Obama Is Lying About Pakistan

Mr. Obama used a domestic event to 'accidentally' declare war on Pakistan. Now his team is trying to encourage the Pakistani military to seize power. The Americans destroyed Pakistan's stability through the Benazir-Musharraf deal in 2007. They are doing it again. Here is the easiest way of telling the Americans to: Lay off, stop lecturing us on India, stop supporting separatism, and mend your ways in Afghanistan.

By AHMED QURAISHI

Friday, 1 May 2009.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—There is not a single towering personality in the Pakistani landscape today, with enough credibility, strong personality and effective communication skills, to stand up and tell U.S. President Barack Obama: You are a liar.

It is not difficult to respond to the entire American psy-ops on Pakistan, which are built on half-truths, disinformation and in some cases outright lies. This campaign is successful mainly because of the broad influence of the U.S. media in setting the world news agenda.

Before listing the exact points where Mr. Obama is lying, let me briefly sum up the existing situation.

AMERICA'S PLAYGROUND

In less than two years, the United States has successfully managed to drop from news headlines its failure to pacify Afghanistan. The focus of the Anglo-American media – American and British – has been locked on Pakistan. In order to justify this shift, multiple insurgencies and endless supply of money and weapons has trickled from U.S.-occupied Afghanistan into Pakistan to sustain a number of warlords inside Pakistan whom the American media calls 'Taliban' but they are actually nothing but hired mercenaries with sophisticated weapons who mostly did not even exist as recently as the year 2005.

No other nation in the world would have tolerated half the arrogance that the Americans are showing Pakistan. But thanks to a mistake by former President Musharraf – sometime in late 2006 when he consented to allow the U.S. to manipulate domestic politics through direct engagement with Benazir Bhutto and other players – Washington was given a free hand to deal directly with individual players inside Pakistan and recruit supporters and proxies.

Today, there are many parties inside Pakistan that are pushing the U.S. agenda and very few of those who would come out and condemn how the U.S. media and officials are single-handedly tarnishing Pakistan's image worldwide to justify a military intervention.

This is precisely why senior Pakistani military officers are gradually coming out of their self-imposed ban on public activity to counter this nasty American psy-ops. Pakistanis need to watch this carefully.

On 24 April, Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, in the words of an official press release, "condemned pronouncements by outside powers raising doubts on the future of the Country," a veiled reference to a spate of official U.S. statements and planted media reports predicting the collapse of the Pakistani state.

On 25 April, Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman issued a statement saying that PAF "will continue to maintain its optimum operational readiness to undertake all types of missions against all internal and external threats … Pakistan Air Force is capable of providing instant support to Pak Army as and when directed by Government of Pakistan. To keep PAF at the highest state of Operational Readiness is my number one priority," the Air Chief said in a public statement.

And on 1 May, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen. Tariq Majeed called a meeting of the military leadership and an official statement made sure to underscore that "the meeting took place against the backdrop of widespread propaganda unleashed by the western media about the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons."

The military statement was being nice. The propaganda was not unleashed by the 'Western media' but exclusively by the American media.

This unusual series of public statements by the Pakistani military leadership was an indirect repudiation of the sheepish attitude of the Pakistani politicians who failed to reflect the will of the Pakistani people. Amazingly, while U.S. media organizations and U.S. officials continued their propaganda about the imminent fall of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, in the hands of unknown terrorists, not a single official from the elected government came out to clarify the position from a Pakistani perspective. The world continued to feed on U.S. propaganda and psy-ops for several days until the public statements from the Pakistani military set the record straight. That is when a couple of government officials, like President's Advisor Dr. Babar Awan, released statements contradicting the U.S. propaganda.

Interestingly, even Mr. Nawaz Sharif, supposedly the opposition leader, refrained from criticizing the U.S. aggressive posturing toward Pakistan. Mr. Sharif, more vengeful than statesmanlike, is hoping these days that Washington will support his bid to become the next all-powerful President after the Americans ditch a weakened President Zardari.

OBAMA'S LIES

Mr. Obama basically chose a domestic event – a press briefing on completing 100 days in office – to unveil what essentially amounts to a declaration of war against another country. The declaration was stage-managed to look accidental and not deliberate. Considering the serious nature of his pronouncements, there is no question these were well prepared in advance. This 'accidental' declaration of war should henceforth be taught in public relations classes as a classic lesson in how to deceive your public and voters and declare war without raising any alarm.

Mr. Obama first made an astonishing remark, that he is concerned about the fate of the elected Pakistani government because it cannot provide services to the people. Ironically, this was a swipe at the fake democracy that Washington itself helped erect a year ago with its direct intervention to bring Benazir Bhutto and later her husband Asif Zardari to power.

