The Great (Double) Game by Thomas Friedman

“The [9/11] terrorist attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis.” – wtf! thomas friedman is tired of being a “sucker” but i think it’s the misguided readers of the nyt who should be tired of his sheer dumbness.

here is his article. the following is my response.

The u.s is being suckered.
the u.s. is an imperial aggressor conducting unwarranted wars and killing civilians, directly or indirectly, on a massive scale in countries that pose no threat to its citizenry.

We are paying Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service to be two-faced. Otherwise, they would be just one-faced and 100 percent against us. The same could probably be said of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.
the pakistani army has been america’s stooge since 1947 and hamid karzai is a puppet govt installed by the u.s.

China supports Pakistan, seeks out mining contracts in Afghanistan and lets America make Afghanistan safe for Chinese companies.
afghanistan is NOT safe, it was much safer under the taliban. karzai’s govt has hardly any influence outside of kabul. 70% of the country is still under taliban control.

china is not a military occupation force. they’re geographically located right next to afghanistan and pakistan and have had and will continue to have both business and security relationships with their neighbors. america is irrelevant.

Oil consumption, which indirectly helps to fund the very Taliban schools and warriors our soldiers are fighting against.
oil consumption is only part of the problem. the saudis don’t need to invest in taliban training. there’s plenty of hatred to go around w/o any taliban schools. its coming from american bombings, raids, detentions, torture – from our brutal occupation.

That terrorist attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis.
where the fuck did he come up with pakistan? i could stand up and say that the 9/11 attack was planned, executed and funded by the cia and mossad and be on equally firm ground.

The short answer is because Pakistan has nukes that we fear and Saudi Arabia has oil that we crave.
the govts in both pakistan and saudi arabia r owned by the u.s. – we don’t fear shit.

We hoped that building a decent democratizing government in Iraq would influence reform in Saudi Arabia and beyond.
friedman was one of the biggest cheerleaders for the iraq invasion and the neo-con idea of ending a state in order to rebuild it in our own image. one of his fake sense pronouncements: “two countries with mcdonald’s restaurants won’t go to war.” for that alone, friedman should be ex-communicated from serious journalism.

After expelling Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, we stayed on to stabilize the place, largely out of fears that instability in Afghanistan could spill into Pakistan and lead to Islamist radicals taking over Islamabad and its nukes.
al qaeda was never kicked out of afghanistan. al qaeda (or the 100 or so people believed to loosely represent it) is completely portable – they can move around. unlike american forces, they actually live in afghanistan. they have plenty of time to play hide and seek. the spilling over of the militancy/instability into pakistan it on account of american presence, not in spite of it.

The Pakistani Army is obsessed with what it says is the threat from India — and keeping that threat alive is what keeps the Pakistani Army in control of the country.
american sponsorship is what really keeps the army in control in pakistan – like all american-funded latin american military dictatorships.

The absence of either stable democracy in Pakistan or a decent public education system only swells the ranks of the Taliban and other Islamic resistance forces there.
the absense of a stable democracy in pakistan also has something to do with america’s support/preference for military dictators.

If Pakistan built its identity around its own talented people and saw its strategic depth as the quality of its schools, farms and industry, instead of Afghanistan, it might be able to produce a stable democracy — and we wouldn’t care about Pakistan’s nukes any more than India’s.
again, see above. as far as the nukes, the u.s. doesn’t fear them. they’ve known about them forever. they just use that card when needed. read seymour hersh’s article about how americans have an arrangement to deploy a special services unit to pakistan should an internal dispute in the country put the nukes at risk. basically, there is no risk. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/11/16/091116fa_fact_hersh

The al-Sauds get to rule and the Wahhabis get to impose on their society the most puritanical Islam — and export it to mosques and schools across the Muslim world, including to Pakistan, with money earned by selling oil to the West.
the sauds r best friends with the bushes. it’s like egypt. it’s not about oil, it’s about control over countries to the detriment of their people’s will.

So we pay Pakistan to help us in Afghanistan, even though we know some of that money is killing our own soldiers, because we fear that just leaving could lead to Pakistan’s Islamists controlling its bomb.
bullshit on account of all of the above.

We don’t have the money, manpower or time required to fully transform the most troubled states of this region.
what reprehensible, racist, neo con hubris – to want to “westernize” other countries out of compassion by destroying and then rebuilding them our way. yuck.

I am tired of being the sucker in this game.
and we r tired of ur stupidity and ur malignant political agenda.