Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan (TSP): May 30, 2011

RamaY · Post by **RamaY** » 02 Jun 2011 21:47

^ good move. Once Bibles are banned from Pakistan, they can find the passages in Quran that are not pious enough... who knows some of the interpreters could be wrong... after all Quran was written ~200 years after prophet (PBUH)

Rajiv Lather · Post by **Rajiv Lather** » 02 Jun 2011 21:53

VikramS · Post by **VikramS** » 02 Jun 2011 21:59

Mahendra wrote:I don't see why people are having orga5ms over JA's comments made to some Pawki( haven't seen the video yet), even if JA Pwned the other guy what bl00dy difference does it make? A pawki is immune to reality, all the Pawkis I have met believe that they won 4 wars with India, defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and that Pawkistan would have been a superpower if not for Zardari and the Joos. If the idea is that JA made Pawkis see the reality then that idea falls flat on its face. JA's comments would be dismissed as the comments of a lower caste Muslim trying to please his Hindu masters in India.
Pawkistan is beyond redemption, the only solution is a break up of Pawkistan and Brinda Karat type of detoxification of text books campaign.

Mahendra, did you meet them in real life or on the internet?

Regarding the video, watch them.

It was the way the pwning was done which made this different. Every aspect of TSP's miserable experience was laid bare, using an =/= which would resonate with the TSPian. He completely took that "pleasing the Hindu" logic out of the picture.

Mahendra · Post by **Mahendra** » 02 Jun 2011 22:04

In real life sirji. I am the RAA station chief in Pindi

VikramS · Post by **VikramS** » 02 Jun 2011 22:07

Mahendra wrote:In real life sirji. I am the RAA station chief in Pindi

Joo too?

Sanku · Post by **Sanku** » 02 Jun 2011 22:07

Mahendra wrote:In real life sirji. I am the RAA station chief in Pindi

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 02 Jun 2011 22:09

ramana wrote: ...

A big change we are not comprehending is the effect of Holebroke going to the great Jahanum. We see the change on BO admin after his demise. That worthy even on death bed was pleading to Paki doctor (as if he had any infulence in the matter!) to persuade TSP to come halfway to support the US.

...

Holbrooke's influence from beyond the grave, channeled by Nicholas Kristoff:

What Holbrooke Knew

Muppalla · Post by **Muppalla** » 02 Jun 2011 22:11

I don't know if this news is posted. Tabloid style news anyway:

India planned attack on Pak navy base

The terrorist attack on Karachi's Mehran Naval Station on May 22 was conceived and launched by India with the primary objective of killing the Chinese engineers present there, a Pakistani newspaper has claimed, citing 'informed sources'.

Four to six Taliban terrorists had entered PNS Mehran on May 22, destroying two maritime surveillance aircraft and killing ten military personnel during their 17-hour siege of the naval air base.

India is the only country in the region that feels troubled by the Pakistan Navy, which had awfully beaten the Indian Navy in Operation Dwarka of 1965. Since then, it has been an earnest desire of India to harm the Pakistan Navy but it was perhaps not possible on the battle front, hence it struck the PNS Mehran," The News quoted sources as saying.

According to it, the sources disclosed that sufficient evidence of Indian involvement in the attack has been found.

The paper quoted sources as saying that India's access to terror outfits active in Pakistan through its consulates in Afghanistan poses a major threat to the internal security of the country.

This is the reason that Pakistan has always been voicing concern over the opening of an unjustified number of Indian consulates in the war-ravaged and lawless neighbouring country of Afghanistan, they added

The attack on PNS Mehran was conceived by the top secret service of India -- Research and Analysis Wing -- with the primary objective of killing Chinese engineers with the destruction of expensive maritime surveillance aircraft of the Pakistan Navy being the secondary objective," said the sources.

"The final goal of such a daring assault was to give an impression to the international community that Pakistan was a highly fragile country vis-a-vis its internal security," they added.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 02 Jun 2011 22:19

KLNM, That article confirms my view of Holebroke.

BTW if he were alive OBL would be too!

As for Pakistan, Holbrooke told me and others that because of its size and nuclear weaponry, it was center stage; Afghanistan was a sideshow.

“A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential,” he noted, in the musings he left behind. He believed that a crucial step to reducing radicalism in Pakistan was to ease the Kashmir dispute with India, and he favored more pressure on India to achieve that.

RH belongs to the old Cold Warrior gang that wants to punish India for being with FSU. They don't understand that it was US support for TSP and PRC that drove India to seek help wher it could. They ignore that India never allowed the FSU bases etc. They will do anything to support TSP in its goals so long their goals are achieved with TSP's connivance.

