Human Rights Law

Bad Moon Rising

By Alexa

The good news is that U.S. President George W. Bush is not going to invade Iran before he leaves office. The bad news is that he is attacking Pakistan instead.

Pakistan is a U.S. ally, even though the great majority of Pakistanis wish that it wasn't. There are few unbreakable rules in international affairs, but not attacking your ally is definitely one of them. Except if you are American, in which case it's okay, or so the White House appears to believe.

The latest incident, just after midnight on Monday morning, began when seven U.S. helicopter gunships and two troop-carrying Chinook helicopters landed near the Pakistani border in the Afghan province of Pakhtia. U.S. troops got out and tried to cross the border into Pakistan, presumably in search of some "terrorist" target.

According to local officials, Pakistani paramilitary troops manning a checkpoint fired into the air to warn off the Americans while local tribesmen took up defensive positions. On this occasion, the U.S. soldiers stopped. With nobody around to stop them, however, another American ground force attacked a target in Pakistan's South Waziristan province on September 4, and, according to local witnesses, killed about 20 people, including women and children.

You noticed vaguely that the typical war rhetoric about Iran and its nukular Axis of Evilness had tapered off and then stopped. This in spite of Iran blowing off an alarming IAEA report on Monday. You knew that without Pervez Musharraf to front cooperative, the bribe of the century would come back to bite the asses of officials in high office; exactly how much has been paid to Pakistan as our "ally in the war in terror" to not find Osama Bin Laden? All these things and more, you knew, and hoped to walk between the shadows cast by this bad moon.
Losing the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan. What's a lame duck to do?

Raids into Pakistan: What U.S. authority?

Orders President Bush signed in July authorizing raids by special operations forces in the areas of Pakistan controlled by the Taliban and Al Qaeda and undertaking those raids without official Pakistani consent, have roots stretching back to the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The evolution of operations in Pakistan from covert to overt actions is reminiscent of a trajectory followed in some aspects by the Vietnam War, some analysts note.

Bush's orders authorizing cross-border incursions into Pakistan mean in a sense that the rules governing US special operations have shifted from yellow to green. The military will no longer need a presidential "finding" for each operation - and that, military analysts say, means the handling of forays into Pakistan will fall increasingly into military rather than CIA hands.

That has some intelligence officials worried that the consequences of stepped-up US operations in Pakistan - in terms of Pakistani public opinion and the stability of the government - will get short shrift. According to intelligence sources, officials from the National Intelligence Council recently briefed the Bush administration's national security team on the potentially dire consequences of US actions that could destabilize the government of a country with nuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons? Please. This is the home of AQ Khan's nuclear Walmart, the biggest black market in history. Pakistan has a national holiday celebrating the father of the bomb, jet-setting physicist AQ Khan,  the godfather of global nuclear proliferation. Perhaps more than any one person, Khan is responsible for the most egregious string of nuclear proliferation transactions evah.

Khan's televised mea culpa on sharing nuclear technology with Iran, North Korea and Libya is little consolation. Certainly not enough to warrant the pardon given by Musharraf.

"A.Q. Khan is out of business and he is out of the business that he loved most. And if you don't think that his national humiliation is justice for what he did, I think it is. He's nationally humiliated." -- then NSA, now Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, October 3, 2004.

Condi, how could you? Khan was living in a villa when pardoned. Not one of Khan's co-conspirators have been brought to trial. Humiliation is the effect of torture you dismissed and denied until Maher Arar, victim of kidnapping/torture, extraordinary rendition, proved you wrong by living through his ordeal. AQ Khan is laughing at you in his "humiliation."

President George Bush secretly approved new US military raids in Pakistan:

The official said that President Bush signed the classified documents over the summer, giving new authority to US special operations forces to target suspected terrorists in the dangerous area along the Afghanistan border.

US counter-terror operations along the border are highly unpopular in Pakistan, whose new leadership is trying hard to show independence from Washington.

Dr Manzur Ejaz attempts to give us context with a comparison to the US-Russian Cold War, stating in The Daily Times:

"It may seem farfetched, but there is a real possibility that US incursions into Pakistan were meant to provide justification for a stepped-up Pakistan Air Force presence in the tribal belt. Or it was a successful tactic to force the Pakistan army to take strong action in the area . . . "

Ejaz compares US-Pak relations to a "bad marriage."  

So why do I feel like we're not just sleeping on the sofa, but the divorce has failed mediation? Cold War analogies miss the mark here badly. I'm not sure the Vietnam comparison works, either, so I'll hold out for door number three and the end-timer Armageddon that Bush has been courting since circa 2001.

Pakistan could end cooperation in war on terror:

The furor intensified Friday over Washington's decision to pursue Islamic militant targets inside Pakistan, with opposition lawmakers threatening the country could pull out of the war on terror if the U.S. refuses to respect its borders.

About 100 protesters burned American flags after the latest missile attack left at least 12 people dead in the North Waziristan region of the troubled northwest. Residents said they heard the sound of propeller-driven U.S. Predator drones circling overhead before the explosions.

President Bush secretly approved more aggressive cross-border operations in July, current and former American officials have told The Associated Press.

Since Aug. 13, there have been at least seven reported missile strikes as well as a raid by helicopter-borne U.S. commandos that Pakistani officials claim killed 15 civilians in tribally governed territory where the government has little control.

American voters, don't elect any more wanna-be messiahs, okay? They always take their hostages to misfortune along for the ride. That'd be us. And I for one want off the holy roller coaster.

Pakistan Daily Times:

To defend the country and its people against any foreign aggression is the stated policy of the Pakistan Army, military spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said on Tuesday.

He told Daily Times that there had been no recent change in the army's policy after cross-border incursions by US-led forces.

"The orders are clear," he was quoted as saying in the interview. "In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire."

Hope you got your things together.
Hope you are quite prepared to die.
Looks like were in for nasty weather.
One eye is taken for an eye.

Don't go around tonight,
Well, its bound to take your life,
There's a bad moon on the rise.

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on September 17, 2008 (boomark / email).