With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heading to Pakistan later this week, she is unlikely to receive a warm welcome from the public. While the Zardari government largely remains firmly on the side of a greater American influence in the nation’s political affairs, the public is increasingly having reservations about an alliance which is recent years has brought them only continuous war and financial ruin.
But even as Pakistanis are re-examining their relationship with the US, the Obama Administration has been putting a very public amount of pressure on the nation to ratchet up their military offensives and spread them to new parts of the country.
Though the US has been increasing the amount of aid it intends to send to the impoverished country, the number of strings attached to that aid has also grown precipitously, leaving even many members of the government wondering if America’s billions aren’t a bit too expensive for their tastes.
Moreover, last month the US threatened to attack Quetta, one of Pakistan’s largest cities and the capital of its largest province. While the US pressure has managed to convince the military to launch what is proving to be a difficult battle in South Waziristan, it is unlikely they will stop there, and Clinton’s visit will likely spark a new round of calls to action.
Maybe the secret plan is for Hillary to give a speech on Pakistani television with the intent of boring all the terrorists to death with her mind-numbing monotonic delivery. It would be superior to the actual plan, which is to bribe our Pakistani puppets to wage war on their own people, as if there is a finite number of extremists. Once we bomb them into oblivion, the problem is solved, right?
Of course, the alternate scenario is that our policies are creating an endless stream of terrorists. If my family was butchered by pilotless drones, I might be more than a little annoyed too. I might even harbor thoughts of lashing out at foreigners that had wiped out loved ones and left me homeless.
None of this enters the thick skull of a dim-wit like Hillary or her arrogant boss. They do not have to pay the price in blood or treasure for the hare-brained schemes they've unleashed on the rest of the world.
These people are a cancer on society. Where's the chemotherapy?
We are the super power. Killing a few hundred here, and maiming a few thousand there, is mere collateral damage. we do not worry about such trivial details.