U.S. Pakistan Policy "is vastly increasing the threat of another 9/11 on American soil.”

[Better Believe It]

NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 28, 2011
U.S. Pakistan Policy “Threatening Another 9/11″

WASHINGTON - November 28 - A New York Times front page article reports today: “The NATO air attack that killed at least two dozen Pakistani soldiers over the weekend reflected a fundamental truth about American-Pakistani relations when it comes to securing the unruly border with Afghanistan: the tactics of war can easily undercut the broader strategy that leaders of both countries say they share.”

FRED BRANFMAN, fredbranfman at aol.com
Branfman has written a dozen articles warning that U.S. policy towards Pakistan is a national security disaster, including two recent Salon pieces entitled “The Petraeus Projection, The CIA Director’s Record Since The Surge“. Branfman is best known for having exposed the CIA’s secret war in Laos.

He said today: “Short-sighted U.S. policy is creating a national security disaster in Pakistan. The U.S. policy of trying to win in tiny Afghanistan by extending its war-making into giant, nuclear-armed Pakistan — including drone strikes, cross-border raids, illegal U.S. ground assassination and forcing the Pakistani Army to wage scorched-earth offensives … threatens the greatest U.S. foreign policy disaster since its support for Iran’s Shah, including another domestic 9/11. …

“U.S. policy has led to an increase in the strength of militant groups in Pakistan, vastly increased the ranks of potential anti-U.S. suicide bombers in both Pakistan and the West, and increased the possibility of an anti-U.S. military coup. And, most significantly, as former U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson has secretly warned, it has vastly increased the possibility of materials from Pakistan’s nuclear stockpile — the world’s fastest-growing and least stable — falling into terrorist hands. U.S.-Pakistan policy, largely designed by David Petraeus, had led over 69 percent of Pakistanis — over 125 million people — to regard the U.S. as their ‘enemy,’ and is thus sowing a whirlwind which threatens disaster in coming years.

“The U.S. badly needs to pull out of Afghanistan as soon as possible, end the drone strikes in Pakistan, and vastly increase its economic aid to Pakistan — particularly helping to extend its electricity grid, its top domestic priority — to reduce the threat of terrorism. Present U.S. policy is vastly increasing the threat of another 9/11 on American soil.”

Branfman’s previous articles include “Unintended Consequences in Nuclear-Armed Pakistan“.
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A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.

http://www.accuracy.org/news-releases/


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November 28, 2011
What's Next?
NATO vs Pakistan
by TARIQ ALI

The Nato assault on a Pakistani checkpoint close to the Afghan border which killed 24 soldiers on Saturday must have been deliberate. Nato commanders have long been supplied with maps marking these checkpoints by the Pakistani military. They knew that the target was a military outpost. The explanation that they were fired on first rings false and has been ferociously denied by Islamabad. Previous such attacks were pronounced ‘accidental’ and apologies were given and accepted. This time it seems more serious. It has come too soon after other ‘breaches of sovereignty’, in the words of the local press, but Pakistani sovereignty is a fiction. The military high command and the country’s political leaders willingly surrendered their sovereignty many decades ago. That it is now being violated openly and brutally is the real cause for concern.

In retaliation, Pakistan has halted Nato convoys to Afghanistan (49 per cent of which go through the country) and asked the US to vacate the Shamsi base that they built to launch drones against targets in both Afghanistan and Pakistan with the permission of the country’s rulers. Islamabad was allowed a legal fig-leaf: in official documents the base was officially leased by the UAE – whose ‘sovereignty’ is even more flexible than Pakistan’s.

Motives for the attack remain a mystery but its impact is not. It will create further divisions within the military, further weaken the venal Zardari regime, strengthen religious militants and make the US even more hated than it already is in Pakistan.

So why do it? Was it intended as a provocation? Is Obama seriously thinking of unleashing a civil war in an already battered country? Some commentators in Islamabad are arguing this but it’s unlikely that Nato troops will occupy Pakistan. Such an irrational turn would be difficult to justify in terms of any imperial interests. Perhaps it was simply a tit-for-tat to punish the Pakistani military for dispatching the Haqqani network to bomb the US embassy and Nato HQ in Kabul’s ‘Green Zone’ a few months back.

Read the full article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/11/28/nato-vs-pakistan/

[Quartermass]

1. From 2007:

In a strikingly bold speech about terrorism Wednesday, Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Sen. Barack Obama called not only for a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, but a redeployment of troops into Afghanistan and even Pakistan — with or without the permission of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

"I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges," Obama said, "but let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al Qaeda leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

Obama's mention of an "al Qaeda leadership meeting" refers to a classified military operation planned in early 2005 to kill al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden's top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri in Pakistan's tribal regions. First reported in The New York Times earlier this month, the mission was "aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3434573&page=1#.TtRHdXquOIk