Suggested Discussion Outline

[johnkarls]

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1. Pakistan's 3 conventional wars with India followed by "nuking up" in 1998 in preparation for "round 4."

2. Pakistan nuclear-bomb technology immediately supplied to North Korea, to Iran and to Colonel Qaddafi's Libya.

3. Pakistani "turn key" nuclear weapons already sold to Saudi Arabia for delivery as soon as Iran goes nuclear.

4. Has Pakistan already sold "turn key" nuclear weapons programs to other countries that have also announced they will go nuclear as soon as Iran does = Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait, The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman?

5. Pakistan's fixation, according to our author, with undying enmity toward India -- reasons and rationality.

6. Why, according to our author, is a nation of 193 million seemingly focused solely on India's rule over Kashmir and its population of only 9 million -- to the exclusion of everything else including its own economic development?

7. Why has Pakistan been the home of "Al Qaeda Core" and, following 9/11, the home of Osama bin Laden?

8. What is it about Pakistan that makes it unable to "get along" in the world? After all, Bangladesh (the old East Pakistan) has decent relations with India and is not the source of nuclear-weapons proliferation or Islamic Jihadis.

9. Is our author correct that Pakistan and the U.S. can never truly be allies because of their radically-different objectives? Or is ally status merely a nomenclature problem that should not deter the U.S. from continuing to pursue its objectives vis-à-vis Pakistan = nuclear non-proliferation and suppression of terrorism?

[johnkarls]

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Additional Food Morsel No. 1

What happened to the U.N. Report on the U.S. drone program that had been requested by Pakistan/Russia/China and that was due to be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly last October?

[Further details available on www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org in connection with our 7/10/2013 meeting on U.S. Drone Policy.]

Is the apparent disappearance of the report evidence of informal cooperation between the U.S./Pakistan/Russia/China?

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Additional Food Morsel No. 2

Isn’t there an eerie parallel between America’s refusal to admit publicly 1985-1998 that Pakistan had acquired nuclear weapons (which had happened in 1985 per our author at p. 267) and America’s current refusal to admit publicly that Iran HAS ALREADY acquired nuclear weapons?

{Please see “NY Times Speculation That Iran Already Has Nuclear Weapons” posted on www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org under Reference Materials for our 11/13/2013 meeting focusing on the Character of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.]

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Additional Food Morsel No. 3

Is the Pakistani fear of India justified?

After all --

(A) approximately 1 million Muslims (and nearly as many Hindus) were massacred during the 1947 partition of Pakistan and India upon independence from Britain,

(B) India tested nuclear weapons first = a ludicrously-named “peaceful” atomic bomb in 1974 followed by 5 more tests in 1998 before Pakistan first responded with its own tests, and

(C) India and Pakistan have fought 4 wars, the most recent in 1999 after India and Pakistan had both nuked up.

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Additional Food Morsel No. 4

Didn’t Pres. Bill Clinton exhibit a lot of wisdom and courage during his 3/25/2000 speech at the Islamabad Airport that he insisted be televised live all over Pakistan as his price for helping Pakistan extricate itself from the FOURTH India-Pakistan War???

Per our author (pp. 306-7), Pres. Clinton said, inter alia:

“Are you really more secure today that you were before you tested nuclear weapons? Will these weapons make war with India less likely or simply more deadly? Will a costly arms race help you to achieve any economic development? Will it bring you closer to your friends around the world, closer to the partnerships you need to build your dreams? ….. Will endless, costly struggle build good schools for your children? Will it make your cities safer? Will it bring clean water and better health care? Will it narrow the gaps between those who have and those who have nothing? Will it hasten the day when Pakistan’s energy and wealth are invested in building its future? ….. If you choose that future, the United States will walk with you. I hope you will make that choice.”

Unfortunately, per our author (p. 307): “As soon as Clinton left the country, Pakistan’s media reverted to its usual pattern. The United States was accused of siding with India, ignoring the just Kashmir cause, and acting as an imperial power.”

[Pat]

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Reading Liberally Editorial Note =

John Karls’ “Additional Food Morsel No. 1” questioned what happened to the U.N. Report on the U.S. drone program that had been requested by Pakistan/Russia/China and that was due to be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly last October.

And speculated about the reason for its apparent disappearance.

THE REPORT ONLY FAILED TO APPEAR IN THE AMERICAN MEDIA !!!

There follows an American Al Jazeera article on the U.N. Report which was in fact released last October and two additional reports released nearly simultaneously by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

[The fifth paragraph of the article confirms the release of the U.N. report a few days earlier.]

Two observations =

The blackout (or near blackout) by the American media happens more often than Americans would like to believe and underscores the need to canvass foreign media outlets on a regular basis.

