the same vein, I'm not sure tht attendance at a Madrassah with a major in Koranic memorization and a minor in oppresssion of females would enhance the candidate's bona fides.
I am struck, parenthetically, by the apparently universal high foreheads displayed by all these guys, which is generally considered a proxy for an IQ test, with a positive correlation to intelligence.
by jollyroger on Mon, 11/04/2013 - 5:59pm
Au contraire, I'd be willing to bet you that he has lots of very creative ideas about torturing females in his ideal society, and probably far more and uglier than any Salafi that attempts to stick to Koranic text interpretation, as warped as the latter may be.
Things like outlawing kites and music and females driving and females being educated does not come from the Koran. Neither do things like bacha bazi.
It's Pashtun tribal culture and similar anti-women tribal culture attaching itself to Islam that is the problem.
Edit to add: as the slogan goes: reading is fundamental. There is at least a sliver of hope that someone who has learned to read the Koran can break out of a medieval culture they were born into and be dragged into the 20th century (used 20th instead of 21st on purpose) should they start reading something else. With someone illiterate, that sliver becomes infinitesimally tiny.
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 11:42am
Personally, I keep hope that someday medicine can find a treatment for that condition you describe.
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 11:11am
Would you expand on your comment and explain for me what you mean? I do not want to misinterpret you, and I do want to understand your comment, but I do not see what you mean by "... that condition you describe".
by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 11:35am
Brutal warrior tendencies and "talent" in the same.
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 11:40am
Don't splurge on the word count to the point that you actually finish a sentence.
That didn't clear much up for me. I still do not know whether you are being critical of my evaluation or of the nature of Afghani warriors.
I'm going to make guess and go with it. You seem to imply that someday medicine will be able to cure a condition which causes me to conflate brutal warrior tendencies positively in conflation with talent and presumably you see that I do so by casting the Afghani warrior in some positive light when I suggest that they are the ones to bet on to win their fight. That would mean you think I am sick based on my comment since you hope medicine can someday cure me. It ignores or just misses that I am trying just to describe a reality as I think it exists. I am not admiring all aspect the culture from which those Afghani warriors come when I do so but then I obviously do not admire all aspects of the culture that produces American generals and their tendencies either.
by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 12:44pm
No silly, I meant people like him, not you.
Goes without saying that where I might disagree with you in that I wouldn't praise such talent in any way, shape or form. But I wasn't asking for a debate on that, I was just expressing my own estrogen-fueled fantasies.
You do seem to have a bad habit of looking for personal attacks where there are none intended, even sometimes where 99% of readers would see none at all.
by artappraiser on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 1:18pm
I've got bad habits you haven't even guessed at ... yet.
by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 1:27pm
Elaboration on what I am talking about by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Richie Incognito and the Banality of Supermacho: What does being the "toughest of the tough" really mean? and with even further nuance here: Tony Dorsett Has CTE: Whereas some players accentuated the violence of football, Dorsett masked it. It did not save him.
Coates essays make me realize that as an always hopeful supporter of that experiment called civilization, I would bet on college-educated generals over brute winners of Darwinian contests if given no other options to bet on. Some of those generals might be Darwinian brutes, too. But my chances are better with them, that this testosterone sickness or whatever it is, has been assuaged by education and the valuing of thought over brute action.
Edit to add: I wish we didn't have any uneducated prejudiced fierce warrior brutes with the sickness like Khan Said ‘Sajna’, or Mullah Fazlullah, for that matter, in our current armed forces. I fear we do because it now a volunteer force that is desperate for recruits.
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 12:32pm
I am a reasonably big fan of civilization too. The point I made was who I would bet on to win the battle in that relatively uncivilized area, [and though I didn't say it, I expect that was why they chose the guy they did] not who I held up as the more or less benighted leader.
by A Guy Called LULU on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 1:19pm
Hard-liner Mullah Fazlullah is the new leader:
Continues at length; note: Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan, and Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud from Islamabad.
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 1:55pm
So far, Dawn.com has a shorter piece, as their headline story:
Pakistani Taliban elect Mullah Fazlullah as new chief
Also they have this AFP story up:
TTP’s ruthless new commander Fazlullah
by artappraiser on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 2:08pm
the Pakistani Taliban on Thursday appointed as its new leader the hard-line commander responsible for last year’s attack on Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Pakistani education activist.
