05.13.11
The Revenge of Osama bin Laden
A pair of Taliban suicide bombers attacked paramilitary police recruits eagerly heading home for a break after months of training, killing 80 people Friday in the first act of retaliation for the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
It underscores the inadequacy of Pakistan.
It was possible to be complicit in hiding him and incompetent elsewhere in alleged pursuit at the same time.
The President had to pull the trigger. No one there would have ever done so.
In Pakistan you have a country with an idiotically large defense budget and military.
Even more swollen by US arms deals, it’s an aggravating suck on the masses. It provides little security — jobs programs and grift for the privileged. And it was something there was the possibility we would have had to destroy if things had gone wrong in the raid.
If, for instance, the US were like Pakistan, you could imagine it as a place still with the largest military in the world. But Montana and the Dakotas would be hideouts for a small semi-professional insurgent army fond of killing the neighbors in fits of pique, with an occasional trip to the port of Seattle thrown in on the side.
“The bombers blew themselves up in Shabqadar at the main gate of the facility for the Frontier Constabulary, a poorly equipped but front-line force in the battle against al-Qaida and allied Islamist groups like the Pakistani Taliban close to the Afghan border,” the story reads.
“Like other branches of Pakistan’s security forces, it has received U.S. funding to try to sharpen its skills.”
After almost ten years, a truly independent oversight committee would have to firmly say: Good example of entrenched failure.
And so bin Laden has had a measure of his revenge, in a place where,
a couple months from now, it will be hard to separate from all the other subsequent miseries. The al Qaeda men will continue, if they can, a campaign in futility, taking it out on the locals and diminishing their numbers further, turning more people against them.
But they won’t be here.
Lorne Marr said,
May 16, 2011 at 2:05 am
That’s exactly the main problem of the relationship between Pakistan and the US. There is so much money poured into the military while other domains such as economic or social programs are clearly neglected. The Pakistan military is a prosperous business and it only contributes to the fights between military and civilian leaders. There should be a different system based on a more balanced approach when it comes to providing financial resources for the people of Pakistan.