Another claim of negligence

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed May 22 10:32:40 PDT 2002


Michael McIntyre wrote:


>The story in the Guardian understates the depth of the disaster in
>Kashmir. Lashkar-e-Toiba, the group responsible for the attack
>noted below, is not simply a group of nasty Pakistani-based
>militants; it's an arm of al-Qaeda. This attack, timed to coincide
>with a U.S. diplomatic visit to the region, was intended to send a
>signal: we're still in operation, and the U.S. will do nothing to
>stop us.
>
>The solution proferred is far too simple: just tell Musharraf to
>call off the dogs. Musharraf doesn't have the power to call off the
>dogs. Were he to try to withdraw support from the militants, shut
>down the camps, put an end to the attacks, he would be removed from
>power within days. Not that he has any desire to: this is, after
>all, the general who launched the Kargil offensive in 1999.
>
>Meanwhile, Kashmir chafes under martial law, a decade of "encounter
>killings" between Indian forces and putative militants has left tens
>of thousands of victims, and the BJP government in Gujarat continues
>its pogrom of Muslims. The massacres in Gujarat have quietly
>eclipsed the massacres in Palestine, but scarcely anyone notices.
>
>To top it all off, within days we could see the sort of
>no-holds-barred warfare between India and Pakistan that we have not
>seen in more than thirty years - this time with nukes.
>
>We've really stirred the shit this time, haven't we?

I don't get your argument here. If Lashkar-e-Toiba is an arm of AQ, then isn't that an argument for supporting AQ's eradication? Just what's this pot "we" stirred and how? WITBD, IOW?

Doug



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