BTW very big ego to think the General calling him a wingman is an insult. He probably thought the General was his orderly.

What peace did he acheive in Dayton accord? He formalised an Islamic state in Balkans.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 02 Jun 2011 22:28

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pak ... story.html

At least 70 killed in 2-day battle on border of Pakistan, Afghanistan

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — At least 70 people have been killed in two days of intense fighting between Pakistani security forces and hundreds of militants who crossed from Afghanistan into northwest Pakistan, officials said.
Local officials and residents in Upper Dir, a remote valley that borders the Afghan province of Konar, said Pakistani troops regained control of the area after 36 hours of fierce clashes with heavily armed militants who attacked a police checkpoint Wednesday. Omar Hassan Ahravi, who identified himself as a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban in the nearby Malakand region, told some local reporters that his organization had carried out the attack “with Afghan friends.”
Ahravi said the militants managed to seize Pakistani anti-aircraft weapons.

( Poak Fry-day is advanced to Thu now)

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 02 Jun 2011 22:30

So is the long awaited pincer from Pakiban? Afghan Taliban from Pashtun areas and TTP from TSP areas.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 02 Jun 2011 22:32

http://www.frumforum.com/u-s-pakistan-f ... rror-squad
Luv/Ashna/Rakhail/ Raksa/ affair continue

Bruised from their latest diplomatic clash, the U.S. and Pakistan are trying to bandage their relationship by forging a new joint intelligence team to go after top terrorism suspects, officials say.The move comes after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton presented the Pakistanis with the U.S. list of most-wanted terrorism targets, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Wednesday. The list includes some groups the Pakistanis have been reluctant to attack, U.S. officials said.It’s one of a host of confidence-building measures meant to restore trust blown on both sides after U.S. forces tracked down and killed al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden during a secret raid in Pakistan last month.But it also amounts to a new test of loyalty for both sides. The Pakistanis say the U.S. has failed to share its best intelligence, instead running numerous unilateral spying operations on its soil.U.S. officials say they need to see the Pakistanis target militants they’ve long sheltered, including the Haqqani network, which operates with impunity in the Pakistani tribal areas while attacking U.S. troops in Afghanistan.All those interviewed spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The U.S. and Pakistan have engaged in a diplomatic stare-down since the May 2 raid, with the Pakistanis outraged over the unilateral action as an affront to its sovereignty and the Americans angry to find that bin Laden had been hiding for more than five years in a military town just 35 miles from the capital, Islamabad.

arun · Post by **arun** » 02 Jun 2011 22:34

Sadanand Dhume in the Wall Street Journal in an article titled “Keep Faith in Pakistan” argues that despite popular opinion to the contrary, the U.S. should continue to aid Pakistan.

With a hat tip to Alexander Pope a case of damn with faint praise; just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike?

Keep Faith in Pakistan

krithivas · Post by **krithivas** » 02 Jun 2011 22:39

^^^ Regarding "Operation Dwarka"
From Wikipedia:

Operation Dwarka, also known as "Operation Somnath", was a successful naval operation commenced by the Pakistan Navy to attack on the Indian coastal town of Dwarka on 7 September 1965. This was the first use of Pakistan Navy in any of the Indo-Pakistan Wars.
As the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 broke out between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, armies and air forces of both nations were involved in bitter fighting. Pakistan was under attack in Punjab region and were locked in battles in Kashmir. To relieve pressure on the northern front, Pakistan decided to use its navy in the war by launching a quick strike on Indian coast. The primary objective of the attack was to destroy the radar station and other naval installations which Pakistani Navy mistakenly believed were at Dwarka.[3] Pakistani command also hoped to the attack divert the Indian Air Force from the north.

......

The mission objectives of Pakistan Navy are listed below. None of the objectives were achieved.
To draw the heavy enemy units out of Bombay for the submarine to attack.
To destroy the radar installation at Dwarka.
To lower Indian morale.
To divert Indian Air Force effort away from the north.

TSP definition of success is to not achieve their objective. Reminds me of Pirates of the Caribbean .. "Up is Down"?

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 02 Jun 2011 22:43

Manny wrote: His sin of sanctimonious speech is not in how he felt about India and others. But doing it to an unreceptive audience that got India nothing! India came out looking like a loser. India was not a world power then. He punched far beyond his weight and looked silly and made India look even sillier. You don't punch when can't get away with it. It looked like a weakling shouting at the top of his voice complaining how righteous he was. It really doesn't matter if the weakling is righteous at all.

The world doesn't operate on righteousness alone and many Indians are clueless about it.

