Pakistan Hearts Taliban

Although Pakistan's leaders publically deny providing the Taliban with money, weapons and strategic information, behind closed doors there is an understanding between Islamabad and Washington. The New York Times reports:

American officials say it is unlikely that top officials in Islamabad are directly coordinating the clandestine efforts. American officials have also said that midlevel ISI operatives occasionally cultivate relationships that are not approved by their bosses.

In a sign of just how resigned Western officials are to the ties, the British government has sent several dispatches to Islamabad in recent months asking that the ISI use its strategy meetings with the Taliban to persuade its commanders to scale back violence in Afghanistan before the August presidential election there, according to one official.

The ISI is the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan's CIA.

In his book, The Inheritance: The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, David E. Sanger "levelled serious allegations against Pakistan and its Army claiming the telephones of all senior officers, including the COAS General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani were bugged by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA), the main eavesdropping US agencies around the world." A review summarizes his testimonial:

“But once he got into it, he could not contain himself”. The two-star general began making the case that the real problem was the tribal areas and in Afghanistan was not al-Qaeda or the Taliban, or even the militants who were trying to topple the Pakistani government. The real problem was Pakistan’s rival of more than sixty years which he said was secretly manipulating events in an effort to crush Pakistan and undo the 1947 partition that sought to separate the Islamic and Hindu states.

“The overwhelming enemy is India”, the Pakistani officer told the General. “We have to watch them at every moment. We have had wars with India, he said as everyone in the room needed reminding.”

The Pakistani two-star general described President Karzai’s cozy relationship with India, seeking investment and aid. With alarm, he talked about how the Indians were opening consulates around the country and building roads. What the rest of the world saw as a desperately needed nation-building programme, Pakistan saw as a threat. He was not alone in that view, conspiracy theories about Indian activities in Afghanistan are a daily staple in the Pakistani media.

As the officer talked, he became more and more animated. The Indians will surround us and annihilate us, he said, knowing McConnel was hearing every word. “And the Indians in their surrounding strategy, have gone to Afghanistan.” Those newly built roads were future invasion routes, he seemed to suggest, without quite saying so.

The consulates were dens of Indian spies. The real purpose of the humanitarian aid to Afghanistan was to run “operations out of Afghanistan to target Pakistan”.

The conspiracy theory deepened. “In the long run, America will not have the stomach to bear the burden of staying in Afghanistan,” the officer continued, still seeming to ignore the presence of the American intelligence chief. “And when the Americans pull out, India will reign. Therefore, the Pakistanis will have to sustain the contacts with the opposition to the Afghanistan government meaning the Taliban so when the Americans pull out, it’s a friendly government to Pakistan. “Therefore,” the officer concluded with a flourish, “we must support the Taliban”, two-star general announced in the meeting in the presence of US spymaster.

President Obama and his security advisors are currently considering widening the scope of their missle strikes, carried out by unmanned predator drones, beyond the tribal areas into the province of Baluchistan. Pakistan complains that attacking the Taliban haven will violate its sovereignty and exacerbate tensions in what some are calling "Obama's war" and "Obama's Iraq". Afghanistan and Pakistan are technically two countries, but are increasingly viewed as a single, unstable entity with nuclear capabilities vulnerable to extremists, who travel with ease across a porous and mountainous border.

Tourists

In one of his first big moves in office, President Barack Obama released an executive order that promises to close the infamous Gauntanamo Bay within a year. "Review and Disposition of Individuals Detained at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and Closure of Detention Facilities" is intended, among other things, to restore a legality and legitimacy to the United States by reconfirming an adherence to Article III of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the "Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War".

Guantanamo Bay has been used on terrorist recruiting posters and earned us criticism among our enemies and allies alike, a uniting symbol of anti-American sentiment worldwide. But with 245 current inmates that no country wants (at least, no country that we want to give them to), the question of their travel plans looms sharply. Harshly conditioned prisoners, many of whom are terrorists, some of whom probably weren't, are being reinvoked as a threat by many Republicans. Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri has suggested Alcatraz be deconverted from a tourist attraction to their new home.

Democrats agree with Obama's decision, and point out that we already have many dangerous criminals in maximum-security prisons in the continental US, where the detainees are most likely going. Many of them do not have these detention facilities in their districts, however, and the others aren't taking numbers to volunteer.

