Crashing the Party

Let me introduce myself -- I'm a semi-regular contributor to the op-ed pages of the Daily News. Some more info on me can be found here. (You'll notice that the Daily News is mentioned before those cross-town people.)

I'm grateful to Mr. Weinkopf for the chance to be a part of Friendly Fire. I have immense admiration for Chris, the kind of honest, principled, yet intellectually supple writer who is too rare in our day. Okay, enough apple-polishing.

I grew up with one foot in America and one foot in Pakistan, which seemed a rather boring matter until Pakistan ended up becoming the key front in the war on terror (yeah, yeah, I know Iraq is the key front, but c'mon....). Now I spend a great deal of time trying to make sense of how my two homelands collided in such remarkable ways. As one who has lived in both places, I feel that precious few people on either side "get" the other side. And I see that as a huge challenge for us as Americans going forward. Yes, I do see my identity as fundamentally "American," although I'm also comfortable with the "Pakistani" hyphen.

I'm politically independent; but though I often criticize the president, I'm ultimately more of a libertarian than a liberal. And I look forward to being caught in the friendly fire here!