The Long Road to Change: Obama’s Opinion of Pakistan’s Sovereignty

Hold on to your hats, citizens of the world, the American president is rattling sabers at a former ally. A parenthetical was left off the end of his statement, though. It should have ended:

“…that you don’t end up having a [another] nuclear-armed militant state [‘cause this town ain’t big enough for the both of us.][1]”

Like every other president since … well … ever, Obama starts off with a token platitude about respecting sovereignty, then, in the same sentence no less, shows an utter disregard for that sovereignty if the country in question’s interests don’t align with those of the U.S. Those interests almost invariably involve bleeding the sovereign country dry to America’s own benefit. In Pakistan’s not-at-all unique case, the U.S. almost single-handedly propped up one military dictatorship after another, which opened the door for religious extremists, to whom a completely desperate population has increasingly turned in the hopes of throwing off the yoke of foreign economic occupation. Now, Pakistan needs to be stabilized, which will obviously be achieved in the same, sterling, steadfast and successful manner as U.S. foreign policy—while pretty much only has a military arm—has brought to Iraq, Pakistan, Iran (ruled it through the Shah for decades, don’t forget), much of Southeast Asia and nearly all of South and Central America.[2] That means increased drone attacks for Pakistan and probably a goodly number of daily bombing runs in the next 1-2 years. There will more than likely be U.S. troops on Pakistani soil within the next year and no one will be surprised in the least. We will be told that the Pakistani people are welcoming them with open arms (and roses) and that we are effecting peace in a region formerly infested with terrorists. And it will all be bullshit and people will be dying in hideously large numbers—among them some relatively few American soldiers, each of whose death will be an unparalleled tragedy equal to the suffering of thousands of Pakistanis—and this will be told to us in hushed, terrified and, above all, shocked whispers by the media.

On the foreign policy front, the Obama administration seems to have found the old playbook and is following it page-by-page. Those that crept out of their holes because they thought real change had finally come to America for the first time in decades can creep right the hell back in and wait out what looks to be a long, long ideological winter.