Justifying Intervention in Pakistan - Justifying Incineration of Pakistan

Joachim Martillo

Posted Jan 2, 2008      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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Justifying Intervention in Pakistan - Justifying Incineration of Pakistan

by Joachim Martillo

Pakistan’s government claimed that al-Qaeda killed Benazir Bhutto without providing any evidence, but compared to other players in Pakistani politics al-Qaeda received quite small strategic or tactical benefits from the act.

Nawaz Sharif now stands alone as the chief opposition leader and may receive many of Bhutto’s votes.

Parvez Musharraf can use the ensuing chaos as an excuse to cling to power and possibly make at least part of the Bush administration very happy.

According to reports, Condi Rice pressured Benazir to return to Pakistan. Rice could even have threatened seizure of Benazir’s wealth, for the USA has developed such capabilities, and outstanding corruption charges against Benazir and her husband would have made such action legal and possible under US law.

In post-return interviews Benazir had certainly shown a willingness to be a good US puppet and to permit direct US military intervention in Pakistan. (Of course, she could have been trying to pull a Chalabi on the Neocons in the Bush administration.)

watch video Frost Over the World.  Video Description:  Sir David speaks to former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto about her controversial return to Pakistan, who she thinks is behind the deadly bombing of her convoy in Karachi last month, and whether she and Musharraf can forge a power-sharing agreement.

Factions within Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) might have considered Benazir’s Nov. 2, 2007 interview with David Frost more than enough reason to kill her as would anyone that thought she might have fingered him in the October assassination attempt.

The CIA has had a longstanding working relationship with ISI. If Benazir represented a threat to that relationship, the CIA might have taken her out.

So far Neocons and the US Israel Lobby have orchestrated the incineration of Afghanistan and Iraq. They have increase the harshness of US policy toward Palestinians. They have provided political space for Israel to cluster-bomb Lebanon. They destroyed the best possibility for stability in Somalia in a decade. They are in the process of inciting attacks on Sudan and Iran on the model of the US invasion of Iraq. Adding Pakistan to the list of Arab and Muslim states to be destroyed would hardly be much of a stretch for politically influential ethnic Ashkenazi American extremists, fanatics, and racists.

I spoke with David Frum after the overthrow of the Taliban in Pakistan. He considered the alliance with Pakistan a strategic liability and argued that the USA should be attacking Pakistan and not working with that country.

I pointed out that good arguments identified Israel as an even greater strategic liability and that the USA should end its alliance with that state.

Frum replied that Americans had already decided on that issue. I asked when. We have had no genuine public debate on Israel and certainly no public vote. He had no answer, but I was more impressed that already in December 2001 a representative Neocon was already gunning for Pakistan. From the Neocon standpoint, a Pakistan under Benazir Bhutto working closely with the USA might diminish the importance of Israel to the USA. Neocons control US army intelligence and could have ordered a hit on Benazir.

By similar logic Israeli Mossad might have decided to knock her off.

From the Neoconservative and Israeli standpoint, however friendly toward Neoconservative policy and Israeli interests Benazir might have been, she may be more valuable as a victim with whom Americans might identify because of her physical attractiveness, her perfect English and her Harvard education. A dead Benazir would serve exceptionally well as the focus of a marketing campaign into manipulating the USA to intervene in Pakistan. (Is it surprising that Hillary Clinton, who along with Angela Merkel has been heavily funded and supported by Israeli-American billionaire and arch-Zionist manipulator Haim Saban, was among the first to call for an independent international investigation of the murder of Benazir?)

The early reports on the assassination indicated the possibility that there might have been two or even three independent simultaneous attempts to kill Benazir. One attempt might have involved close associates of Benazir.

Any police officer knows that a competent investigation must check out family and friends. Benazir’s son Bilawal and her husband Asif Ali Zardari have benefited directly from the assassination by taking control of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which she headed. Benazir also has many personal enemies including family members as the article Aunt Benazir’s False Promises indicates.

Benazir and her family do not fit the profile of idealistic democracy advocates as they have sometimes been portrayed in US media.

The French, Polish, Spanish, and Swiss governments have provided documents that indicate the involvement of Benazir and Zardari in corruption totalling more than $1 billion, and the couple was ordered to pay millions of dollars back to the Pakistani government. Benazir asserted that all the charges were politically motivated.

The Bhutto family were part of the old feudal elite in Sindh.

I overlapped with Benazir’s younger sister Sunny (Sanam) when we were undergraduate students at Harvard.

One of my friends was a singer in a rock band and good friends with Sunny’s boyfriend Joe Incagnoli. I became acquainted with Sunny. (I am astounded that there was actually serious discussion for a time about bringing Sunny back to Pakistan to run the PPP.)

From personal acquaintance and from reading about the Bhuttos, I simply do not have the impression of much genuine commitment of the part of the Bhutto family to democratization, but I never had any acquaintance with her brothers Shahnawaz or Mir Murtaza.  Mir Murtaza’s daughter Fatima seems to be exceptional in her progressive politics.

While the problem of Zionist and extremist ethnic Ashkenazi American domination of academic discourse in important areas of politics and foreign policy constitutes a serious threat to the USA by imposing a sort of Gramscian hegemonic blocking on American political debate, in many regards the issue is less immediate and far more subtle than the dangers that Pakistan faces. Yet, Fatima, who is a Columbia alumna, was willing to take the time to investigate the conflict over Nadia Abu el Haj’s tenure application at Columbia and to sign the web petition in support of Nadia Abu el Haj. (See Jacob Lassner and Nadia Abu el Haj, Nadia Abu el Haj and the Truth about the Wizard of Oz, and Long Version of Tenure Wars.)

I also have to give Sunny credit for hanging out with a Boston townie, who was accepted at Harvard and also was trying to make it on the Boston rock scene.

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