Girl shot by Taliban..here's your chance to whine about Christians!
My American friends, let me ask you -
Is this so-called "Islamic" terrorism being carried out
- by holy men and women for God, or
- by terrorist proxies of states to gain more money and power for their state elites?
If the reason for this terrorism is the former, then a comparative discussion of religion - Christianity versus Islam - could well be relevant.
However, if the reason for this terrorism is the latter, then a discussion of whether the US government is giving the Pakistani state more money and power for their elites which is acting in effect as a reward and to encourage this terrorism would be more relevant.
My analysis suggests the latter explanation to me. I think we need to question the policies of our governments in trying to deal with terrorism and leave religion out of it.
Pakistan, Egypt and other countries with a terrorist problem have long been getting billions of dollars in aid from the US government.
Kansas City Star: "Pakistan freed of anti-terrorism obligations; U.S. billions flow instead"
WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration has refused for the first time to declare that Pakistan is making progress toward ending alleged military support for Islamic militant groups or preventing al Qaida, the Afghan Taliban or other extremists from staging attacks in Afghanistan.
Even so, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has quietly informed Congress that she’s waived the legal restrictions that would have blocked some $2 billion in U.S. economic and military aid to Pakistan. Disbursing the funds, she said in an official notice, is “important to the national security interests of the United States.”
This military aid is most perverse and harmful to US national security because the Pakistani military via its military intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) trains, arms and supplies the Taliban who are killing US and allied soldiers in Afghanistan and committing terrorist acts in Pakistan as well.
This 2-hour video is of a British TV programme which explains in great detail the role of the Pakistani state via the ISI (Inter-services intelligence) has in supporting the Taliban's war against our forces in Afghanistan.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_SkNUorWhc"]Secret BBC - Pakistan Double Cross on Terrorism - Full - YouTube[/ame]
BBC Documentary - "SECRET PAKISTAN - Double Cross / Backlash" (2 hours)
RECOMMENDED VIDEO - 2 HOURS WELL SPENT!
The USA thoughtlessly throwing vast amounts of cash at poor countries like Pakistan is precisely what is encouraging the Pakistani state and other poor countries never to eradicate and always to sustain Islamic extremist terrorism because Pakistan and the rest reasonably believe that if they had no Islamic extremist terrorists to cause problems for the world then they would not get their corrupt hands on quite so much aid money to spend on, in Pakistan's case, making more nuclear weapons and on other things that the aid recipient country's elite want.
It's not just Pakistan but also Egypt and a host of other countries know that the best way to get their state bankrolled by the USA's aid money is to invest some time and effort in covertly organising Islamic extremist terrorists in their country and in other countries. Then the country puts on a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the USA's pleasure asking for cash to deal with the very terrorist problem which they themselves have created.
So the USA is paying, inadvertently, for and encouraging terrorism which undermines its own national security all the while thinking to itself it needs to pay up "for" national security whereas its foolish payments are really acting
against its own national security.
The solution to "Islamic" terrorism is not to pay military aid to Pakistan because the terrorism is being organised not for God but for money.
The US and other NATO countries could force Pakistan honestly to confront and end their business of terrorism by ceasing all military aid and by bombing the Pakistani ISI for their part in organising Taliban terrorism.
By paying military aid to Pakistan etc the USA is simply encouraging the Pakistani state covertly to promote the terrorist perversion of Islam so as to keep that aid money flowing.
A similar argument applies with Saudi and other wealthy states support for Islamic terrorism but in the case of those oil-rich states who don't need aid, what they do need from the US and other Western countries is to maintain business-as-usual and political support rather than any Western intention to pursue regime-change towards democratic republican regimes for the Arabs.
So the Saudi royals and other Arab royals paint the only possible political alternative to the Arab monarchs' "stable" rule as being instability leading to the terrorists the Saudis covertly support seizing power and becoming the official government.
But whether the hidden reason for state sponsors of terrorism is cash for poor country elites or business and political support for rich country elites, the "Islamic" justification only really exists in the minds of the terrorists but since it is the stated reason then unscientific and popular political commentators tend to discuss that to the exclusion of the real political reasons why states sponsor terrorism.