When an Indian diplomat carrying in his memes the finest intellectual tradition makes a speech that lasts 8 hours, it is probably because he wants a best possible shot at getting what his country wants from an unreceptive audience. If they were going to be receptive and on India's side, there would have been no need for a speech. That he failed doesn't necessarily mean the speech was a bad idea.

Given the global power politics of the time and what we know about the anglo-american plans for Pak and J&K, it is not clear even in hindsight that there would have been any behavior by India would have actually got India something. As to punching above its weight, even then Indian army was more than capable of pushing out the pakis from J&K, were it not for accepting the cease fire. That was an error in judgment, but only in hindsight. At the time, UN was fresh on the scene as the way to resolve conflicts. India approached the UN in good faith, perhaps in some naievete. But then its modern incarnation was a brand new country with very limited, if any, experience of foreign policy. That might have led to big mistakes, but it is not a crime or a sin.

If we are going to berate India for "being sanctimonious", and "punching above its weight" all those years (funnily we also berate India for having been too meek, waiting too long to assert ourselves while building up our strength), in hindsight then we have to say what the alternative should have been. (Otherwise we'll just be like the mythical random guy on the train to Chennai who expounds at length about how he wrote Nehru about all the right answers and the fellow failed to listen).

So, should we have simply forgone all assertion of our values and beliefs because we are small guys only? For a nation that was there for embodying Dharma 2.0, what is wrong in being true to ourselves and asserting that Dharma? True, Packiness would have much easier to adopt and perhaps more expedient (see Margaret Bourke-White's excellent article referenced at the top of this thread), but we know the consequences now, and should be taking our hats off to our elders who could see the consequences even then.

As to speeches, we are an oral culture, given to the tradition of "hitopadEsa", or imparting of the right way, as we see it Should we have abandoned it and adopted a submissive and quiet ji-huzur stand, agreeing, for example, that the soviet union was just unmitigated evil, when many of our leaders and educated people--rightly or wrongly--believed at the time that while it is deeply flawed and its system is not for us in toto, it was more or less on the right track?

Basically, what I see happening with this "sanctimonious India" trope is that US found India irritating because it wouldn't fall in line with its agenda, and now we have unthinkingly adopted the US line and vocabulary, hook line and sinker so to speak.

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 02 Jun 2011 22:47

arun wrote:X Posted from the Oppression of Minorities in Pakistan thread.

Mohammadden clerics in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan seek to have parts of the Bible declared blasphemous or alternatively banned:

June 01, 2011

Pakistani Muslims Want to Ban the Bible

A group of radical clerics in Pakistan wants the country's Supreme Court to declare certain passages in the Bible blasphemous - because they depict as flawed certain biblical characters whom Muslims regard as Islamic prophets.

If the court fails to do so, they said, then lawyers will submit an application for the Bible to be formally banned in Pakistan. …………………..

Fox News

AoA, do it, do it, mashallah subhanallah etc etc.

Shaashtanga · Post by **Shaashtanga** » 02 Jun 2011 22:49

shiv wrote:I repeat yet again what I have been saying for the past few weeks.

Pakistan has an agrarian economy. That economy was viable only as long as there was trade with the east (India). An "agrarian economy" is one where most people are farmers or deal with farm products. They cannot suddenly become techies. Pakistan has virtually no manufacturing, services or mineral export economy. The tourism industry is defunct.

This country has been kept alive by infusions of funds from abroad that sustained a high living high spending elite while the "agraian economy" just pulled along. Remove the support and Pakistan has nothing. In the medium to long term the Pakistani economy can be supported ONLY by one nation - India. India is the only country which will buy Pakistani agricultural produce that supports 50% of the Pakistani population. The wealthy west are not importing Pakistani produce. Neither is China. It is cheapest to export stuff 50 km east than 5000 km by sea.

If Pakistanis cannot return to normal and develop a "normal" relationship with India they are fuked. It may already be too late. Pakistan my irretrievably be heading for another split. Pakistaniyat has ensured suicide by creating a set of people who hate and fear India. But India is the only country that can offer life-blood to the people of Pakistan. It would be best to have Pashtunistan and Baluchistan independent and have a rump state which gets international attention for detoxification. It will take 100 years. Just as papa Cohen says.

But I do suggest special aid Packages in exchange for enriched Uranium. The Uranium will be diluted and power Indian reactors.

Shiv saar, excellent post.

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 02 Jun 2011 22:55

ramana wrote:KLNM, That article confirms my view of Holebroke.

BTW if he were alive OBL would be too!

As for Pakistan, Holbrooke told me and others that because of its size and nuclear weaponry, it was center stage; Afghanistan was a sideshow.

