POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN IN THE NEW YORK TIMES
Well, anything which causes grief to the gang of criminals in the White House must have some redeeming value.
Sarcasm aside, here we go again with destructive outcomes from the Afghan and Iraq invasions.
All the U.S. cares about in Pakistan is the border and the movement of Taleban supporters. This completely ignores the fact that there is no genuine border in the Durand Line.
Families on both sides belong to the same tribal group and speak the same language and share religion and customs.
Yet somehow, Gen Musharraf is supposed to suppress this historic reality in favor of what armchair experts on the Potomac think should be done.
America's so-called war on terror is thus translated into a real war inside Pakistan, tearing apart families and causing needless harm.
The U.S. has put immense pressure on Musharraf, even to sending over Ms Bhutto whose own record is a sorry one.
At the same time, the Taleban have now taken control of two provinces from the corrupt warlord governors the U.S. used in its invasion.
The situation in Afghanistan, according to good critical observers in Britain and other places, is almost hopeless.
On another front, we have the PKK attacking Turkey, and note the total hypocrisy of the White House reaction. Israel killed more than thousand people and left a million cluster-bomb bomblets on the flimsy excuse of having two soldiers kidnapped.
The attack on Turkish forces was a serious one, yet the White House prevents Turkey from responding, going to the extreme apparently of influencing the release of kidnap victims.
The October death toll in Iraq was higher than the month before, even though official American sources make loud claims of reduced violence. The only real change is the frequency and location of bombs.
American soldiers now frequently speak of the hopeless mess in Iraq. None of this is widely reported by establishment newspapers.
America has left huge open wounds across the region, yet still the madman in the White House threatens more, an attack on Iran, a country which has attacked no one and is threatened itself on many sides.
