Offering advice to the Bush administration on Pakistan

shahin m. cole, a pakistani lawyer residing in the u.s., suggests some ways the u.s. can respond to martial law and the constitutional crisis in pakistan...

from juan cole's informed comment...

• Americans, who enjoy constitutional liberties of long standing, should support the lawyers in their protest against the suspension of the Pakistani constitution.

• The US should be earmarking aid to Pakistan not for military use but for funding and building schools for the millions of poor Pakistani children (some of them still from refugee Afghan families displaced by the US struggle with the Soviet Union in the Cold War). Such schools should stress east-west understanding.

• Washington should keep pressure on the present government to hold free and fair elections for parliament on schedule. US aid for election observers and voter education would be well spent.

my response...

a noble sentiment but completely at cross-purposes with the reasons the aid is offered in the first place... the u.s. is spending money to make more money, channeling vast sums of taxpayer-generated funds to pakistan in a quid pro quo, namely that pakistan will turn around and send that money right back to the u.s. in the form of massive defense purchases, purchases that only serve to maintain the rivers of cash flowing into the coffers of the already super-rich elites that call the shots in the u.s... offering principled advice to the criminals that run the united states is, as has been abundantly apparent for the past six and one half years, an exercise in complete futility... the u.s. will not engage in principled foreign policy unless and until there are principled people placed in office... in the meantime, your energy would be better utilized in helping to find a way to get those people removed...

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