Posted on 09/28/2003 8:22:43 AM PDT by Brian S
U.S. must quell hatred of the west through positive action, not invasion
Mike Blanchfield The Ottawa Citizen
The Muslim world is so full of hatred for the United States that President George W. Bush must do something positive in the region, such as capturing fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden or restoring order to Afghanistan, warns Pakistan's president.
"There's so much hate, so much anti-western, anti-U.S. feelings, we have to show a positive," Gen. Pervez Musharraf told the Citizen in an interview.
"If we show one more negative, in the form of a military operation against another Muslim country, I think it's going to be disastrous."
Gen. Musharraf is Mr. Bush's No. 1 Muslim ally in the war on terror, and the on-going effort to capture Mr. bin Laden, the man held responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.
In a candid and expansive interview with the Citizen, Gen. Musharraf said the U.S. used up whatever good standing it had in the Muslim world by invading Iraq.
Now the Bush administration must do a good deed in the region to diffuse the hatred that has built up following the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Gen. Musharraf said that's a message he has delivered to Bush personally.
"President Bush is trying his best. He knows what to do. The problem is, how to do it."
Gen. Musharraf said the U.S. must think again before it considers taking action against a second Muslim target such as Iran.
Mr. Bush has labelled Iran as part of the "axis of evil," and his administration has deep concerns about the country's ambitions to develop nuclear weapons.
Gen. Musharraf, whose country sparked outrage when it entered the nuclear age in 1998, said he has no proof Iran has nuclear weapons.
If the U.S. took pre-emptive military action against Iran -- the way it justified attacking Iraq to rid it of weapons of mass destruction -- it would lead to a backlash in the Muslim world, Gen. Musharraf warned.
"The Muslim world is in turmoil. There's a lot of opposition to the West and the United States in the Muslim mind because all the political disputes after the Cold War have involved Muslims. Muslims feel that maybe they are being targeted."
Mr. Bush could score a major public relations victory by capturing Mr. bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader who has inspired a generation of downtrodden Islamic youth to hate and fight the West, said Gen. Musharraf.
The longer Mr. bin Laden remains at large, the more his followers will be emboldened, he said.
Western intelligence has been certain for months that the al-Qaeda leader is hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt, a mountainous, lawless and largely backward region that borders Afghanistan.
Gen. Musharraf said the intelligence he has seen does not dissuade him from believing his country is host to the most wanted man in the United States.
The new intelligence has persuaded Gen. Musharraf that he was mistaken when he once said he believed that Mr. bin Laden had died of kidney failure.
Capturing Mr. bin Laden would create an initial backlash among Islamic extremists, but that would pass in the long term, said Gen. Musharraf.
Gen. Musharraf described in detail the difficulties in finding Mr. bin Laden and the limitations of the U.S. satellite technology in the mountainous region.
"We are using electronic means, high technology ... monitoring mobile telephones, internet," he said.
"You can see them walking, sitting, vehicles moving, people getting out. But you don't see their faces. You don't know if it's Mr. Osama bin Laden ... so you can only guess through activity if it's an important man.
"So how do you react? You react with force, of course."
And that, said Gen. Musharraf, is where the complication arises.
Too many innocent lives would be imperiled if the U.S. started firing rockets at every group of people it thought might contain Mr. bin Laden, he said.
Gen. Musharraf said he believes stability can be restored to Central Asia in the next 10 years.
Evoking his region's golden era of Silk Route trading, he spoke in glowing terms about how the reconstruction of Afghanistan could herald a new era of economic prosperity in Central Asia.
But the key, he said, is stabilizing Afghanistan.
Turkmenistan, Afghanistan's northwestern neighbour, is keen to run a gas pipeline across the unstable country to Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf said.
But that won't happen unless international peacekeepers expand their area of control outside Kabul, the capital.
Gen. Musharraf became emotional when asked about Pakistan's continued exclusion from the Commonwealth, a result of his seizure of power four years ago in a bloodless coup.
He said he has "a total disappointment with the Commonwealth" because of Pakistan's continued exclusion while dictators such as Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe are allowed access to the club.
Canada, he said, has been supportive of Pakistan's attempts to rejoin the Commonwealth, but Gen. Musharraf said he isn't losing any sleep over the issue.
He blamed India, who he labelled as an enemy of his country, for sowing opposition towards Pakistan.
"Why should I bother about the Commonwealth?" he asked.
Early warnings should be heeded. Maybe it is time Gen. Musharraf made checking who and what is under all those veils should be made mandatory! Certainly here in the US, IDs must be compulsory/required regardless of religion and that means pictures of faces matching the one under the veil off with the veils! Militant Islam is out to do us in and made soooo easy with political correctness paving the way for terrorists to do just that.
Western intelligence has been certain for months that the al-Qaeda leader is hiding in Pakistan's tribal belt, a mountainous, lawless and largely backward region that borders Afghanistan.
Gen. Musharraf said the intelligence he has seen does not dissuade him from believing his country is host to the most wanted man in the United States.
Gen. Musharraf described in detail the difficulties in finding Mr. bin Laden and the limitations of the U.S. satellite technology in the mountainous region.
"So how do you react? You react with force, of course."
And that, said Gen. Musharraf, is where the complication arises.
Too many innocent lives would be imperiled if the U.S. started firing rockets at every group of people it thought might contain Mr. bin Laden, he said.
To me, that sounds like tacit approval to operate covertly inside Pakistan and do what we have to when we are sure we have the right target. Not that I doubt that that has been the policy for a long time already, but it looks like an extra wink and nod from Gen. Musharraf.
You think Pakistan's bomb is not an 'Islamic bomb'? Have you ever been to Pakistan? Their missiles are named after famed Islamic invaders of India, and there are shrines to their nuclear missiles in the center of cities, in roundabouts, etc. It's bizarre.
The bottom line is: if Pakistan acts up, they will do some damage in the short term, and then they will cease to exist as a country. Bush made this very clear to them before the Afghan war: Either disassociate yourself from your creation (the Taliban), or get erased. Musharraf chose wisely, but he shouldn't be lecturing the US on the danger of Muslim 'anger'. He should be lecturing Muslims on the danger of US anger.
No, I've never been to Pakistan.
There's a problem with the Commander-in-Chief though. He still maintains islam is a religion of peace and one of the world's great religions.
Thats The Ottawa Citizen for you, it owned by a very lefty guy.
The U.S. is not going to take military action against Iran, Israel is.
Triggering event? Timeframe?
Musharraf believes his cards against us are stronger than ours against him. Maybe he's right. Pakistan's plunge into chaos would hardly help the war on terror and regional stability, would it? With Mushy in charge Pakistan can be more part of the solution than part of the problem. If he goes, that'll probably change for the worse. It's the same Catch-22 we're in with respect to the Saudis and Egyptians - their leaders assume we need them since even their flawed stability is preferable to potential takeover by the fundamentalists. That's why they get away with all the anti-Semitism and even anti-Americanism that's deeply ingrained in their public institutions. This situation won't change unless we're ready to invade their countries the same way we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, but clearly we're not, and even if we were, what are the prospects for a cheap and speedy victory in a country where anti-Americanism has permeated so deeply into popular culture, where the people seem to hate the US more than their leaders? For this reason I'm far less concerned about Iran and even Iraq than Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
DUH!!!! Ya think???
War can take many forms. We could engage in all out cyber war with China and never fire a shot, not a word would be said in admission by either side. Ditto power infrastructure. I don't see how blackouts lead to nukes being dropped.
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