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Pakistan’s Failure is the World’s Problem

December 6th, 2009 at 11:46 am David Frum | 8 Comments |

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Kapil Komireddi today continues his beautifully written series on the nexus between the failure of Pakistan as a state and America’s terror problem. Pakistan’s need to justify its existence as a hacked out state from India required it to invent a story of Islamic victimhood – and that story provided much of the ideology for what would become al Qaeda. We’ll be running three more parts of this urgently important series over the next days. And you can read the prior despatches in order here.

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8 Comments so far ↓

  • sinz54 // Dec 6, 2009 at 12:54 pm

    Frum: Pakistan’s need to justify its existence as a hacked out state from India required it to invent a story of Islamic victimhood – and that story provided much of the ideology for what would become al Qaeda.
    What evidence is there for this?

    AFAIK, prior to 9-11, Osama bin Laden never mentioned any debt to Pakistan in his statements (even though he eventually fled there). Neither did Yasir Arafat.

    When Osama bin Laden did allude to, however, were events of 86 years ago (as measured from 2009). Well, what happened 86 years ago? That was the formation of the Republic of Turkey, marking the end of the Ottoman Empire. And with its end, went the last heir to the Islamic Caliphates of olden times.

    The Islamists see the (Christian) West as having destroyed their empire, and replaced it with nations based on Western (Christian) philosophies.

  • Reason60 // Dec 6, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    I read an article in today’s LA Times about how Yemen is becoming a “failed state”
    http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-yemen-failed6-2009dec06,0,1224610.story

    Money quote:
    “Some say its strategic location near Saudi Arabia and the Horn of Africa mean it cannot be allowed to fail.”

    There he is again- the Some Say guy.

    I really want to kick his G- D teeth out.
    Here we are once again, being warned sternly about what we should or should not allow the world to do.
    We must not allow Iraq to fall into civil war;
    We must not allow Afghanistan to become a failed state;
    We must not allow Yemen, Somalia, Statetobenamedlater to become a failed state.

    Is it really this? Are we unsafe, if there exists a corner of the world in which chaos and anarchy reign?
    Do we literally have to become the social workers, policement, marriage counselors to all the world?

    And this is all to prevent a group of people from crashing a jetliner into our buildings?
    Even though most of their plan was created in Europe, New Jersey and Florida?

    And where is the EU in all this? Why is Pakistan’s internal politics strictly America’s problem to solve?
    Why is America under threat from AQ, but not Mexico, or Japan, or Brazil?

    Isn’t it possible that we are the number one target, because we are the number one occupier?

  • jakester // Dec 7, 2009 at 1:29 am

    Reason60
    We ahve to pick our battles carefully. Islam is the 800 lbs gorilla, guerilla in the room, and our presence is a catalyst for that mindset yet we assume that being reasonable, helpful and pliant is what everyone wants. BS, being a jihadist and martyr is a prized occupation in that culture, not some well off worker or middle class drone. We have to fight this battle politically by rallying the world to the Islamic threat, which was weakly pursued under Bush while he courted such stellar allies as the Saudis and Egypt and not at all under Obama. We are not going to win this war by getting into slugging matches with various tribal jihadists and other malcontents and killing a few here or there nor are we going to win by building schools, water plants etc unless we address the underlying social political engine that is driving these people, Islam.

  • sinz54 // Dec 7, 2009 at 9:22 am

    Reason60: Isn’t it possible that we are the number one target, because we are the number one occupier?
    Two words:

    LEON KLINGHOFFER

    We were the number one target long before the Gulf War.

    As usual, you are unaware of the history of Islamist hatred for America.

    It goes back to Sayyid Qutb, who was the intellectual founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.

    Qutb had visited America in 1949. And what he thought he saw was a soulless, immoral, decadent, corrupt society, full of sex. He believed that America was no place for Muslims to live.

    There is quite a bit of morbid sexuality in Qutb’s writings:

    “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity. She knows it lies in the face, and in expressive eyes, and thirsty lips. She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs — and she shows all this and does not hide it.”

    Qutb looked at the history of America and found it to be totally illegitimate and evil, going all the way back to the Revolutionary War.

    Qutb’s writings were the inspiration for the ideas of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1253796

    Americans are often unaware of how decadent and immoral they appear to religious fundamentalists.

    Shortly after 9-11, a radio reporter was interviewing an African pastor on why Islam was spreading in Africa, and why so many of the pastor’s own congregation were deserting Christianity and converting to Islam. The pastor replied, “They don’t like what they see about America.”

    The radio reporter was surprised at this answer and asked the pastor, “Just what don’t they like about America?”

    The pastor replied, “In America, all your women dress like half-naked sluts.”

  • Reason60 // Dec 7, 2009 at 11:51 am

    Sinz-
    Fascinating! So the only reason Al Quaida crashed those jets into the Twin Towers was that women run half naked through the streets of America?

    Apparently that is the single factor that separates America from Canada and Australia and Finland and Russia and Japan and Brasil and every other Westernized nation ; We have half naked sluts, and they don’t.

    I don’t argue that Islam is the ideology that many turn to in anger and defiance; to assume though, that all Muslims are motivated by a desire for a grand caliphate is to seriously misunderestimate the various motivating factors of the players. And to assume that all this anger is derived solely from a disgust with our Western morals is nonsense.

    Here is my theory of why they single out America, and not all the other nations-

    When you one country- America- occupying and bombing three Muslim nations at once, and threatening a couple other, and asserting its right to dictate what is, or isn’t allowed to happen in the Muslim world- well then, yes, America becomes the primary target- not because we have half-naked sluts running through the streets, but because we alone- not Canada and Australia and Finland and Russia and Japan and Brasil are doing the occupying and bombing and killing.

    Oh, and I find it odd that you name poor Leon Klinghoffer as an example of why we are their target; was that old man running half naked around the deck of that cruse ship?

    Why was he singled out , again?

  • Carney // Dec 7, 2009 at 11:51 am

    Excellent points, sinz54. We cannot appease a movement that considers a 1950s church dance in rural Colorado to be a shocking exercise in depravity, as Quttub did.

  • Carney // Dec 7, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Reason60, we were not “occupying” any Mulsim nations in 1996, when al Qaeda declared war on the US, and 1998, when it endorsed killing all Americans, including civilians, women and children, wherever we are. We did have troops on Saudi soil at the request of the Saudi government to protect it from Saddam Hussein, but considering that an “occupation” justifying 9/11 is demented.

    Furthermore, Canada has been actively involved in combat with us in Afghanistan, and al Qaeda and those it inspires have hardly confined their attacks to the US and American targets, as seen in the 3/11 Madrid bombings, the 7/7 London bombings, the bombings in Bali Indonesia, and many others.

  • DFL // Dec 8, 2009 at 12:51 pm

    Pakistan will be a failed state for many decades, and maybe forever, but it is the fate of India to be its neighbor. Chiefly, Pakistan is a problem for India and, possibly, for China if Pakistan ever deteriorates into an ultra-Muslim state intent on aiding the Muslims of western China. Pakistan is not really America’s problem.

    Thanks to David Frum for providing the essays of Mr. Komireddi.

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