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Saturday, 5 January 2008
The Age's Motto: Only Dis-Connect

"Pakistan has received about $10 billion in U.S. funding since 2001 because Washington views Pakistan as a key ally in President George W. Bush's campaign against terrorism...."
-- from this news article

This figure, used routinely by the press, which simply accepts what the Administration puts out, greatly underrates what has been given to Pakistan since 2001. Selig Harrison, a close student of Pakistan, almost a year ago calculated the actual aid to Pakistan up to that time as amounting to (if one includes, as of course one should, the cancellation of Pakistani debts to the United States) at $27.5 billion. Since then many millions more have been added. Members of the Press, and others, before repeating the claim that Pakistan has received "$10 billion" should read Harrison's article, and come to their own conclusions. My view is that the correct formulation would be that since 2001 Pakistan has received $30 billion dollars from the United States. It has become, during that time it was receiving such colossal amounts of aid, and has remained, the sanctuary of Bin Laden and of Ayman al-Zawahiri. It has remained the chief sanctuary and supporter of a revived Taliban. It has remained the chief incubator of Islamic nuclear ambitions, with weapons which, we are supposed to believe, are being "secured" by "Pakistani"(!) forces. It has remained, and will remain, a malevolent supporter of terrorism and aggression against Kashmir, and the rest of India.

But what is $30 billion wasted, compared to the $60 billion wasted on malevolent meretricious Egypt? And what is $30 billion wasted on Pakistan, to do what it never would do, to become what it never will become (a real "ally" in the "war on terror" -- god, we are run by fools, and other fools listen to them and do not question them), compared to the one trillion dollars, and counting, spent on Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations Iraq, the one place where, so perfectly, the ethnic and and sectarian divisions within the Camp of Islam are offered up for exploitation, and we do what? -- we spend a trillion dollars to heal those fissures, to make Iraq hold together, and to prosper, in the hope -- the idiotic hope -- that somehow this will lessen the problem of Muslim demographic conquest and Da'wa in Western Europe, of Muslim attacks on southern Thailand, the southern Philippines, the southern Sudan, West Africa, everywhere -- no, actually those things are not connected, because the entire theme of the Administration is the reverse of E.M. Forster's famous epigraph.

The theme of this Administration is not to connect example after example of Jihad worldwide, but to ignore most of it, to pretend it has nothing to do with Islam. The motto of this Administration in dealing with Islam is "Only Dis-connect." And so they have. And that Disconnect is there for all to see.

Posted on 01/05/2008 9:12 AM by Hugh Fitzgerald
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