It is also further evidence of American hubris = our attitude on display for the rest of the world that “Our Shit Doesn’t Stink”!!!


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america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/10/21/rights-groups-sayobamasdroneprogramviolatesinternationallaw.html

Rights groups say Obama's drone program violates international law
By Peter Moskowitz @PeterMoskowitz

Two new reports on the use of drones by the United States in its ongoing war against Al-Qaeda add to a growing chorus of concern among human-rights groups that the Obama administration's drone program has violated international law and caused unnecessary civilian deaths, fear and chaos in Pakistan and Yemen.

One report, released by Amnesty International, reviews 45 drone strikes in North Waziristan and surrounding regions in Pakistan in 2012 and 2013. The area is considered a hotbed of Al-Qaeda activity and is the most targeted location in the world for drone strikes. The other report, released by Human Rights Watch, details the circumstances and aftermath of six strikes in Yemen, where drones are used less frequently than in Pakistan.

Both reports conclude that in many cases, drone strikes may have breached international laws. Both also say that the White House's and CIA's lack of transparency surrounding the drone program makes it unaccountable to the citizens of the U.S. as well as to unintended victims of the attacks.

"The biggest problem is the accountability vacuum," Naureen Shah, Amnesty International's advocacy adviser for Pakistan, told Al Jazeera. "(The Obama administration) has created a situation where they're claiming success at killing the right people and ignorance or indifference to the wrong people dying."

THE TWO REPORTS COME DAYS AFTER THE UNITED NATIONS RELEASED ITS OWN REPORT ON THE U.S. DRONE PROGRAM. THE U.N. ALSO URGED THE UNITED STATES TO BE MORE TRANSPARENT ABOUT ITS PROGRAM, AND THE INTERNATIONAL BODY PLANS TO PRESENT THE REPORT TO THE U.N. GENERAL ASSEMBLY ON OCT. 25. [Emphasis added.]

Amnesty International investigators conducted on-the-ground research into nine of the 45 drone strikes they reviewed. They found that in some cases, innocent civilians were killed in the strikes. In one circumstance, 18 workers were killed by multiple missiles in North Waziristan as they were settling into an evening meal. In another, a 68-year-old grandmother was killed by a Hellfire missile as she harvested vegetables from her family's farm.

"We cannot find any justification for these killings," said Mustafa Qadri, Amnesty International's Pakistan researcher, in a statement. "It is hard to believe that a group of laborers — or an elderly woman surrounded by her grandchildren — were endangering anyone at all, let alone posing an imminent threat to the United States."

These attacks, the organization says, are in violation of international law. Amnesty International said that one attack it investigated may also be a war crime.

On July 6, 2012, a U.S. drone appears to have struck a group of people who arrived to help rescue those injured in an attack a few minutes earlier, according to Amnesty International. If the U.S. intentionally targeted those who were injured or the people assisting previous them, that could be considered a war crime, according to Shah.

But there is no way of knowing what the U.S.'s motivations were, Shah said.

In the vast majority of strikes, the target, any accidental deaths and information about whether a strike was successful are all kept confidential.

That, the groups say, makes it hard to ensure that the program falls within the bounds of international law. It also makes it difficult to determine how many people have been killed by drones.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism estimates that 407 to 926 civilians have been killed since 2004 in Pakistan, while the Pakistani government says the number is between 400 and 600. The United States says information on civilian deaths is classified.

By not acknowledging civilian deaths or releasing details of the strikes, the U.S. government makes it impossible for families of civilians killed by drones to receive compensation, according to Amnesty International.

The strikes, coupled with the U.S. government's secrecy, create an atmosphere of anxiety in areas where drone attacks are frequent, according to the reports. Many are afraid to speak out against the strikes because they fear that would associate them with terrorists in the eyes of the U.S.

Human Rights Watch's report on Yemen, where the drone program is less prevalent, came to many of the same conclusions that the Amnesty International report did.

Both say the U.S. should work to make the facts and legal justification surrounding drone strikes more transparent and investigate when there are claims of innocent lives lost. Both groups say the international community should condemn the drone program in its current state and push the U.S. and its allies to fall in line with international law.

But it is unclear what, if anything, can be done about the U.S. drone program.

According to the Obama administration and some experts, only so much can be revealed about the program without jeopardizing national security.

"The Obama administration has been rather transparent, but there are limitations," Charles J. Dunlap, a former Air Force major general and now a professor at Duke University, told Al Jazeera. "What they haven't been transparent about is the information about specific cases. That's because adversaries go to school when any information is released."

This isn't the first time the Obama administration's drone program has come under fire.

Responding to mounting pressure, Obama gave a speech in May in which he promised to release more information about the program. But nothing has come of that speech so far.