New Liar Prime Minister of Pakistan Again Whines About Drones

Nawaz Sharif of the “Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz” (yes, that's the egotistical name of his party) has repeated his call against U.S. drone strikes- with an intriguing weasel-word.

Sharif is quoted (in the New York Times for example) as announcing to the Paki Parliament: “The chapter of daily drone attacks should stop.” Notice that word, daily. So would attacks every other day be okay? How about weekly? Or does he mean all attacks should stop? According to U.S. media, the attacks aren't “daily,” although the drones are apparently omnipresent in the skies over the terrorist-dominated regions that border Afghanistan.

Now here's the part where Sharif lies: “We respect the sovereignty of other countries, but others should also respect our sovereignty.”

No you don't. You launch terrorist attacks against India. You sponsor terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan, such as inside Kabul, including against sovereign diplomatic targets such as the Indian embassy. Your pants are on fire, man.

As I have previously pointed out, the Pakis could shoot down the drone any time they want, if they were serious. [See “Pakistan Reissues Its Usual Objections About Drones-- Again"]

Here's how the NY Times interprets Sharif's words: “His comment on drone strikes suggested a firm, and perhaps more distant tone in relations with the United States, whose alliance with Pakistan has frequently been stormy in recent years.” [“Pakistan's New Premier Calls for Drone Strike Halt,” NYT, 6/6/13, p. A6.] Stormy indeed!

So perhaps the tone will be more distant. What does that mean? It implies the relationship is currently friendly. How do you go from “stormy” to “distant”? Stormy is angry. Will it be angry from farther away? Less angry and more coldly contemptuous? There's no clue.

NY Times “news” articles are frequently larded with vague speculations like this, oblique hints that the reader is left to puzzle over. Maybe more facts an less attitude would make for better journalism. So much of what is in the NYT is about transmitting the NYT's attitude about a subject, person, or country to the reader. It's an underhanded form of indoctrination, hiding under cover of pseudo-objectivity,

By the way, this is the third time Sharif has been Prime Minister, which is a symptom of how tiny and inbred the Paki ruling elite is.

Last time he was PM, General Pervez Musharraf overthrew him in 1999 in one of the routine military coups that are standard practice in Pakistan. He was lucky, however; Musharraf didn't execute him, as a previous dictator, the loathsome General Zia ul-Haq, (one of Ronald Reagan's favorite dictators) did to the civilian ruler he overthrew, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. (Benazir Bhutto's father. Benazir herself was murdered with the connivance of Musharraf and indeed of the U.S., which refused her request for protection after a bombing killed many of her followers at a rally.) Ali Bhutto was President, and then PM, when ul-Haq overthrew him in 1977.

Like all the civilian bosses of Pakistan, Sharif is a theft and a crook. The oh-so-genteel NY Times, which hates to cast disrespect on any national boss, obliquely references this in a sentence fragment buried 3/4ths of the way down in their article (paragraph 17 of 24), mentioning that during Sharif''s previous term, “Back then, Mr. Sharif had little public support because of accusations of corruption and mismanagement, while the coup received a broad, if short-lived, welcome.” That's all you get in the way of facts- there were some “allegations.” Actually there was common knowledge of routine corruption, graft, and indifference to running a real government that provides services to the people- like an educational system (hence the rise of terrorist incubation centers, aka “madrassas”) or a health care system.

The NYT has rarely if ever given a detailed account of the massive thievery and governmental negligence of the Paki elites. This particular article wouldn't be the place for that, but a total whitewash is dishonest and far from objective. They couldn't minimize it any more unless they entirely omitted any mention whatsoever, which they almost did.

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