Center for a New American Security

you can't ever go wrong w/

you can't ever go wrong w/ sex.

Don't worry Zak. We'll

Don't worry Zak. We'll have less, starting with the lesson that our dollars have become valueless due to overprinting.

Uh...our society could do with a little less public sexuality. Your internets can confirm this for you, or what we call music, or TV...etc, etc. I don't want the burqua, I just want porn to be something secret and shameful. They have too much shame, we have none in the popular culture. Or seemingly in our elites.

BTW the purpose of sex is in fact to procreate the species. Just sayin. Nature just made it fun to move things along.

Elf/J.E.Fan: Lol. The ghost

Elf/J.E.Fan: Lol. The ghost of Howard Hughes... Wonder if Pete Bondurant is hanging around...? Now we know who has been leading the birthers, at least.

On our email group, we have

On our email group, we have had a fair amount of discussion about coming events in Pakistan. The latest being Dr. Manzur Ejaz's opinion piece today (http://wichaar.com/news/294/ARTICLE/18179/2010-01-06.html)
in which he has unequivocally stated that the army-jihadi nexus is history and all jihadi parties will gradually be eliminated by the armed forces. An unstated corrollary of this hypothesis is that the state will actually survive and stabilize and all the "worst case scenarios" will fail to materialize.
I just happened to have a conversation with a Pakistani physician who just returned from a trip to Islamabad and he vehemently rejected this theory. I will present his argument and some thoughts of my own and look forward to your comments.
First, some background. This physician used to be a PMLN supporter as well as a Pak army supporter, strongly anchored in traditional orthodox Islam and from an upper-middle class family with "traditional values", not overtly westernized and certainly not secular in outlook.
Here is an outline of his argument:
1. Pakistan is an Islamic nation, created in the name of Islam.
2. The state's wrong policies since the time of General Zia have created a jihadi menace (this was a surprising statement coming from him).
3. The corrupt ruling elite has wrecked all institutions and completely failed in governance. The people are totally fed up and losing all hope of improvement.
4. The army is now trying to control these jihadis on behalf of the United States, but the army itself is largely or partly jihadi and no army can win a war if it is divided against itself.
5. The people see the army fighting against fellow muslims on behalf of America and intensely resent this action. They also see their own condition becoming more and more miserable and if this goes on, they will throw in their lot with the jihadis, who are fighting in the name of Islam and who are not corrupt.
6. America wants to destroy Pakistan and it is likely that all this is being stage managed by the US, who "wants pakistan to fight their war".
I said: "dont you think the army is strong enough to eventually win this fight against the jihadis". He said this army is a mercenary army and is infiltrated with Jihadi sympathizers. They cannot win against the Jihadis.
When I said, OK, so are you saying the jihadis will win against the army? He answered "no, they cannot defeat the army. Instead, Pakistan will break up and each part will go its separate way. That is what America wants."
I asked him HOW the breakup would occur? who would run each resulting component. He answered that he does not know, but this cannot last.

My comments:
I tend to agree with Dr. Ejaz. I think the army has no choice. It was a terrible mistake to create free standing armies of jihadis in the first place (what sane state has ever done that? what were they thinking when dozens of training camps were being set up all across the country and Masood Azhar and company were going around with escorts of armed men on pickup trucks? what was the plan? I already know the answer: there was no plan in the mind of the "secular" morons like Musharraf. They were just being their usual idiotic selves and were being made total fools by the jihadis like General Mahmud and General Gul and so on. But I ask the question to encourage all of you to spend a few minutes thinking about this. WTF was the army thinking and doesnt this deserve a real inquiry and several court martials?). But by now, even our generals must have realized what a mess they have made and know that this is not sustainable.
I also think the arguments presented by my friend are an indication that the belief that Pakistan is about to fall apart and the army will lose this battle are based on false premises and confused thinking. The pessimistic view reflects the (carefully manufactured) confusion of the chattering classes and not a systematic analysis of the facts on the ground.
But I also think that these confused statements (blaming the jihadis, General Zia, the CIA and everyone else in almost mutually exclusive theories) are an indication of what a tremendous job lies ahead of the army high command and how poorly they have managed the "information war" until now. Once again, I think the explanation has less to do with any clever scheme of having their jihad and eating it too, and more to do with the limited abilities of the high command and their desire to avoid (at all costs, even the cost of efficient handling of the war on terror) any discussion of how they created this mess and who the enemy is. Instead, they prefer to keep people confused with CIA-Jew-Freemason-Hindu conspiracies and any other story that comes to mind...anything but the truth that their own creations have brought Pakistan to this pass. The other driver behind this nonsense is their desire to hold on to "the commanding heights" of the state, even if they have to imperil the functioning of national institutions in a time of war to do so. On this, I differ with Dr. Ejaz, who beleives the army is actually trying to strengthen civilian institutions to save the state. I think he underestimates how totally the PMA mindset hates civilian politics and politicians and how exalted an opinion they have of their own ability to run everything from credit rating agencies to the railways.
I would make an analogy with the US civil war. A Dr. Ejaz in 1861 would have confidently predicted (on the basis of rational analysis of economic realities and the direction of historical trends) that the North was going to win the civil war and the Union would be preserved. Not only that, slavery would be abolished and the entire slave-owning economy overhauled and converted to more modern lines. That is exactly what eventually happened. But this 1861 Dr. Ejaz may not have known how close fought the thing would be, how long and hard the war would turn out to be, how terrible a slaughter it would cause...and even this imaginary Dr. Ejaz might have had second thoughts about his predictions when Lee was marching around Pennsylvania.....I think we are in for some very bad times in Pakistan as well.

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