On right-wing sanctuary Human Events, Linda Chavez writes, "If he is lucky enough to see Osama bin Laden or Ayman al-Zawahiri captured on his watch, he'll have to decide what to do with them. Ensure they're read their Miranda rights and appointed taxpayer-funded legal counsel, perhaps?" She goes on to ask, "And would the Obama administration go further, as Attorney General nominee Eric Holder hinted in his confirmation hearings, and seek to prosecute those who ordered or carried out waterboarding?"

Which is precisely what those on the left are asking. Joe Biden said in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "I'm not ruling it in and I'm not ruling it out. I just think we should look forward. I think we should be looking forward, not backwards."

Slavery, Abortion Donuts and The Rise and Fall of Western Civilization

On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama, who has decided to use his middle name after all, will give his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible. His inauguration invocation will be delivered by Rick Warren, the megachurch pastor who amassed controversy for saying homosexuals are like pedophiles and abused women have no right to divorce their husbands and Jews go to Hell, leaving many of Obama’s constituencies to feel thrown under the bus. Aretha Franklin will sing.

The transition team has been decisive, modeled with no great subtlety on Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals”—arch-nemesis Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State and Bush’s Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, keeps his job. The “big tent” approach seems to be working, with 67% of the country “confident” in his abilities and not too much bloodlust over future head of the economic team, Timothy Geithner, apparently not paying his taxes. So far.

John Stauffer, Professor of English, African and African-American Studies at Harvard, writes on The Huffington Post that Obama would “do well to consider” why many of Lincoln’s supporters, including former slave and civil rights leader Frederick Douglas, lost faith in him after his inaugural address.

In fact he [Douglas] was so upset over Lincoln's Address that he planned a trip to Haiti, with an eye toward emigrating there and encouraging other blacks to do the same.

Why? Because the speech was "little better than our worst fears," Douglass complained. Instead of rebuking Southerners as traitors, Lincoln "courted their favor." He vowed to uphold the draconian Fugitive Slave Act, which many Northerners considered unconstitutional. He promised to suppress slave insurrections. And he declared that he would never interfere with slavery in the states. Douglass was outraged and called Lincoln "an excellent slave hound."

Of course, the best way to gauge Obama’s success may yet be to assess the desperation of his fiercest critics. After Krispy Kreme donut shops offered a promotion for free pastries on Inauguration Day (“just another reminder of how sweet ‘free’ can be”), the American Life League assailed the chain for offering “‘Freedom of Choice’ donuts” to celebrate the killing of “over 50 million preborn children since Jan 22, 1973”.

"My Corpse Is Still Warm"

In the first big political scandal of the Obama era, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich—accused of trying to sell Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder—is universally mocked, reviled, and could be out as soon as Monday. Late night comedians, who all secretly supported funnier candidates for president, received Blagojevich with open arms—his hair, his language, the fact that he’s from Illinois (which has a governor go to jail roughly once every ten years). True believers on the right, more alienated than they have been in years from a shifting and increasingly bipartisan center, also saw a silver lining on the comedy gold.

The Illinois GOP launched a website that will reportedly link twelve state Democrats with the governor, and the Republican National Convention released a video titled “Questions Remain” that tracks Obama’s “evolving explanations” on Blagojevich. Sean Hannity implored the Chicago Tribune’s Jill Zuckman, “Let me go through this with you. It's another—it's acceptable, Bill Ayers is just an accepted professor in the neighborhood. Louis Farrakhan is viewed as somebody that has political influence, that's OK. The corrupt land deal with Tony Rezko, that's OK. This doesn't raise eyebrows. It's—is it just somebody like Sean Hannity sitting on the outside saying this doesn't look right?"

But it’s almost 2009, and with unpredictable economic and foreign policy disasters that seem inevitably mounting before Obama even takes his oath of office (confirming to another faction of the right that he may, in fact, be the Antichrist) most of the country seems willing to accept the wire-tapped Blagojevich as an unwitting character witness. Blagojevich on Obama and friends: “They’re not willing to give me anything except appreciation. F—k them…Motherf—ker…F—k him. For nothing? F—k him.”

On Meet the Press, John McCain—who enjoyed popularity with the true believers for a few months in 2008, in between his selection of Sarah Palin and his concession speech—said, “I think that the Obama campaign should and will give all information necessary. You know, in all due respect to the Republican National Committee and anybody—right now, I think we should try to be working constructively together, not only on an issue such as this, but on the economy stimulus package, reforms that are necessary.”

McCain declined to say if he’d support a Palin run in 2012. “Have no doubt of my admiration and respect for her and her viability, but at this stage my corpse is still warm!” A recent Gallup poll found that 67% of Republican-leaning candidates supported a Palin run in 2012, putting her just ahead of Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. McCain was not one of the ten candidates listed on the survey.