What's Pashto for "How ya like us now"?
Talk about doubling down on the tribal crazy.
by jollyroger on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 2:36pm
The attack on Malala should be a rebuke to those who say we must "redress the grievances" of the jihadists. Their grievance is that girls are in school.
by Aaron Carine on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 5:36pm
Just for clarity, exactly who says that we must redress the grievances of the jihadis?
by jollyroger on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 5:39pm
Noam Chomsky, Sam Husseini, Boondocks cartoonist Aaron Mcgruder, the late Howard Zinn, the late Alexander Cockburn, and a couple local peace activists where I am.
by Aaron Carine on Thu, 11/07/2013 - 9:45pm
You forgot to add: "a substantial number of the citizens of Pakistan."
See, for one example, the headline story of this thread.
And then there's stuff like this: For many of her compatriots, Malala Yousafzai is a stooge of the United States and a CIA agent, a symbol of the West's evils and a global conspiracy to bring down her native Pakistan. More at Dawn: Hating Malala.
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 12:52pm
And actually, the Fazlullah pick is surprising because it's real "in your face" to Pakistanis making all these crazy rationalizations. While there aren't that many that give full-throated support to Malala, a lot of Pakistanis were screaming bloody murder over one of Fazlullah's other past escapades when he took over the Swat valley, as noted in the New York Times article, my bold:
That flogging really did cause such an uproar that it allowed the troops to go in with lots of public support.
Furthermore, as noted on page 2 of the article, his appointment an "in your face" to the current premier supporter of the anti-U.S. & soft-on-Taliban contingent, populist Imran Kahn, because his party is currently in control of the same region. So it's going to get interesting.
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 1:03pm
You better come with quotes, pilgrim...edit to add: perhaps you are confusing the grievances of the jihadis (eg, there are t-shirt wearing whores stationed in the hejaz) from the grievances of the oppressed "the US is supporting a colonial excresence which practices apartheid"
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 3:29pm
I'll provide quotes, but you might have to wait awhile-- I may have to get A People's History of the United States out of the library. One of the grievances of the jihadis is American support for the "colonial excresence". Another way to put it might be "the U.S. is supporting a state whose government favors a Palestinian state, but whose destruction is still being demanded by Palestinians"(tendentious, yes, but less so than what you wrote).
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 4:14pm
whose government favors a Palestinian state,
This is inbcorrect. The government of Israel favors a collection of isolated, bantustan-lite enclaves. That said, you might convince me of the merits of your position by addressing the issues raised by the plebecite that we did not have.
There alrady was a palestinian state--it was called (suprise, surprise...) Palestine. Israel was carved out therefrom without the nicety of the consent of the assembled citizens thereof.
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 5:05pm
A Palestinian state that included over ninety percent of the West Bank would not be a bantustan. That said, I don't think Palestinians should have to give up any land without getting an equal amount of land in exchange.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.532236
Bin Laden's grievances included Israel, Iraq, and the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia(this last was hardly a crime).
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 5:22pm
By the way, I am well aware of the wrongs done to Palestinians in 1948, but there isn't a lot that can be done about that now, unless we want to throw the Jews into the sea.
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 6:56pm
I'll start with this one--Zinn is clearly saying that the United States and Israel should end jihadism by redressing the grievances of the jihadists and their supporters.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1109-01.htm
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 4:28pm
Here is a quote of Chomsky from The Indispenable Chomsky:
" The people in the advanced countries now face a choice: we can express justified horror, or we can seek to understand what may have led to the crimes.If we refuse to do the latter, we will be contributing to the likelihood that much worse lies ahead".
I read this to mean that Chomsky thinks American and Israeli policies led to the crimes, and that we should reverse the policies i.e. redress the grievances of Arabs, including the jihadists. You may interpret it differently.
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 4:48pm
The principal beef of the jihadis, which extends to the existence of democracies (abhorrent to a theocrat) is that the caliphate has been fractured.
That they embrace as a public relations ploy the posture of a pan-arab riposte to the colonization of North Africa and the Middle East is a fiction that can only exist in the hothouse environment produced by our support ot autocratic kleptocracies allied with our indigenous plutocrats.
