Pakistan is Threatening My Borders!

So here’s the deal with Pakistan. Weighing in at a healthy 175 million residents, it is the world’s sixth most populous country (according to the CIA World Fact Book). At roughly the size of California, it is pretty crowed by American standards and, like California, a significant part of the country is rugged and inaccessible by all but the most determined. There are about 10 different languages or dialects spoken by at least somebody in the country, if you include English, and 95 percent of the citizens are of the Islamic faith. Despite significant out-migration, Pakistan has a healthy population growth rate (1.55% annually) and a more healthy inflation rate that ranges from 5 to 20 percent, depending on the year in question. I could go on reciting facts, but that wouldn’t help go where I’m headed exactly. The point is, Pakistan is a real place with real flesh and blood people, 175 million of them. 175 million people means 175 million different perspectives and 175 million different plans and aspirations and 175 million different reactions to stuff that happens.

As a matter of full disclosure, I have been to Pakistan. I spent a lovely three weeks there 21 years ago trying not to expire from the late May heat. I was there getting married to a lovely Pakistani lady who had taken the ill-considered action of consenting to marry me. I am sure she has had many ambivalent feelings about this choice over the years, but that’s not the point of my rambling tome either. I'm telling you all this so that you can go ahead and dismiss my perspective as biased, if you see fit, but ask yourself this; would a guy actually take his wife’s side on anything that has anything to do with blowing stuff up?

So, whether you get your news from Fox or MSNBC or the Appleton Daily Standard, you are probably aware that our government has come to the conclusion that all those evil people that planned attacks on us that we let escape from Tora Bora (I’m just sayin’) have made it to safe haven the tribal areas of Pakistan. As the story goes, which I do not doubt, money and religious and political sympathy have bought Osama and his krewe of murderous douche-bags (the ones still alive, that is) a place to hide far from the maddening crowds. Of course we take exception to this, as we should, and have been looking for the dude and his buddies under every rock from Jalalabad to Peshawar. Whenever we think we have found one of them, we send a MQ-1 Predator to pop an AGM-114 “Hellfire” missile at the suspect location. The Hellfire carries a variety of warheads, but the ones used in Pakistan are probably mostly the 20 pound high explosive type. Herein lies the problem.

By most accounts the United States has launched what is approaching 100 Predator Drone attacks in Pakistan thus far. An indeterminate number of evil-doers have been obliterated and somewhere between 700 and 1000 innocent (i.e. non-target) civilians are estimated to have been killed. I have not seen estimates for the number wounded or the value of “collateral” property damage, but twenty pounds of high explosive can do a real number on mud brick structures. The Obama Administration has made these attacks its principle military strategy in fighting “Al Qaeda” in Pakistan and there does not appear to be any plan to reduce or cease such attacks in the near future.

Anyway, along comes this doofus, Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen of Pakistani origin, who knows less about bomb-making than the average UGA fraternity boy, who also gets his ass caught and starts spilling the beans about his trips to Pakistan and all the fine friends he made over there and how they are all mad about the drone attacks. Suddenly, every paper bag in Manhattan is a Pakistani Taliban bomb and a nation that already has enough problems between radical Islamic insurgents and an unstable democracy and a big, powerful and generally unfriendly neighbor in India, now has to worry about the public relations disaster brought about by ONE guy.

Now, I am not suggesting any sympathy for Mr. Shahzad, who may, or may not, be the biggest dumbass in Sing Sing for the next 40 years, but let’s take a look at it like this. What if some Mexican criminals, drug lords for example, escaped across the Mexican border into Brownsville, Texas and the Mexican government thought they had found out where they were hiding and launched a missile across the border which did, or did not, kill the escaped criminals, but which also blasted little Joey and Susie, the fine American children living next door, into a pile of goo. How much outcry from the American public would there be and how much pressure would there be on the President (Palin, maybe?) to retaliate? How long do you think that it would be before half of Mexico City was a smoldering ruin?

I am simply amazed at the indifferent arrogance of the average American when it comes to killing completely innocent people all over the world. People say “well, that’s war”, or “they shouldn’t be hiding the douche-bags”, but we are not at war with Pakistan, and I’d wager 98 percent of Americans have no idea who is in the house right next door right this minute. I don’t appreciate Mr. Shahzad’s attempt to imitate the wanton destruction of innocent life, but I do understand why somebody in Pakistan might not be too copasetic with aggressive U.S. actions which kill their family or neighbors who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, victims of “faulty intelligence”, poor aim, or the political sentiments of cousin Abdul.

I am probably as much a victim of nostalgic amnesia as anyone in this country; I have this persistent thought that America used to be better than this, that we were a kind and caring nation who wouldn’t blow up old ladies and children unless there were no alternative. I’m likely dreaming on that one and, in all fairness, we are probably still one of the most well-intentioned nations on the planet, but we are rapidly becoming one of the most incompetent, and power and incompetence make a dangerous combination. Our ignorance of, and indifference to, the thoughts, feelings and ideas of people who are different from us is appalling. Our certainty in our own moral superiority, unsupported by anything but jingoistic rhetoric, continues to isolate us from needed friends and creates enemies unnecessarily. Faisal Shahzad is clearly more American than Pakistani; he thinks complex problems can be solved by indiscriminate violence and he doesn’t have the slightest clue, what the hell he’s doing.