Occupied Iraq and the US are the most dangerous countries in the world, not Pakistan

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=108883

4/25/2008

I have never been a member of Pakistan’s gloom and doom brigade of journalists who seem congenitally unable to see anything right with this country and tend to argue that whatever happens is likely to be for the worst. Indeed, some members of this brigade sound as if they are on some foreign anti-Pakistan payroll and are regular recipients of envelopes stuffed with cash (lifafas, in local parlance) given to them by their paymasters for portraying this country in a bad light. If somebody happens to be feeling well and healthy today, for instance, these gloom and doom types are likely to say, “That’s no guarantee that tomorrow you won’t be feeling sick.”

In recent years, these professional Cassandras have become so thick on the ground that it has now become increasingly difficult to pick up a Pakistani newspaper without coming across their doom-laden writings. To make matters worse, many of these journalists also work as stringers for the Western press, which is basically not interested in any good news from a developing country like Pakistan and only wants stories that tend to highlight things that are supposedly wrong or are likely to go wrong – a task that our gloom and doom journalists are only too happy to perform.

Given this sorry state of affairs, it came as no surprise when these journalists pounced with perverse glee on a recent story in America’s Newsweek magazine that described Pakistan as “arguably the world’s most dangerous country.” The refrain was subsequently picked up by Britain’s The Economist magazine which put the phrase “the world’s most dangerous country” on its cover in a recent issue, along with a picture of a hand-grenade. Some Pakistani journalists lost no time leaping into the fray and began churning out piece after piece quoting what Newsweek and The Economist had said and adding gloom and doom embellishments of their own.

It is another matter that what Newsweek and The Economist had said was, in fact, a load of utter rubbish. Make that, UTTER RUBBISH. If by “the most dangerous country” they meant a country that poses the most danger to other countries, then the United States wins that title hands down. Since World War II, no country on earth has attacked more countries than the United States. Indeed, there has hardly been a time during the last sixty years when US troops were not attacking some country or the other: Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Grenada, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq – the list goes on and on.

Millions of civilians have been killed by US troops in these countries, including 3.5 million in Vietnam. An estimated 600,000 people were killed in Indonesia in a CIA-sponsored military coup in the mid-1960s. And hundreds of thousands of people were killed in Cambodia in the early 1970s as the result of a ferocious US bombing campaign.

Coming to the case of Iraq, a survey carried out by the respected British medical journal The Lancet in 2006 and published in the journal’s October 2006 issue suggested that about 655,000 Iraqis had died by July 2006 in the US attack and occupation of Iraq. A survey published by the UK-based polling agency Opinion Research Business in September 2007 suggested that up to 1.2 million Iraqis might have died because of the conflict.

[Supersedeas]

1. Violence is an American way -- it is very much part of our culture

Just ask yourself -- if your neighbor a 'gathering threat' -- do you merely believe that your neighbor is a 'gathering threat' -- maybe it is time to change the head of household over there, just so you feel more secure even if you actually aren't and even if you are mistaken about the 'gathering threat'