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 5:09pm
you read this as addressing the grievances primarily of jihadis?
At the core of unspeakable and unjustifiable acts of terrorism are justified grievances felt by millions of people who would not themselves engage in terrorism but from whose ranks terrorists spring.
Those grievances are of two kinds: the existence of profound misery-- hunger, illness--in much of the world, contrasted to the wealth and luxury of the West, especially the United States; and the presence of American military power everywhere in the world, propping up oppressive regimes and repeatedly intervening with force to maintain U.S. hegemony.
This suggests actions that not only deal with the long-term problem of terrorism but are in themselves just.
Instead of using two planes a day to drop food on Afghanistan and 100 planes to drop bombs (which have been making it difficult for the trucks of the international agencies to bring in food), use 102 planes to bring food.
Take the money allocated for our huge military machine and use it to combat starvation and disease around the world. One-third of our military budget would annually provide clean water and sanitation facilities for the billion people in the world who have none.
Withdraw troops from Saudi Arabia, because their presence near the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina angers not just bin Laden (we need not care about angering him) but huge numbers of Arabs who are not terrorists.
Stop the cruel sanctions on Iraq, which are killing more than a thousand children every week without doing anything to weaken Saddam Hussein's tyrannical hold over the country.
Insist that Israel withdraw from the occupied territories, something that many Israelis also think is right, and which will make Israel more secure than it is now.
In short, let us pull back from being a military superpower, and become a humanitarian superpower.
Let us be a more modest nation. We will then be more secure. The modest nations of the world don't face the threat of terrorism.
Such a fundamental change in foreign policy is hardly to be expected. It would threaten too many interests: the power of political leaders, the ambitions of the military, the corporations that profit from the nation's enormous military commitments.
Change will come, as at other times in our history, only when American citizens-- becoming better informed, having second thoughts after the first instinctive support for official policy--demand it. That change in citizen opinion, especially if it coincides with a pragmatic decision by the government that its violence isn't working, could bring about a retreat from the military solution.
It might also be a first step in the rethinking of our nation's role in the world. Such a rethinking contains the promise, for Americans, of genuine security, and for people elsewhere, the beginning of hope.
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 5:12pm
Jollyroger, you are a bit behind the times. You know that Saddam Hussein is dead and that there aren't any sanctions on Iraq, right?
If you don't care that Al Qaeda is mad about military bases in Saudi Arabia, then there is no reason to appease them on this issue. People have been advocating the closure of the bases as a means to stop terrorism, not simply to satisfy Arabs who aren't terrorists.
Withdrawal won't make Israel secure as long as Palestinians are demanding Israel's destruction.
Al Qaeda wasn't doing it because people are poor, they were doing it because of Israel, Iraq, troops in Saudi Arabia, and their desire to restore the caliphate. Also, I don't think the United States is the cause of poverty in the Arab world.
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 7:28pm
Also, to say that Al Qaeda hates us because we support dictatorships ignores the fact that Al Qaeda is in favor of dictatorship--they just think the current dictatorships aren't Islamic enough.
We withdrew support for Mubarak's dictatorship, at least, and we've reduced aid to Egypt since the military took over.
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 7:33pm
you are a bit behind the times
con respetto, you cited the work, I only ported a quote from it. If it was written by an author now dead, and thus addresses issues which time has altered, call me pisher.
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 8:24pm
Okay, but let's clarify something. That a lot of Arabs have the same gripes that the terrorists have doesn't mean that giving them what they want(cutting off aid to Israel, pulling troops out of Saudi Arabia) won't mean "redressing the grievances of the Jihadists". Chomsky, Zinn, and the others were advocating appeasement as a way to make the terrorists stop. They weren't saying "do this only for the Arabs who don't support terrorism, not for the jihadists".
by Aaron Carine on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 9:43pm
I don't think anything you are saying has anything to do with Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda or Mullah Fazllullah's Tailban. They are not the same thing as say, Hamas, far from it. Hamas does not chant we love death more than you love life. People who follow this ideology are not really interested in fighting anything that happened recently, but rather, "the tragedy of Andalusia," and wish to install an Islamic caliphate where most of the modern world is not allowed, which they dream will one day encompass the entire planet. If you and Chomsky happened to be within their geographically-controlled area, if you were lucky you would be exiled or in prison, if not lucky, something worse.
