Coming
in October
From AK Press
Today's
Stories
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Leavitt
for EPA Head? He's Much Worse Than You Thought
Recent
Stories
September 17, 2003
Timothy J. Freeman
The
Terrible Truth About Iraq
St. Clair / Cockburn
A
Vain, Pompous Brown-noser:
Meet the Real Wesley Clark
Terry Lodge
An Open Letter to Michael Moore on Gen. Wesley Clark
Mitchel Cohen
Don't Be Fooled Again: Gen. Wesley Clark, War Criminal
Norman Madarasz
Targeting Arafat
Richard Forno
High Tech Heroin
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Website of the Day
The Ultimate Palestine Resource Site!
September 16, 2003
Rosemary and Walt Brasch
An
Ill Wind: Hurricane Isabel and the Lack of Homeland Security
Robert Fisk
Powell
in Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
Imperial Sociopaths
M. Shahid Alam
The Dialectics
of Terror
Ron Jacobs
Exile at Gunpoint
Christopher Brauchli
Bush's War on Wages
Al Krebs
Stop Calling Them "Farm Subsidies"; It's Corporate
Welfare
Patrick Cockburn
The
Iraq Wreck
Website of the Day
From Occupied Palestine
September 15, 2003
Stan Goff
It Was
the Oil; It Is Like Vietnam
Robert Fisk
A Hail of Bullets, a Trail of Dead
Writers Bloc
We
Are Winning: a Report from Cancun
James T. Phillips
Does George Bush Cry?
Elaine Cassel
The Troublesome Bill of Rights
Cynthia McKinney
A Message to the People of New York City
Matthew Behrens
Sunday Morning Coming Down: Reflections on Johnny Cash
Uri Avnery
Assassinating
Arafat
Hammond Guthrie
Celling Out the Alarm
Website of the Day
Arnold and the Egg
September 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
The Great Alejandro Escavedo Needs Your Help!
September 12, 2003
Writers Block
Todos
Somos Lee: Protest and Death in Cancun
Laura Carlsen
A Knife to the Heart: WTO Kills Farmers
Dave Lindorff
The Meaning of Sept. 11
Elaine Cassel
Bush at Quantico
Linda S. Heard
British
Entrance Exams
John Chuckman
The First Two Years of Insanity
Doug Giebel
Ending America as We Know It
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Blank Check Military
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Website of the Day
A Woman in Baghdad
September 11, 2003
Robert Fisk
A Grandiose
Folly
Roger Burbach
State Terrorism and 9/11: 1973 and 2001
Jonathan Franklin
The Pinochet Files
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Postcards to the President
Norman Solomon
The Political Capital of 9/11
Saul Landau
The Chilean Coup: the Other, Almost Forgotten 9/11
Stew Albert
What Goes Around
Website of the Day
The Sights and Sounds of a Coup
September 10, 2003
John Ross
Cancun
Reality Show: Will It Turn Into a Tropical Seattle?
Zoltan Grossman
The General Who Would be President: Was Wesley Clark Also Unprepared
for the Postwar Bloodbath?
Tim Llewellyn
At the Gates of Hell
Christopher Brauchli
Turn the Paige: the Bush Education Deception
Lee Sustar
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
Elaine Cassel
McCain-Feingold in Trouble: Scalia Hogs the Debate
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Hammond Guthrie
When All Was Said and Done
Website of the Day
Fact Checking Colin Powell
Hot Stories
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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September
18, 2003
Pressure from the
US, India and Israel
The
Pakistan Squeeze
By MUQTEDAR KHAN
Pakistan has perhaps taken more risks than any
other nation in America¡s war on terror. Yet it remains
most insecure about its relations with Washington. In fact Pakistan's
extensive and risky cooperation with the US has done little to
alleviate its own security dilemmas. Pakistan, even today remains
exposed to the dangers of preemptive strikes from America's other
close allies in the war on terror: India and Israel. Even from
the US Pakistan is not fully assured. Washington seems to maintain
a complex strategy of coercive diplomacy combined with economic
assistance towards Pakistan which rewards it economically for
its cooperation but does not reduce its geopolitical threats.
In a strange way Pakistan in spite of being a close ally of the
world¡s most dominant power continues to live in a Hobbesian
world.
Insecurity can lead nations to monumental
irrationality. Notice how a heightened sense of vulnerability
after September 11 attacks has led American foreign policy from
one monumental blunder to another. As Pakistanis, especially
the Islamists are made to feel that their nation is being bullied
into working against its own interests and its own people and
faith, their anger, resentment and fear is increasing. At seminar
after seminar on South Asian security and on the war on terror,
I hear Pakistanis expresses deep concern, confusion and suspicions
about Washington¡s policies and in particular the emergence
of a new anti-Pakistan axis ---US, Israel and India.
Pakistan essentially identifies three
dangers to its national security and they are:
* A conventional strike by India from
the Kashmir border or a strategic strike by India against Pakistan¡s
nuclear facilities.
* A preemptive strike by Israel at Pakistan¡s
nuclear facilities with India¡s direct assistance or by
using India as a base.
* A preemptive strike by the US against
Pakistan¡s nuclear facilities to prevent them from becoming
available to Islamists who could easily come to power in Pakistan.