“A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential,” he noted, in the musings he left behind. He believed that a crucial step to reducing radicalism in Pakistan was to ease the Kashmir dispute with India, and he favored more pressure on India to achieve that.
RH belongs to the old Cold Warrior gang that wants to punish India for being with FSU. They don't understand that it was US support for TSP and PRC that drove India to seek help wher it could. They ignore that India never allowed the FSU bases etc. They will do anything to support TSP in its goals so long their goals are achieved with TSP's connivance.

BTW very big ego to think the General calling him a wingman is an insult. He probably thought the General was his orderly.

What peace did he acheive in Dayton accord? He formalised an Islamic state in Balkans.

One thing Holbrooke and his like would never have gotten, lacking the area's ancient historical memory as they do, is that the aggression in the subcontinent is always from the Afghanistan side into Pakistan, and end game is really to pacify (fighting and defeating if necessary) and come to an agreement with any latter-day incarnation of Seleucus, Kanishka, Babar, Akbar, or Ahmed Shah Abdali. That will give the peace and space for Indics to cultivate and harvest knowledge in aryavartam, kashmiram, dakhsinapatham and pragjyotisham. Afghans know it, Pakis know it in their gut, probably Indians know it, but Americans don't know it.

BijuShet · Post by **BijuShet** » 02 Jun 2011 22:55

Opinion in "The News"
His finest hour

Ikram Sehgal
Thursday, June 02, 2011

The Pokhran nuclear explosions by India on May 11 and 13, 1998, plunged Pakistan into a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” crisis. The gloating rhetoric and venom flowing out of the BJP leadership then governing India was startling, if not altogether shocking. Clearly intent on rubbing our noses in the dirt, their rhetoric pushed us into a corner. As a knee-jerk reaction an immediate tit-for-tat nuclear blast was a non-starter. However, the morale of both the military and civilians across the board nosedived within days to an all-time low. It was a Hobson’s choice: unless we reacted, we would not have any credible deterrent; if we did, international condemnation (and sanctions) would swiftly follow.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s single-minded obsession was to get a nuclear deterrent to equal India’s bomb even if we “had to eat grass.” To Nawaz Sharif’s credit, he took the brave decision to carry out the nuclear blast in the face of international pressure. In a perverse way, one must be thankful to the Indians: the Pokhran blasts forced us come out of the nuclear closet, without that cast-iron “casus belli,” we would have had to face the full weight of international retribution. We soon messed up our nuclear “coming out” party. The freezing of all foreign currency accounts within hours of the Chagai blast destroyed our credibility as a financial safe haven, probably for good.

Nawaz Sharif’s economic-oriented vision envisaging rapid development of the socio-economic infrastructure was symbolised by the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway. However, he could not quite reconcile to his businessmen colleagues (and himself) paying the taxes that make up the revenues for running any country. At his urging, Moinuddin Khan had abandoned a seven-figure salary with Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong to become chairman of the CBR (now FBR). He died of a broken heart at this rank duplicity. Sharif talked the good talk about the economic reforms crafted by Sartaj Aziz but failed to implement them because of political and personal compulsions. Musharraf’s economic golden years of the early 2000s was possible only because of (1) Nawaz Sharif’s policies being implemented, and (2) hard cash in US military aid to Pakistan after the 9/11 attacks being diverted to budgetary support. The ultimate tragedy is the perception of our armed forces gobbling up the more than $10 billon received from the US for military hardware. Actual figures show they got less than 15 percent, 85 percent went to support the consumer-friendly budget sustaining the “feel good” economic environment prevalent. Musharraf allowed the master of PR, Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, to short-change the defence services so that he could look good as the leader of an upwardly mobile “economically prosperous” country.

Both Mian Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf have a lot in common. Counting on the notoriously short memories of the Pakistani public, they conveniently gloss over their repeated faux pas. In Sharif’s case the infamous “yellow cabs” scheme, in Musharraf’s case, Kargil. {==!}Neither Sharif nor Musharraf belonged to the landed gentry or had any background of politics, and both are products of the army. While berating the military, Mian Sahib conveniently forgets he came into politics because of the direct patronage of Zia’s martial law.