BTW, poverty is something they'd like everyone to have. What more do you need but a Koran, a tent, some water and a little bread?
What ever happened to your dislike of Yahwehists? And why do you think America being a kinder, gentler geopolitical power would change such vehement, passionate otherworldy beliefs?
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 8:04pm
I bow to no one in my hatred of Islamists (ditto Christianists and Haredin)--that's not the point.
As a matter of geopolitical deconstrction, as I have elsewhere expounded at length, I put my trust (along with the estimable Mr. Loaf) in the gods of sex and drugs and rock and roll.
That is to say that permitted to unfold with their natural advantage, I believe that the forces of modernity would sweep away all these antiquated canaanite conceits.
That said, when I see my country astride the world like a colossus, empowering everywhere the forces of repression, it is hard not to sympathize with the popular sentiment that cries out in pain therefrom.
As you doubltess know, the work of actual scholars makes clear that the phenomenon of suicide bombing (of which 9/11 was a sub set) is directly related to the projection of US power into and upon a distant population.
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 8:13pm
"the tragedy of Andalusia
Now you touch with eerie clairvoyance upon my family history...
Roger I (aka, Roger the Impatient) who failed to wait and marshall all his forces before attacking the invading Tuarag vanguard of the Caliphate in 711 at Cordoba. The resulting closure of the Mediterranean brought on The Dark Age that enveloped Europe for 700 years. On behalf of the entire family, I would like to take this opportunity to express our sincerest possible regrets of the most profound nature for this interruption in the march of human progress……………
by jollyroger on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 8:19pm
I don't have any particular objections to killing him. My problem with the drones is the killing of innocents, although other weapons besides drones do that. Some of the drone attacks have definitely been war crimes. While the "collateral" killing of innocents may not be quite as bad, it still matters. And there is the question of whether we should still be fighting this war; if, as I think, we shouldn't be, the killing of civilians becomes still harder to bear.
by Aaron Carine on Tue, 11/05/2013 - 7:07am
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 11:06pm
much more there...
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 11:14pm
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/08/2013 - 11:45pm
I think the above may be a variation of the classic Pakistani refrain" "if all else fails, blame Karzai." (After all, India is in chahoots with him, etc.) And then Karzai always responds with equally fervent accusations against Pakistan.
Who to believe? Well one thing Karzai has for points is that he kept implying where Osama bin Laden was for years, and he was right.
Admit I may be wrong on this, as haven't kept up on my Af-Pak reading like I used to, not since Syed Saleem Shahzad was killed in 2011.
by artappraiser on Sat, 11/09/2013 - 12:26am
by artappraiser on Fri, 11/15/2013 - 11:48am
I understand Pakistanis hating us for the drone strikes, but it is somewhat surprising that they are soft on the Taliban, which has killed more innocent Pakistanis than we have. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, I guess.
by Aaron Carine on Sat, 11/16/2013 - 9:30am
Maybe you are casually thinking of the Taliban as a completely removed, completely different kind of person than the non-Taliban common people they are interacting with. But they largely come from the same or similar culture don't they. In the old South not everyone was a racist bigot and not all the racist bigots joined the KKK, but a KKK murderer could be set free by a jury that knew damned well he was a killer and most the vocal community would support it. Those who didn't would mostly keep their mouths shut. No doubt sometimes there were persons on the jury who would have liked to have seen justice as you and/or I would see justice today, but would not hold out or even speak up for it among their peers.
Getting way out in tortured-metaphor-land, imagine if a more morally advanced African country's more morally enlightened leaders sent some snipers to start picking off some clan leaders so as to put a stop to lynchings. They swore convincingly that their targets needed killing and so their own electorate supported them, partly because they believed it when told that the snipers were precise in their aim, that it was always at known bad guys, but the locals in Selma, for instance, knew for a fact that sometimes the foreign gunner found his target in a crowded place and opened up at him with a machine gun or grenade launcher. It's not hard to imagine where the most bitter feelings would be directed, even among those citizens who would like to see the Klansmen dealt with justly.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 11/16/2013 - 10:56am