Over the last month I have written lots of pieces on Pakistan and U.S. interference there. In the 'Links' posting I titled pieces about the administration's talk on Pakistan as War propaganda, Pakistan panic and War preparation campaign. The build up was obvious to me, but I missed the rest of the blogsphere on this theme.Now finally others are waking up too.
Junah Grundberg wrote yesterday:
The danger here is how similar the rhetoric about Pakistan is beginning to resemble the rhetoric in the run up to the Iraq War: a potentially mortal threat to the U.S. that the government in question is unwilling to address, while the region and world look on helplessly.
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It increasingly appears that we're in the second phase of an opinion-shaping effort whose only outcome, short of Pakistan acting in ways that betray its core interests, is an escalation of American military involvement in the region.
Chris Floyd in today's Counterpunch:
We are now in the midst of a full-blown campaign to "roll out the product" for a new war: this time, in Pakistan. Anyone who lived through the run-up to the invasion of Iraq should be able to read the signs — anyone, that is, who is not blinded by partisan labels, or by the laid-back cool of a media-savvy leader far more presentable than his predecessor.
Pepe Escobar today with a bright piece at ATOL on how very much Obama's words and actions on Afghanistan and Pakistan now resemble Bush's war on terror and Iraq campaign and on how much this is again very much about the control of hydrocarbons and over Baluchistan as the strategic prize in the U.S.-China contest.
Pat Lang chips in with AfPak and the Neoconization of Obama.
Welcome folks. This campaign has been going on for months. The New York Times has spewed out propaganda piece after propaganda piece about the 'Talibanisation' of Pakistan. The gray lady never disappoints when a president wants to launch a new war. Obama now talks about fighting al-Qaeda – whatever that may be – in Pakistan. Clinton sees mushroom clouds on the horizon. It is all the same systematic play again.
But unlike during the campaign for the war on Iraq, there is no resistance today to this new and much wider war. The domestic U.S. discussion and the rest of the world is distracted with economic issues. The U.S. 'left' is silent as it is a 'left' president now that is running the U.S. into another war it will lose.
Zardari will get his blood money, Karzai may be allowed to keep his job if finally shuts up. Pakistan may end up in a civil war and a lot of dirt poor peasants on both sides of the Durand line will die for the glory of commander in chief Obama and the enrichment of the empires elite. Years from now the U.S. will limp out of the area again. Defeated like so many empires who have been defeted in that special place of this world.