It is not unusual in South Asia for individuals to turn upon their benefactors and biting the hand that fed you. As prime minister, Sharif fell out with five successive army chiefs, Gen Mirza Aslam Beg, Gen Asif Nawaz (died in office) and Gen Waheed Kakar in his first tenure. During his second stint as prime minister, Gen Karamat was retired early for advocating the National Security Council. Sharif interpreted this as a conspiracy by the military for a more active role in Pakistani politics. Superseding the far more deserving (and nominally senior) Lt Gen Ali Kuli Khan, he appointed Musharraf as COAS. When he attempted to remove Musharraf on Oct 12, 1999, Sharif’s action backfired. While he does have a genuine grouse against Musharraf for the counter-coup that ousted him as prime minister, why is he persisting in attacking the whole army? Given deep pockets to sustain a battery of lawyers, why doesn’t he go legally after Musharraf? The rest of the generals had no idea about Musharraf’s ambitions. They just did not take kindly to Sharif throwing out one army chief after another.

The Sharifs are blatantly hypocritical about their holier-than-thou stance about the rule of law. In November 1997, PML-N rank and file, bussed in by Shahbaz Sharif from Lahore, physically attacked the Supreme Court, even entering the courtrooms and performing “Bhangra” live on CCTV. “Wikileaks” has revealed that, during Pakistan latest judicial crisis Shahbaz Sharif told US consul general Bryan Hunt in confidence that “even if he was restored, Iftikhar Chaudhry would soon be replaced.”

Abbottabad embarrassed and humiliated Pakistan. {Here Pakistan = Army!}Voices were raised across the world for Pakistan to be “punished” for “harbouring” Osama bin Laden for a decade. How come no one raises questions about how Serb general Ratko Mladic, responsible for the genocide of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, evaded the dragnet of all Western governments and their intelligence agencies for over 15 years in his cousin’s house in a village in Serbia? And what about his boss Karadzic doing the same for 12 years, even running a medical clinic in the centre of Belgrade? The US should reveal the contents of the computer discs and hard discs the Seals unit removed from the Bin Laden compound that clearly is the “smoking gun” about the purported “official” or “unofficial” support for Bin Laden in Pakistan. Accessories to the murder of over 40,000 Pakistanis, we need the names of these despicable characters. {Most likely they will be generals who ran TSPA and ISI!}

With Imran Khan’s appeal spreading far and wide, particularly among newly registered young voters, Mian Nawaz Sharif’s latest political forays represent a rather belated change of heart (nothing to do with the recent heart procedure he had in London). By clambering onto the bandwagon of the causes Imran Khan has been espousing, Mian Sahib is vainly attempting to steal Imran Khan’s thunder.

The Indian deployment on our eastern borders constitutes more than four times our total strength, further depleted by the moving of some of our operational reserves to fight counterinsurgency operations. Does Nawaz Sharif understand the dangerous implications of India operationalising its Cold Start doctrine? The same man who stood tall on May 28, 1998, now says that India “is not our enemy.” There is a limit to appeasement. Mian Sahib needs to read up about Munich.

Pakistan should be thankful for the deterrent value of the nuclear bomb. While May 28, 1998, was certainly his finest hour, his reputation has gone downhill since (not counting the “breakout” from Raiwind on March 16, 2009, that led to the restoration of the chief justice). Will the real Mian Nawaz Sharif please stand up and be counted for what he really stands for?
The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: [email protected]

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 02 Jun 2011 22:57

Pakistan Seen Readying to Cross Nuclear Threshold
http://www.nationaljournal.com/national ... 602?page=1

Pakistan's test launch last month of a new short-range ballistic missile, when added to its quickly growing arsenal of lower-power nuclear weapons, indicates the South Asian country is seriously readying to use its nuclear deterrent should war break out again with India, the Times of India reported on Sunday.Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project Director Hans Kristensen said the nuclear-capable Hatf 9 missile appears to be designed to attack an invading force of Indian soldiers.
"While that wouldn't threaten Indian survival in itself, it would of course mean crossing the nuclear threshold early in a conflict, which is one of the particular concerns of a short-range nuclear weapon," Kristensen said.
The missile's 37-mile flight range means it could not strike any major Indian population center. However, the weapon could undermine the Indian military's unconfirmed "Cold Start" doctrine, which focuses on the rapid deployment of armed forces into Pakistan for a targeted strike following a terrorist assault on the scale of the 2008 attacks on Mumbai.Islamabad evidently is increasing its capabilities in response to the likelihood that New Delhi would forcefully respond to another large-scale terrorist attack perpetrated by Pakistani-based extremists.
"A [Hatf 9] would have to drive all the way up to the Indian border to be able to reach important targets in India," Kristensen said. "Amritsar would be one candidate, as would several smaller cities along the border. But that would also expose the missile to counterattack."
The Pakistani army previously said the Hatf 9 "could carry nuclear warheads of appropriate yield with high accuracy" and possesses the ability to be quickly relocated following use.Kristensen said the time had come for Islamabad to provide information on the size, scope, and intent of its nuclear arsenal.Though Pakistan is widely seen to have the world's fastest-growing deterrent, speculation that the state would overtake France as the planet's fourth-largest nuclear weapons state is "a decade or two ahead," Kristensen said."Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is not equal to the number of warheads that could potentially be produced by all the highly enriched uranium and plutonium Pakistan might have produced. The size also depends on other factors such as the number of delivery vehicles and other limitations," he said