Now the U.S. President, no less, has taken it upon himself to criticize the ability of what he called the "civilian government", as opposed to a military government, to provide for the people.

It seems Washington is trying to nudge the Pakistani military again to seize power. The Americans are doing it in subtle ways. One is Obama's swipe. A second way is what Adm. Mike Mullen, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has done. He was allowed to join the panel of the U.S. Time magazine in choosing Gen. Kayani, the Pakistani army chief, to be among the top 2o most influential people in the world. To work up Gen. Kayani's ego, Adm. Mullen wrote the following words:

"I don't remember all the details of my first meeting with General Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistan army's Chief of Staff. But I do remember thinking, Here is a man with a plan, a leader who knows where he wants to go. He seemed to understand the nature of the extremist threat inside Pakistan , recognized that his army wasn't ready to meet that threat and had already started working up solutions."

The Americans are obviously hoping they can have Gen. Kayani in their pockets and use him to achieve their goals in the region. That is why President Obama in his 'accidental' speech on Pakistan shed these crocodile tears: "I'm more concerned that the civilian government there right now is very fragile."

And in another nudge for the Pakistani military, what President Obama's top general for Pakistan and Afghanistan told an American television channel was even more damning. Fox News reported on Thursday that Commander U.S. Central Command Gen. David Petraeus has told U.S. officials the next two weeks were 'critical to determining whether the Pakistani government will survive.'

But in what is sure to be one of the most hypocritical statements to ever come out from the mouth of the leader of the Free World, Mr. Obama said this: "We want to respect their sovereignty, but we also recognize that we have huge strategic interests -- huge national security interests -- in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don't end up having a nuclear-armed militant state."

If Mr. Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador in Washington who basically is the overseer of the Bhutto-Musharraf deal that brought the present 'democracy' to Pakistan, has any feelings for his country, he should call an important press conference and tell the American people the following truths that their media and politicians are hiding from them:

1. American Anti-Pakistanism: The most spectacular, anti-Pakistan media campaign ever against our country has been launched by the U.S. media and continues unabated, with the purpose of softening the international opinion for a possible military action against Pakistan. And there is no question that this campaign has some backing from official U.S. quarters as was the case in the propaganda that preceded the invasion of Iraq.

2. Stop Grooming & Training Separatists Inside Pakistan: With prodding from CIA, academic programs are being launched in the U.S. that advocate the breakup of Pakistan and the creation of smaller entities. This has to stop.

3. Terrorism Inside Pakistan Is Not The Main Story. The real story is America's failure to bring peace to Afghanistan despite the passage of seven years on its direct occupation of the country. Terrorism in Pakistan is a result of the American failure in Afghanistan. We trusted the Americans. And what did they do? They let Osama bin Laden escape from Tora Bora, and then the Americans refused to listen to our advice and filled the puppet government in Kabul with the same people who helped Osama escape.

4. Don't Lecture Us On India: The United States and its sidekick, Britain, have decided that India will be their slave-soldier in Asia in the 21st century. They want India to fight China and stabilize Afghanistan. They now want Pakistan to accept Indian military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan, forget about Kashmir and the water disputes, and turn the Pakistani military into a little more than a local police force tasked with killing anyone who doesn't like America's occupation of Afghanistan.

5. India IS Pakistan's enemy until proven otherwise through actions and not words: Someone has to teach Mrs. Clinton, President Obama and their other team members some lessons in strategy. India continues to prove by actions that it is an enemy of Pakistan. This does not apply to the people of India but it certainly applies to their government and their intelligence services, their media, and their 'non-state actors'. The world should know that India in 1972 launched a unilateral invasion of Pakistan exploiting a domestic political crisis and helped break up Pakistan. We have never done anything similar to India before that year. This naked aggression by India was never condemned by the so-called leaders of the free world and continues to be overlooked. India is portrayed as a responsible country despite having committed aggression against a smaller neighbor without provocation. Can the Americans guarantee India will not do this again?

6. The Afghan Taliban Are Not A Threat To America: The Afghan Taliban have never operated outside their country and are attacking American and other occupation forces inside Afghanistan as a result of the occupation. Washington should stop deliberately confusing the world about the difference between the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda. The al Qaeda is a terrorist organization that should be eliminated, and has considerably been eliminated.

7. Eliminating Afghan Taliban Is Not Pakistan's Responsibility: It is America's responsibility to bring the Pashtun in Afghanistan into the power structure and defuse tensions.

8. So-called Pakistani Taliban Are No Threat To America: Although money and weapons for these militants are coming from U.S-controlled Afghanistan, many of the recruits and fighters are Pakistanis and we will deal with them any way we deem fit. It is not for Washington to decide how we do this.

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