Posted on 04/12/2013 12:07:42 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Islamabad - Musharraf's admission that Pakistani leaders agreed to even a limited number of strikes counters their repeated criticism of a programme they long claimed the US was operating without their approval.
Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf has admitted that his government had secretly signed off on US drone strikes.
This is the first time a top past or present Pakistani official has admitted publicly to such a deal.
Pakistani leaders long have openly challenged the drone program and insisted they had no part in it. However, Musharraf, during an interview in Islamabad, insisted Pakistan's government signed off on strikes "only on a few occasions, when a target was absolutely isolated and no chance of collateral damage", reports the CNN.
Musharraf's admission that Pakistani leaders agreed to even a limited number of strikes counters their repeated criticism of a programme they long claimed the US was operating without their approval, the report said.
The drone strikes, which have killed at least 1,990 people in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians, are unpopular in Pakistan.
Former Interior Minister Rehman Malik had said last month that the world superpower is having its own way, without any consent from Pakistan.
Despite such pronouncements, there's been speculation that the story might have been different behind the scenes.
In a cable sent in August 2008 and later posted online by Wikileaks, then-US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson mentioned a discussion about drones during a meeting that also involved Malik and then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.
US drones began launching attacks in Pakistan in 2004, by which time Musharraf had been president for five years after taking power in a bloodless coup.
Here’s another guy, like Jimmy Carter, who needs to keep his mouth shut.
“The drone strikes, which have killed at least 1,990 people in Pakistan, including hundreds of civilians, are unpopular in Pakistan.”
I imagine that figure is ten times lower than the figures for how many have been killed by the Taliban in Pakistan and the Pakistani government’s battles with the Taliban and their religious kin, and likely ten times lower for the civilians who were killed in those skirmishes as well.
But, like so many things Arab or Islamic, what members of an Arab or Islamic community do to each other is culturally accepted but not anything done by the “infidel”. How do we know? The world knows the mass protests in Pakistan over “drone strikes” and the workd knows there have been no mass protests when the Taliban pepetrate murderous attacks on Pakistanis or Afghans.
In the west we call it a double standard, but whether or not that is a correct characterization it is not a winning argument in Islamic dominant cultures because it fails to acknowledge the negative position of the “infidel”, for which there cannot be an “even handed” position in comparison with a Muslim.
The neocons were and are wrong. The people of the world are not all of one mind - on MANY MORE things than they are in agreement on.
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