I had become accustomed to believing that in general, governments just don’t give a damn about their populations, unless, of course, it was election time. If you had the luxury of being a dictator, even elections weren’t a concern. The now classic example is that despite literally millions of people protesting against the war in Iraq, American coalition forces still invaded (based on WMD’s that never existed). 97,105 bodies later, American forces are still in Iraq. Barack Obama is planning to keep 60,000-80,000 “residual” American troops inside Iraq after he officially leaves. Something about “80,000 staying” and “leave” just doesn’t make sense. All of this had gone quite far towards convincing me that domestic public opinion doesn’t matter as long as you have bread and circuses. As soon as the “bread” started running out because of the credit crunch, the Obama circus stepped into high gear.

For some, Iraq is now old news. The American public has accepted that it is over thanks to their savior, even if Iraqis never will. Despite the unfounded belief that anything had to be better than Bush, Obama has personally stated that he would support the invasion of Pakistan based on “intelligence” that al-Qa’idah was present. Sound familiar?

When Bush and Blair wanted to send ground troops into Iraq, invade Iraqi airspace and drop bombs on its people, there was a need for creating “dossiers” of evidence. We were shown little vials of biological weapons, photographs of weapons factories, etc. Colin Powell had to run around garnering the support of various nations to form a “coalition of the willing”. By contrast, the war in Pakistan has been politically engineered such that there has been no need for such frivolity. Make no mistake: there is a war in Pakistan. Certainly Britain would consider it an act of war if France decided to send reconnaissance drones over its borders, or order airstrikes, or send in Special Ops forces to kill people, or have tanks entering the country and destroying a town. These actions have been taking place with impunity in Pakistan, without the need for a fancy UN resolution. Obama shows every sign of using the War on Terror as a basis for destroying another Muslim country. You don’t need to take my word for it, just use Google, or check out this week’s New York Times article.

Pervez Musharraf offered “unstinting support” for America’s war against Afghanistan, and now Obama wants to send more American forces into Afghanistan and has also turned against its former ally. The current Pakistani President has grumbled about it, but true to form is as corrupt as ever, and continues to allow the destruction of his country.

As for my original assumption that domestic opinion doesn’t matter, I have to concede that I’ve changed my mind. The fact is that that the government needed a dossier for Iraq, needed to scare people with the word “terrorism”, and that the British government is targeting Muslims in its campaign to “Prevent Violent Extremism“. These are all designed to form public opinion, because in the long run, the government knows that Muslims will find a way to kick out their corrupt rulers and replace them with a system that truly represents their needs.

Forget the slogans of “hope and change”. Pakistan is in an undeclared war.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 9:26 am and is filed under Islam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.