Paki PM Summons U.S. Ambassador To Demand End To Drone Attacks

Nawaz Sharif, the new Pakistani Prime Minister, is at least putting on a good show of opposing drone attacks on Paki territory. He's summoned the U.S. ambassador to demand an end to the strikes after the latest one killed 9 people in North Waziristan. [Not 7 as the NY Times reported earlier. See "Pakistan summons US ambassador to protest against latest drone killings," Guardian, 8 June 2013.]

The Paki Foreign Ministry claims that today "It was conveyed to the US chargé d' affaires that the government of Pakistan strongly condemns the drone strikes, which are a violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and territorial integrity."

"The importance of bringing an immediate end to drone strikes was emphasized." This according to a statement the Ministry issued.

We've been through this before. See "Pakistan Reissues Its Usual Objections About Drones-- Again." Any time Pakistan wants to stop the drones, all it has to do is shoot one down. It had a chance yesterday, it had a chance ten days before that, it will have another chance in a week or two, no doubt.

Actions speak louder than words, Pakistan.

Obama claims these drone strikes are ONLY against threats that are "imminent." Obama long ago redefined "imminent" to me "possible, someday," without informing anyone of his own idiosyncratic definition. But it is obvious that that is what he means.

Either that, or he's a shameless, bald-faced liar.

No one is making him lie and claim the people he's killing thousands of miles away (like the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki and a group of teenaged cousins, killed in Yemen along with nobody else, or the 35 women and children Obama killed in his first attack on Yemen in 2009, using a cruise missile, in order to "take out" a retired jihadist who had fought in the U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan 3 decades ago) are an "imminent" threat. Seems virtually none are. Some are enemies of the U.S., mostly because they're fighting in Afghanistan, or in Somalia. Claiming an "imminent threat" is pure propaganda, to scare the American public into supporting his Murder, Inc. operations. Probably most Americans would support his executions of many of the victims of his attacks (even I would, in the case of Taliban and Al-Qaeda terrorist leaders). But he refuses to make his case honestly and openly, while spouting off about how much he loves "transparency" and "dialogue" whenever there's a mini-uproar. He's like a philandering husband who coos sweet nothings at his wife every time she raises her suspicions with him.

We see the same pattern of saying the opposite of what he's doing with the massive police state surveillance program he's instituted, the persecution of whistleblowers and leakers, now moving on to target reporters, and the repression of the Occupy Movement.

He has proven more and more dishonest over time. He adamantly refuses to justify his actions, even to Congress, while unctuously claiming Congress is "informed." With breathtaking chutzpah, he claims to welcome "discussion" when in fact he moves heaven and earth to keep everything a secret, and goes after leakers, whistleblowers, and increasingly reporters, with the full might of the Federal government, kicking down their door in FBI raids, indicting them under the Espionage Act and other legal clubs the repressive U.S. Government has at its disposal.