What's senseless in it?
The whole article is senseless, misleading and inflammatory.
First, he makes this claim:
"Now, if this were a report from Iraq, we would be hearing that it was all our own fault and that the Bin Ladenists would not be in that country at all if it were not for the coalition presence. It's practically an article of faith among liberals that only the folly of the intervention made Iraq into a magnet and a training or recruiting ground for our foes. One of the difficulties with this shallow and glib analysis is that it fails to explain Afghanistan and, in fact, fails to explain it twice."
But earlier in the article he points out this:
"I call your attention to the front-page report in the Oct. 30 New York Times in which David Rohde, writing from the Afghan town of Gardez, tells of a new influx of especially vicious foreign fighters. Describing it as the largest such infiltration since 2001, Rohde goes on to say, "The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies." They also, it seems, favor those Taliban elements who are more explicitly allied with al-Qaida, and bring with them cash and resources with which to sabotage, for example, the opening of schools in the southern provinces around Kandahar."
Now why does he think these foreign fighters are going to Afghanistan much like they did in Iraq. What's the common link between Afghanistan and Iraq........they both have Western troops fighting. Duh! Isn't that what liberals have been saying from the get go?
Then he says this:
""No end in sight" is another favorite mantra of the anti-war mentality. And how true that melancholy reflection seems to be. The latest news is of a very nasty Islamic insurgency in southern Thailand, butchering Buddhist villages (remember the Taliban assault on the Buddha statues at Bamiyan?) and making demands for the imposition of sharia law. Perhaps someone will identify for me which Thai and Buddhist—or Western imperialist—crimes have led to this sudden development. Or perhaps it will be admitted, however grudgingly and belatedly, that there is something sui generis about Islamist fanaticism: something that is looking for a confrontation with every non-Muslim society in the world and is determined to pursue it with the utmost violence and cruelty. It is also seeking a confrontation with some Muslim states and societies."
He starts by pointing out that there is a common liberal lament.....no end in sight. Well that's true because there is no end in sight after being promised by the Bush/Cheney/Rumfeld gang that this would be a short war. Nearly 5 years later, we are still at it. So then, he makes a giant leap to Thailand.....what does this have to do with the fighting between the West and Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan? Nothing really. However he is now embarking on another rightie attempt to paint Muslims as the human equivalent of the pitbull. Forget that there are over a billion Muslims living peacefully in this world. Forget that Muslims are not the only perpetrators of violence in Southern Asia and the rest of the world. Forget that the author makes no attempt to find out if their have been Buddhists assaults/repression on Muslims in Thailand. Nope. Muslims are born bad seed.....its in their DNA. Much like Communists were during another era when Muslims were not the right's punching bag and their reason for maintaining the largest military force in the world.
Are you starting to see a theme yet, Tim?
One last comment......if the Muslims of Pakistan want to have a purely Muslim state and if they vote it into place, of what business is it to your author and his rightwing constitutency? After all, many of those same supporters of his want to see a Christian state in the US.
God, your cohort is ripe with hypocrisy.
"The people of Pakistan are also discovering the cost of "blowback." Their entire state is consecrated to the idea of Islam: It is one of the first countries to have its very nationality defined by religion. But there are those for whom a mere state for Muslims is not enough and who insist on something quite different, which is a purely Muslim state. Gen. Pervez Musharraf used to flirt with these forces, as did Gen. Zia and as did (though she now prefers to forget this) Benazir Bhutto. The groups that used to be Pakistan's proxies in Afghanistan are now waging war on the streets of Pakistan's cities and in the mountains of Pakistan's frontier provinces. They are blowing up Shiite mosques, killing the doctors and nurses who try to administer polio vaccine in rural areas, and forcing women and girls back into the role of chattel. For them, nothing will do but the reimposition of seventh-century mores and the re-establishment of the caliphate. It is idle to think that "we" created this gruesome phenomenon and idler still to imagine that there is any possibility of our compromising with it." |