Manny · Post by **Manny** » 02 Jun 2011 22:59

KLNMurthy,

Did not this moralistic high ground attitude and the culture of pontification that made Nehru concede the UN Security council seat to China, when the US actually wanted India to have it after Taiwan was considered not an option for the UNSC? Did not India blow it then with this "clueless, living in an idealistic world where others do not care to live by"? No sir, it has actually harmed India lot more than it has helped.

I am talking about this culture of platitude without backing it with action or capability. If India had focused on becoming a stronger nation economically before punching beyond ones wt, we would have been better off. Is all. People walking on eggs shouldn't hop.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 02 Jun 2011 23:02

Keep Faith in Pakistan
SAD ANAND DHUME
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 64856.html

Emotionally satisfying as that may be, it would also be shortsighted. To begin with, to borrow the writer Steve Coll's memorable phrase, Pakistan's size and nuclear weapons program make it the AIG of nation states, too big to fail. Throw into the mix Pakistan's control of vital supply routes to Afghanistan, and the need for some form of cooperation to keep up the pressure on terrorists, and you have the main practical argument against walking away.
But there is another, less obvious, reason for keeping the faith. Pakistan may be teetering but it's hardly a lost cause. Ten years ago the country was ruled by a general who had seized power in a coup, housed a largely tame and ill-informed media, and had spent the previous two decades welcoming jihadists from across the globe. Indeed, pre-9/11 Pakistan more or less openly backed terrorism as an instrument of policy, and helped create arguably the world's most brutal Islamist regime in history under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Nandu · Post by **Nandu** » 02 Jun 2011 23:05

harbans wrote: Remember Reagan introducing Benazir as the PM of India? Asked for clarification, Reagan explained, that before the joint conference BB was only talking of India all the time, so the inadvertant slip.

No, I don't remember that. Where is this from?

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 02 Jun 2011 23:13

You were too young at that time maybe or not into following the news.
BB was on state visit to US and Reagan introduced her as PM of India.

Ikram Sehgal is truly Paagal Sehgal. What a bunch of whines and half truths and wrong parallels in one article.

Manny lets not discuss Indians in TSP thread. Thanks, ramana

KLNMurthy · Post by **KLNMurthy** » 02 Jun 2011 23:31

Manny wrote:KLNMurthy,

Did not this moralistic high ground attitude and the culture of pontification that made Nehru concede the UN Security council seat to China, when the US actually wanted India to have it after Taiwan was considered not an option for the UNSC? Did not India blow it then with this "clueless, living in an idealistic world where others do not care to live by"? No sir, it has actually harmed India lot more than it has helped.

I am talking about this culture of platitude without backing it with action or capability. If India had focused on becoming a stronger nation economically before punching beyond ones wt, we would have been better off. Is all. People walking on eggs shouldn't hop.

There will never be any universal agreement as to when it is right to keep quiet and bide our time and when we should speak up and take a risk.

Part of being a leader is making that call, and taking the heat when the consequences work out less than optimal. Foolishness, ignorance, naievete and even wickedness on the part of the leader can play a part in the equation. That's how it goes.

Part of the joy of being in the peanut gallery is the fun of endlessly second-guessing and berating those who are in the hot seat and taking decisions, without having to worry about the consequences. But I don't think it means that the denizens of the peanut gallery would have done a perfect job, if only a more sensible Providence would have put them in charge instead of that bunch of jokers who messed everything up.

Paki leaders starting with Jinnah and going on through Kiyani, all made clear, decisive calls and allied with a superpower to enhance their own power and advance their agenda. They never preached to their masters. At that time, they received accolades from AngloAmerica for being clearheaded, decisive, martial and generally TFTA. And today, here we all are.

Nandu · Post by **Nandu** » 02 Jun 2011 23:34

Ramana, BB became Paki PM on Dec 2nd, 1988. Her state visit to the US was in June 1989, few months after Reagan's retirement. There is no reason why Reagan would have introduced her during the visit.

So... where is the story from?

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 02 Jun 2011 23:39

Finest hours of Pagal Sah-Gal were in India when he was POW in 71. He did surrender to save his Musharraf.
I think it was Sr Bush who addressed her as PM of India.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Jun 2011 00:10

Ok Prem corrected me.

