This was the scene outside the Chicago Convention Center today,
as representatives of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization met for
the first day of a two day
summit. Protesters want the allies out of
Afghanistan – and many want the organization to be dissolved.
American ‘Grandees’
Should Pay Debt to Pakistan and be Grateful (The Frontier Post, Pakistan)
“While fleecing
someone with a long, sharp butcher's knife, the American grandees pose as though
they were performing an act of great generosity. … this
money is no hand out, charity or alms. It is reimbursement for what Pakistan
has spent out of its own pocket fighting America's spurious war on terror.”
How could the hubris of the self-important people in the U.S.
Congress, administration, think tanks and media be anything but maddening? How
could one react any other way when, while fleecing someone with a long, sharp
butcher's knife, they pose as though they were performing an act of great
generosity?
The case at issue is funding for Pakistan from the Coalition Support
Fund. U.S. Congressmen, by an overwhelming majority, want to link this
support to a reopening of NATO supply routes through Pakistan. But this money is
no hand out, charity or alms. It is reimbursement for what a recipient has
spent out of his own pocket fighting America's spurious war on terror. And
Pakistan has been deceitfully short-changed and even cheated by the Americans on this reimbursement for years.
Even now, they are sitting on bills pending payment to
Pakistan worth over $3.2 billion. Yet these Congressmen have the audacity to
pretend that if we succumbed to their arm-twisting, they would be doing us a
great favor by releasing the money.
U.S.-led adventurism has cost Pakistan dearly and multifariously.
In monetary terms, it has inflicted economic losses on Pakistan to the
staggering tune of a $70 billion. Much-hyped U.S. economic aid totaling $7.5
billion over five-years, said to be at an annual rate of $1.5 billion per annum
under the Kerry-Lugar-Berman
Act wouldn’t even cover a respectable fraction of the colossal losses
Pakistan has suffered. Even this puny amount of aid is slow in coming. The
grandees in the Islamabad establishment who should be telling us the truth are too
loyal to their American benefactors and treacherous to their own people. But
while they remain stone silent, co-author of this law, Senator Lugar, has been more
forthcoming.
Indeed, one such panjandrum, Congressman
Dana Rohrabacher, wants to "cut off every cent" to Pakistan
"because it is being used for evil purposes." But at the same time,
this Congressman Rohrabacher has been holding open hearings and moving
resolutions in Congress for the dismemberment of Pakistan and the potential
secession of its Baluchistan Province. Apparently, this jester doesn’t think
that working toward a sovereign state's dissolution is evil! He presumably holds
that it is a noble task.
And indeed, America’s panjandrums must be thankful to the
Islamabad establishment, without who’s ineptitude and carelessness they would
never have gotten away unscathed and unchallenged with such deceit and fraud.
Lugar divulged not long ago that under the law, over the
past three years, barely $500 million has flowed to Pakistan, whereas the
figure should have been in the neighborhood of $4.5 billion. But then throughout
this period, Pakistan has been taken for a ride by its American buddies. After
ousting the Taliban, they and their coalition allies deployed a puny force of
less than 18,000 to pacify a country as difficult as Afghanistan, obviously for
fear of accumulating body bags. Meanwhile, Pakistan deployed nearly 140,000
troops along the border to take on the sneaky rumps of Taliban and their
al-Qaeda allies, not to mention their sympathizers on this side of the border.
Posted by Worldmeets.US
Over this period, while over 5,000 Pakistani officers and
soldiers lost their lives and many more thousands their limbs fighting the
militants, the casualties suffered by the U.S.-led invaders haven't even amount
to even half of Pakistan’s colossal losses. In addition, some 40,000 Pakistani
civilians have been snuffed out and many more gored during both attacks by militants
and U.S. drone attacks on Pakistan territory. And by far, that toll is bigger
than what the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks exacted on American lives.
And yet the American grandees have the gall to posture as if
the armies of they and their allies have fought a war on terror and that
Pakistan has not. Nowhere in Afghanistan's southern and eastern areas and now even
in certain western regions can their troops walk alone - even in daylight. And yet
they continue to feign that all is well in Afghanistan and that the problem is exclusively
in Pakistan's tribal areas. But then, deceit, lies and pretense have been their
favorite weapons throughout.
This protest in Multan, Pakistan on May 19 was held against
opening NATO supply routes
through the country. Shouting
anti-U.S. and
anti-NATO slogans, this event is an odd parallel
to the demonstrations now being
held in Chicago.
Nevertheless, this contrivance of theirs has begun to come
undone, not because of Islamabad’s inert establishment, but because of their
own whistle-blowers. Indeed, one such iconoclast, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel
Davis, an active U.S. military officer who has served in Afghanistan, has been
lobbying Congress hard to hold a hearing with American generals to find out the
truth of the Afghan War. Davis has prepared a
classified dossier for Congress that reveals how U.S. generals have been
telling lies about the war and misleading their civilian and military bosses.
But he has found no takers within the halls of Congress. Why don’t grandees
like Rohrabacher give him a chance and try hearing the truth? Or, are they just
compulsively given to hearing and peddling lies?
