November 19, 2007 - 12:00 am
For decades after the 1949 triumph of communist forces in the Middle Kingdom, a question haunted American politics: “Who Lost China?” Pakistan has been a U.S. ally since the mid-1970s and an imperfect democracy since the 1940s, writes PJM Xpress blogger Richard Miniter, and all presidents from Carter onward have tried to nurture its imperfect democracy. Now Pakistan seemed poised on the verge of civil war-and, if chaos comes, the Bush Administration will have no one to blame to itself.
How about ‘blaming’ the true villain in this debacle: Islam.
Has there ever been a more perfect test of Islam than the example of Pakistan? Separated from India at the violent insistence of Muslims, Muslims who found it impossible to live in harmony with their Hindu neighbors, Muslims who insisted it would be better for all to cede to the Muslims vast tracts of territory under threat of Jihad…
So here we have a perfect test for Islam and the claims of Muslims for their ‘perfect’ system of governance on earth – starting out at roughly the same place with roughly the same opportunities, what have the two sides done since partition?
India has slogged her way towards a positive destiny, has entered the world of commerce and modernity despite huge barriers, cultural and economic. India is succeding.
Compare that to Pakistan and Bangladesh. They have genocidally cleansed non-Muslims from their dominions until Muslims constitute nearly 100% of their respective populace, mudering millions in the Jihad, driving millions more before the jackboot of terrorist Islam. Pakistan has spiralled into the most filthy sewers of corruption and human degradation before the eyes of the world. They have regressed to a more primitive and dilapidated state even than that from which they began – they are truly among the world’s most pathetic basket cases. Pakistan is now a nuclear equipped al Qaida nation with tens of millions of her boys enrolled in Saudi funded madrassa guranteeing a tsunami of Muslim murderers for the coming decades. Pakistan has proven that Islam must not be allowed to have nukes for the inevitable result is the unprecedented proliferation we saw under el Baradei and AQ Khan – those twin Muslim snakes who have lurched the world towards Armageddon.
Islam is to blame for ‘losing’ Pakistan. The west is only at fault for ever expecting more from the barbarian Muslim world. That is all.
This strikes me as cliched political thinking. The idea of “Who Lost Pakistan?” is about as fresh as “Who Lost China?” from our grandparents. It reflects an excessive idea of American power that borders on the paranoid. The Pakistanis will have lost Pakistan just as the Chinese lost China. Blame Bush, blame Truman, blame Norman Mailer… get over it. Blame the people involved. It’s their lives.
JKRibera, exactly so. In fact, I’ll say that Musharaff got into this fix by keeping faith with the United States, and putting (irregular) pressure on the Islamists in Pakistan. In fact, a large part of the problem comes from that healthy chunk of the military and judciary who are Islamist in sentiment or in fact.
Morton, alas, has a very feeble grasp of Islam. I’ll merely point out two good counter-examples of functioning Muslim democracies: Indeonesia, and autonomous “Kurdestan” in Iraq.