Cosmo_R · Post by **Cosmo_R** » 03 Jun 2011 00:46

It was Jesse Helms:

http://articles.sfgate.com/1995-04-07/n ... utto-india

Added later: Helms later said that BB only talked about India and no mention of Pakistan so he thought she was the Indian PM.

Brad Goodman · Post by **Brad Goodman** » 03 Jun 2011 01:27

Prem wrote:Keep Faith in Pakistan
SAD ANAND DHUME
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 64856.html
Emotionally satisfying as that may be, it would also be shortsighted. To begin with, to borrow the writer Steve Coll's memorable phrase, Pakistan's size and nuclear weapons program make it the AIG of nation states, too big to fail. Throw into the mix Pakistan's control of vital supply routes to Afghanistan, and the need for some form of cooperation to keep up the pressure on terrorists, and you have the main practical argument against walking away.
But there is another, less obvious, reason for keeping the faith. Pakistan may be teetering but it's hardly a lost cause. Ten years ago the country was ruled by a general who had seized power in a coup, housed a largely tame and ill-informed media, and had spent the previous two decades welcoming jihadists from across the globe. Indeed, pre-9/11 Pakistan more or less openly backed terrorism as an instrument of policy, and helped create arguably the world's most brutal Islamist regime in history under the Taliban in Afghanistan.

I wanted to register to WSJ to conunter this factually incorrect argument. Some brief history in AIG crisis for newcomers. AIG an insurance company in US, during the housing boom in US they had invested heavily in Mortgage Backed Securities. These were financial instruments that would pay them a pre-determined returns each month/ quarter. In case of disruptions in cash flow AIG indirectly owned the real estates (homes) as collateral. The thing started to unravel when the home prices fell so much that owners of those homes did not find any incentive to be paying mortgage for loans. The corrective action was first to stop giving loans to people who do not deserve them and then to shore up AIG with a line of credit from treasury / feds for their SWAPS with counterparties.

Now back to Pakistan. Pakis are busy producting nuclear fissile material at a rate no other country is doing currently. Since the analogy was since they have nukes they are too big to fail. So in financial world it would mean that AIG was buying subprime MBS using the tax payer's money. What Fed did with Freddie Fannie and to some extent with AIG, Citi was to give money with lot of strings attached. Some companies went under conservator ship which meant that government took over the administration of these companies. Others were given strict guidelines on what they could do and what they could not including they could not hire H1B workers (TARP program).

If you want to do the same with Pakis. Then the first things we need to accomplish is
1. Sign FMCT, CTBT and NPT as non nooke country
2. Roll back the expansion of clandestine nooke program under IAEA supervision
3. Cut back military spending to under 3% of GDP including pensions
4. IMF/ WB should included in council that decides on taxes
5. Advisors from donar countries on their foreign policy

If I am paying Pakis I want accountiblity for every tax dollar that goes there. First they need to account all $20B they have received till date and then we can do what Mr Dhume advises after we review what we have got in return of these. In short give up nookes and take marshall plan

A_Gupta · Post by **A_Gupta** » 03 Jun 2011 01:33

KLNMurthy wrote: When an Indian diplomat carrying in his memes the finest intellectual tradition makes a speech that lasts 8 hours, it is probably because he wants a best possible shot at getting what his country wants from an unreceptive audience. If they were going to be receptive and on India's side, there would have been no need for a speech. That he failed doesn't necessarily mean the speech was a bad idea.

Who knows? Maybe he kept talking to delay a vote while someone worked on the side to deal with some key voting country. In effect, a filibuster. Unless we know all the circumstances around the speech, we can't say whether it was possible to do it better and get a better outcome.

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 03 Jun 2011 01:44

Cosmo_R wrote:It was Jesse Helms:

http://articles.sfgate.com/1995-04-07/n ... indiaAdded later: Helms later said that BB only talked about India and no mention of Pakistan so he thought she was the Indian PM.

Good old Jesee Helm, the finest racist to grace the Senate. Its relief to know that many of his ilks are gone or getting ready to go.

Gagan · Post by **Gagan** » 03 Jun 2011 01:46

The reason why I liked Javed Akhtar's talk, is because he showed the Pakistanis what they were.

I saw indignation on his face when the Pakistani tried to talk about there being more religious freedom in Pakistan. The look of indignation on JA's face clearly indicated his sense of Patriotism for India.

Beyond that his rebuttal was precise, and he deeply understands the Pakistanis.

His views on the RSS, I won't comment on, other than to say that his viewpoint is shared by a lot of people, across all religions in India. His theory on doing an == perhaps stems from his beliefs, and I guess he is entitled to them. I know a lot of people who have similar beliefs and no one's questioned their patriotism or their general knowledge yet.

