Terrorism: August 2008 Archives

Here's some elementary logic, based on what's being said on American talk radio:
• All Muslims see themselves as part of a jihad against non-Muslims
• Barack Hussein Obama plans to slip Al Qaeda a key to the White House backdoor on the afternoon of January 20, 2009.
• Obama should be able to sit back and expect 99% of the Muslim-American vote.

But the talk-show freaks, and maybe Obama himself, would be surprised by a growing movement: Muslims Against Barack.

One devoted Muslim, my Pakistani-American mother, trashed the Great Brown Hope the other day, responding to Obama's threats to hammer militants in the Pakistani northwest frontier more aggressively than Pakistanis are willing to.

"Obama just wants to march into the northern areas and start shooting," she says. "Doesn't he know that the extremists will just go south, into Islamabad and Lahore and everywhere else? Doesn't he know they will eventually go into India? Does he really think he can stop the extremists in the northern area without angering everybody and destroying our whole country?"

It's a valid point, and it brings up a question: Why does a kind-hearted Pakistani-American grandmother show more foreign-policy acumen than an Ivy League-trained University of Chicago professor? One obvious reason is that, although Mama and Obama both love America, Mom cares deeply about Pakistan and Obama cares deeply about shutting up the hawks who mock him.

Mama's comments about Obama came just moments after she screened for me a DVD of "In the Name of God." That provocative 2007 Pakistani film electrified Pakistan with its depiction of a moderate Pakistani family wrenched by fundamentalist forces. To Pakistanis already struggling with the religious civil war depicted in the film, Obama sends them into fits of rage by his threats to violate Pakistan's sovereignty in spectacular fashion (whereas the Bush administration is set on violating it more quietly and semi-secretly).

Obama is a decent man - this "secret Muzzie" is in fact the most genuinely Christian presidential candidate of the past generation, in the way that he seems to be fueled by Christian character traits such as grace, forgiveness and redemption. Yet he is also a weak man - a new breed of "chicken hawk." He counters the charges of weakness by morphing from Obama to "Oh, Bomb 'em."

The unintended consequences of power matter very little to the hammer that is trying to prove its power, but those consequences matter very much to the thumb that happen to be in its way.

Since 9/11, Pakistan's army may not have time decimated sparse northwestern villages as harshly as the U.S. would like. But Pakistanis realize the collateral damage done by the Israeli government in its efforts to root out terrorists. It creates a Hydra effect - and before that effect reaches America, it reaches cities such as Islamabad and Lahore. So Pakistanis are hardly getting out of the way of terrorists in order to allow terrorists to reach America: Pakistanis know they themselves are directly in the path of such anarchists, and they are debating how to tame the threat with minimal unintended consequences. Obama is not helping much. Small wonder that he skipped Pakistan on his recent global victory tour.

Pakistani President Musharraf faces impeachment at the hands of his political rivals, and it again reminds us of the complexities and vexing inconsistencies involved in "spreading democracy" in the Mideast and South Asia.

We have preached democracy, but we have justifiably formed pragmatic alliances with strongmen such as Musharraf in the war on terror. The problem arises when we show our frustration with his democratically elected opposition -- at this point, we reveal ourselves to be less interested in democracy than in getting our own way. At that point, we lose all moral authority in those lands, as countless surveys have revealed.

Pakistanis aren't pro-terrorism; they in fact face a far greater threat in their everyday lives than Americans do. But they are not convinced that the American military solution is the answer, either. The result is that American leaders and media now posture about how this "stalwart ally" is in fact an American enemy.

It worries me greatly, as someone with roots there. I do see a crisis coming.