Every nightmare scenario for Pakistan
involves a threat to their nuclear capability form either one
or all of the three states who are currently working very closely:
India, Israel and the US. All three of these nations now identify--Islamic
terrorism--as the main threat to their own security and their
ultimate nightmare involves Jihadis armed with nukes.
Pakistan's nuclear weapons, sought primarily
for defense against a conventionally superior India, seem to
have increased the possibility of Pakistan becoming a victim
of attacks from more powerful nations far and near, rather than
making it more secure. Perhaps there is a lesson in this for
Iran.
The question however that Washington
needs to address is a more complex one and needs more subtle
geopolitical analysis than Washington has been indulging in lately.
Can the world in general and India, Israel and the US in particular
afford to make a nuclear armed nation feel confused and insecure
about its relations with them? Pakistan's defense strategy is
based on a "first strike policy". Very simple this
means that when in danger the Pakistanis will trigger the nukes.
Keep in mind that this is the policy of secular, rational generals
and not some crazy Mullahs.
We do not have to wait for Pakistani
nukes to fall in to the hands of Taliban types before we see
them lighting the sky. All we need to do is scare the present
administration sufficiently. Nothing can be scarier for the present
military establishment in Pakistan than the threat to their nuclear
weapons.
Is Washington scaring the Pakistanis?
Yes it is. But things have not reached dangerous levels, but
who knows what the threshold level of Pakistan is? How much pressure
can it handle?
Washington continues to insinuate that
Pakistan has been sharing its nuclear secrets with Iran and North
Korea. Washington also continues to express its fears about the
stability of Pakistan's command and control structure and the
possibility of their nukes falling in the hands of militant Muslims.
Despite Pakistan¡s repeated reassurances on both counts,
Washington continues to maintain its doubts.
Every time Indians meet with Israelis,
the conversation is the same. Israelis ask, "What can you
do for us?" And Indians ask "What are you going to
do about Pakistan?" So far Israel has not expressed much
concern over Pakistani nukes; it is more worried about the Iranian
nuclear program. But the growing Indo-Israeli military and intelligence
cooperation and the Indo-American military exercises in Kashmir
are definitely raising the fear barometer in Islamabad.
The US must understand that it cannot
enhance its own security by making others feel insecure. While
it works to keep Taliban types out of power and out of range
of the nuclear buttons in Pakistan it must also work to reduce
the stress and uncertainty in the minds of those who now already
have their fingers on the nuclear buttons in Islamabad.
Washington can take the following concrete
steps to allay mutual fears. (While the neocons may not understand
the word "mutual", I am sure Ms. Rice or General Powell
can decode it for them).
* Washington can use the war on terror
to develop a semi-formal regional security institution involving
US, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Starting with the basic
limited goal, that is in the interest of all four nations, of
keeping the Taliban types out of power in South-West Asia and
maintaining regional stability, the US could reduce tensions
and allay fears. This setup may also come in handy as a forum
for future Indo-Pak peace process and for resolving the Kashmir
issue through regional summits.
* The US continues to guarantee Israeli
security. It must use this guarantee to keep Israel from destabilizing
other regions in pursuit of real or imagined threats. An institutional
American security interest in South-West Asia will also help
to reduce Israeli fears about Pakistani nukes.
* Finally the US must learn that it cannot
have an instrumentalist approach to other nations. It cannot
force Pakistan to take risks with its domestic and international
balances of power in US interests without the US also taking
steps to ensure that Pakistan is not over exposed to strategic
threats. A disregard for Pakistani domestic politics gave the
Islamist parties a historically unprecedented victory in the
last elections a contributing to current fears in Washington,
Tel Aviv and New Delhi.
Before the nukes are triggered, Washington
must learn to nurture its allies while nudging them to towards
safer policies and pro-American postures.
Dr. Muqtedar Khan is a Ford Fellow at Brookings Institution and
a Fellow of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
He is also Director of International Studies at Adrian College
and author of American Muslims: Bridging Faith and Freedom. His
web address is http://www.ijtihad.org.
Weekend
Edition Features for Sept. 13 / 14, 2003
Michael Neumann
Anti-Americanism:
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Jeffrey St. Clair
Anatomy of a Swindle
Gary Leupp
The Matrix of Ignorance
Ron Jacobs
Reagan's America
Brian Cloughley
Up to a Point, Lord Rumsfeld
William S. Lind
Making Mesopotamia a Terrorist Magnet
Werther
A Modest Proposal for the Pentagon
Dave Lindorff
Friendly Fire Will Doom the Occupation
Toni Solo
Fiction and Reality in Colombia: The Trial of the Bogota Three
Elaine Cassel
Juries and the Death Penalty
Mickey Z.
A Parable for Cancun
Jeffrey Sommers
Issam Nashashibi: a Life Dedicated to the Palestinian Cause
David Vest
Driving in No Direction (with a Glimpse of Johnny Cash)
Michael Yates
The Minstrel Show
Jesse Walker
Adios, Johnny Cash
Adam Engel
Something Killer
Poets' Basement
Cash, Albert, Curtis, Linhart
Website of the Weekend
Local Harvest
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