He openly undressed the Pakistanis until their bigotry was naked and there for all to see. Here was a guy dismissing their two nation theory, their false religious tolerance, and Jinnah's excuse in creating Pakistan.

The best part was the way he told the guy, "You have to have minorities left in your country to be generous to them". Is this fact about there being 10% hindus in Pakistan at partition, and now down to some 1% a widely known fact? I don't think so, but JA knew this! If that isn't perceptive, then saars what is?

I liked it, I would give the guy 4.5 stars out of 5. (Half mark deducted for bringing in the RSS too much)

Gagan · Post by **Gagan** » 03 Jun 2011 01:49

Mahendra wrote:In real life sirji. I am the RAA station chief in Pindi

Brandy when did joo get transferred to Pindi?

Nandu · Post by **Nandu** » 03 Jun 2011 01:55

Thanks, Cosmo_R.

Sushupti · Post by **Sushupti** » 03 Jun 2011 02:11

This theory though doesn't quite hold water because a lesser organization like LeT had already attacked India in November 2008. The objective of terror organizations is to do something "new and improved" like the ads for soaps. Hence, it is highly unlikely that whatever Saleem was in danger of stumbling on had anything to do with India.

If you remove the obvious alternatives, whatever remains must be the logical option. That would involve Israel - in other words, elements of the Pakistan navy may have been cooperating with al-Qaeda over a possible attack on Israel. The modus operandi would be similar to the attacks on India in November 2008 - sea-based, which is actively ignored by the Pakistan navy.

However, a commando-type operation like the one on India wouldn't be practical in the case of Israel. Secondly, there are a number of other navies between the shores of Pakistan and Israel, not the least of which would be the Americans. Thus, the plan is likely to have focused on what al-Qaeda wanted to remove from Pakistan that could be used later against Israel.

Remember, though, that the attacks on the Karachi naval installations were focused on the P3 Orion aircraft - exactly the technology that the navy would be using to monitor the movements of large craft of the type that is used to load/unload/transport large objects.

Adding up the different permutations, it is difficult to ignore the probability that the idea involves using weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that had been spirited away by al-Qaeda with the active connivance of elements in the ISI. America and other countries have been focusing on the worst-case scenario of al-Qaeda getting WMDs, but haven't spent enough time considering that the organization may already have done so.

Pakistan has been on a bit of a bomb-building spree recently - again a suspicious activity because the stockpile of nuclear weapons meant to target India was widely considered sufficient as recently as 2008. So the building of new bombs had to have something to do with other applications - or other enemies than India. It is also more plausible to hide the creation of a rogue nuclear weapon when a hundred ones are being built as against when the stockpile is stable.

If you were the ISI person responsible for this project, a mere journalist like Saleem would be quite an inconvenience for your partners. Tragic as the killing of Saleem is, it may well have been initiated as part of a blueprint for a WMD to be used on Israel by al-Qaeda. An attack on India using such WMD is also plausible, albeit less likely due to the immediate retaliation that would cause.

http://atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/MF03Df02.html

what prevents it from being used in Europe?

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 03 Jun 2011 02:27

Prem wrote:Keep Faith in Pakistan
SAD ANAND DHUME
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 64856.html

Sheer nonsense. But like an overly eager argumentative Indian, he is offering his unsolicited useless opinion as a way to demonstrate that he is not a bised SDRE and can think positively about Pakis. It sure will earn him a few brownie points among the US elite. Whats the business of an SDRE to worry about US ditching TSP? He should be more worried about US ditching India to appease TSP which is more on the cards than USA loosing faith in TSP wich ain't gonna happen and he need not shed any tears on that count. Dhume dare not write about this poison spreading in DC that India must appease TSP lest he loose his privilages.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Jun 2011 02:31

I dont think he is SDRE Indian. He is US based expert. Its not about India. He comes on CSPAN.

CRamS · Post by **CRamS** » 03 Jun 2011 02:54

ramana wrote:I dont think he is SDRE Indian. He is US based expert. Its not about India. He comes on CSPAN.

BossGaru, he is an SDRE Indian, naturalized now, I don't know. I met him during a SAJA gathering in NYC many years ago. I recall he was one of the few SAJA types who had some Indian sympathies and not "Souh Asian". For e.g., he forecfuly defended India's nuke tests in 1998 and took on DC heavyweights. I guess sensing that Indian assertive PoV is not welcome in DC, he has to temper his views.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 03 Jun 2011 02:59

Well he now plugs the US line. So dont blow an artery.