In a most impressive lack of insight, the current president of Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari, made a plea to president-elect Obama to halt the U.S. military's missile strikes on enemy positions inside Pakistan. Now sure, I understand that Zardari is trying to stop us from fueling the flames of extremism in his nation. It makes for unpleasantness in Pakistan. I say "tough shit", but who am I to judge, right?
Anyway, read his statement and think about it for a second, because he's missing a painfully obvious truth when he makes this statement:
Zardari said, "We feel that the strikes are an intrusion on our sovereignty, which are not appreciated by the people at large, and the first aspect of this war is to win the hearts and mind of the people."
Funny, but it should be pretty obvious to the insightful Mr. Zardari that the hearts and minds of his precious "people at large" belong, and have always belonged, to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. More importantly, the hearts and minds of his own ISI (the Pakistani equivalent of our CIA), belong to Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Whether or not we conduct missile strikes on Al Qaeda positions or not will never change the mindset of the "people at large" in Pakistan. That being said, I don't give a flying fuck what the president of Pakistan wants, because the hearts and minds of his people are ALREADY hell-bent on killing anyone not aligned with Al Qaeda and the Taliban. And that means you and I. I say keep the missiles flying.
I had far more respect for Zardari's late wife, Bennazir Bhutto. It's a shame she was assassinated (again, by Al Qaeda agents). She would have made a far wiser president than her dumbass husband. But I guess I should be nice and practice what I preach about the burden of being a president. Our president has the privilege and the burden of knowing things that you and I do not. However, I'm not sure that Zardari knows diddly squat about his own constituency....
In other news, I was told by a co-worker today that Barack Obama's website, Change.gov , had all kinds of information on Obama's plans for the future if he were elected president. I was told that each issue on the website was thoroughly written up with oodles of information about Obama's thoughts, ideas, and direction. Now that he's been elected and brought up to speed on things by intelligence briefings and by meeting with President Bush, I'm told that all of that valuable information has been pulled from the website. Why would that be, Mr. President-elect? Could it be that now that you've been grounded in reality by facts, you suddenly realized that you cannot possibly move forward with any of the plans you had promised the American people? I confess that I had not seen the website before the change, but I went there tonight and could not find a list of issues or details about each of them. I did find a button called "Agenda" which includes a whopping three sentences or so that summarize the issues he will face. No mention of his actual plan or direction, though. I presume he doesn't want to be held accountable for his upcoming failures by having any kind of written documentation outlining his original agenda.
All that talk of "change", and it seems the only thing that's changed is the removal of his ideas from the website. I wonder how that bodes for his upcoming presidency....
I am encouraged, however, by the fact that Obama claims he will take the fight against Al Qaeda into Pakistan if necessary. How convenient of a promise that was; we're already doing it, dude.
Oh, and then there's his promise of a phased approach to bring our troops home from Iraq. How convenient of a promise that was; we're already doing it, dude.
So if I'm seeing this right, Obama's promising what Bush is already delivering. Fascinating.
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