Colin Powell, "Racist!"

Former Secretary of State (under George W. Bush) and National Security Advisor (under George H.W. Bush) Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama today on Meet the Press. “I come to the conclusion that because of his ability to inspire, because of the inclusive nature of his campaign, because he is reaching out all across America, because of who he is and his rhetorical abilities—and you have to take that into account—as well as his substance—he has both style and substance," Powell said. "He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president."

Contributing to his decision were John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for vice presidential nominee and the “narrow” and “too far” tactics of his campaign. This follows recent endorsements from former Bush supporters like Christopher Hitchens and Chris Buckley and from "conservative" papers like The Chicago Tribune, which hadn’t before endorsed a Democratic nominee in its 161 year history.

“He shares the Obama view of our base as racist and non-inclusive—but has nothing to say about the rabid pack of America-damning preachers who helped make Obama the ‘transformational’ figure Powell has placed his faith in,” writes conservative columnist Michelle Malkin on Powell. “The press only loves maverick Republicans when they jump in bed with Democrats. Just ask John McCain.”

Inevitably, some conservative pundits like Rush Limbaugh and George Will have insisted that Powell only wanted to see a black man in office. “If I had only had that in mind,” said Powell in his interview, “I could have done this six, eight, 10 months ago. I really have been going back and forth between somebody I have the highest respect and regard for, John McCain, and somebody I was getting to know, Barack Obama. And it was only in the last couple of months that I settled on this.” Some might also say if he had just wanted a black president he would have run years ago, when he had the highest approval rating of anyone on the political stage.

Critics who point towards Obama’s 90+ percent support among African-Americans often make the mistake of not comparing it to black support for previous Democratic presidential candidates. The last Democratic candidate to win the popular vote, Al Gore, lost the presidency with 90 percent support among black voters to Bush’s 8 percent. Whether a greater black turnout cancels out a racist McCain constituency is something that will probably be debated long after Election Day, regardless of who wins.

Skeletons in the Closet

The Vice Presidential Debate went by without Joe Biden yelling or Sarah Palin throwing up, the bailout bill that was too expensive to pass was made more expensive and passed and the McCain campaign wants to “turn the page” from the economy and win back our country on the issue of whether Barack Obama is personally a scary black man.

"Our opponent…is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,” said Sarah Palin in Englewood, Colorado. "This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism."

William Ayers, who planted bombs with the Weathermen when Obama was a child, hosted a political event for the candidate early in his career. Obama has denounced Ayers, and there is no evidence that the two were ever close.

Also pending further evidence is Palin’s association with demonic spirits. Witch doctor Thomas Muthee, who ran a Kenyan woman out of town after she was blamed for car accidents in the area, was credited by Palin for her electoral success after he laid his hands on her at the Wasilla Assembly of God.

Hurt Feelings

The House failed to pass the bailout bill today, 205-228, and the Dow hit the lowest point drop in its history. John McCain’s party voted 133 to 65 against the measure, despite his vocal attempts to bring the matter to a bipartisan, expedient conclusion. “Can a maverick be a leader?” asked pundit Chris Matthews on MSNBC (the Democrats, in contrast, voted for the bill 140 to 95). This is the narrative from the left: Republicans are without leadership, and can’t even reach consensus among themselves facing what we have been assured is the great economic crisis of our times.

The right’s narrative is different: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi doomed the bill with a partisan speech she gave shortly before the vote. “It is a number that is staggering,” she said of the $700 billion dollar investment, “but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration's failed economic policies—policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything-goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”

“Today we will act to avert this crisis, but informed by our experience of the past eight years with the failed economic leadership that has left us left capable of meeting the challenges of the future. We choose a different path. In the new year, with a new Congress and a new president, we will break free with a failed past and take America in a new direction to a better future.”

"Pelosi's partisan speech has caused our members to go berserk and may cost us any remaining chance to pass the bill," said a GOP source shortly before the vote. Republican House Leaders John Boehner and Roy Blunt say they would have had the necessary twelve votes if not for Pelosi’s comments.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman and Democrat Barney Frank, in a press conference minutes after it was announced that the bill had failed: “Because somebody hurt their feelings they decided to punish the country. Give me those 12 names and I will go talk uncharacteristically nice to them, and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they’ll think about the country.”

Not everyone agrees that partisan bickering has failed America. On a similar note, the Obama campaign has called Sarah Palin a “terrific debater” and expects her to give a “great performance” on Thursday.