howeird: (Default)
howard stateman ([personal profile] howeird) wrote2010-08-18 01:01 am

Aid for Pakistan?

I am flabbergasted at the outpouring of aid via the US military to the people who helped Bin Ladin and his terrorist pals to escape. Tell them it is the will of Allah.

Posted via Journaler.

[identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com 2010-08-19 12:15 pm (UTC)(link)
The Taliban doesn't present a current "terrorist threat" to the US, other than via the training camps it used to run in Afghanistan. US (and UK) troops are there in an attempt, most likely doomed, to erect a democratic government supported by those tribal warlords who've accepted the bribes offered by Bush and now Obama. As for the Taliban acting as a religious context for Al Queda, the latter uses religion as a beard; its real ideological backers live in Saudi Arabia (an alleged ally of the US last time I checked).

Yes, that's a lot of people hit by a natural disaster which has nothing to do with the United States.

Other than being fellow humans on the same planet. Maybe you and I place different emphasis on geographical borders.

Once again the Islamic nations are showing their usual lack of generosity towards their neighbors.

If you mean the Arab nations, that's quite possibly true (I haven't the time right now to check what specific contribution they've made via the UN effort), but historically, they see themselves as separate from other nations with a largely muslim population. After all, you wouldn't expect Italy to launch a massive rescue mission after an earthquake in, say, Argentina, purely because both are predominantly catholic nations.

[identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com 2010-08-19 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
An understandable attitude in many respects, though the UK is also donating heavily to the aid programme even though we have widespread unemployment and an economy with a big enough hole in it to swallow the North Sea. Meanwhile, we're fighting at least one war which should have landed our ex-premier behind bars.

Pakistan's direct neighbours, incidentally, are India (which is more likely to launch a nuclear missile at Islamabad than an aid parcel), China (India's global supporter, just as the US has always counted on Pakistan as a regional puppet), Afghanistan (broke and engulfed in civil war) and Iran (which will probably ignore Pakistan's plight because of its US links, but may rethink on the grounds that Islamabad was no friend of Bagdad, and the enemy of my enemy, etc).