General Kayani steals the spotlight at Pakistani embassy party
Pakistan’s foreign minister heads his country’s delegation to Washington this week for high-level talks, but there was no mistaking who was the star at a reception at the Pakistani Embassy on Tuesday night: Army General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Guests crowded around Kayani at the annual Pakistani National Day party at the embassy, posing for photos and jostling for the military leader’s ear. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, also drew those eager for photographic souvenirs of the occasion, but not such a feeding frenzy as that around Kayani.
U.S. senators and Obama administration officials lined up to speak to the slim and dapper general, who Pakistani media say rules the roost back home but is also central to U.S. relations with Islamabad.
Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani, who has had his own tensions with the military in the past, heaped praise on Kayani during his introductory remarks for Qureshi.
“He (Kayani) embodies the conviction of the Pakistani armed forces, not just to defend the frontiers of Pakistan but also to ensure the continuity of constitutional democratic rule in accordance with the aspirations of our people of Pakistan,” said Haqqani before Qureshi took the podium.
Since he has been in the United States, Kayani has had a busy schedule, meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, and other senior U.S. military officials.
The First Draft: US media’s Fort Hood coverage turns to militancy question
First came questions about whether anyone missed emotional signals that suspected Fort Hood shooter, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was close to cracking. Now U.S. media say Congress wants to know if he was also veering toward Islamist militancy.
A preliminary review of Hasan’s computer has revealed no evidence of any connection to terror groups or conspirators, according to a report by CBS News.
But lawmakers have asked the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies to preserve documents on Hasan. That’s according to ABC News, which says the spooks believe he may have been trying to contact U.S.-born imam Anwar al Awlaki, who is based in Yemen and supports holy war against the West.
It’s not clear whether the U.S. military knew one of its officers was under intelligence surveillance, ABC said.
U.S. law enforcement and military investigators are also looking into associations between Hasan and the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, in early 2001, about the same time Awlaki and two of the Sept. 11 hijackers were there, the Los Angeles Times reported. The mosque is one of the biggest in the United States and thousands of people go there for prayer services and other events.
Witnesses at Fort Hood told investigators that Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is Greatest” — before killing 13 people and wounding another 30 last week. The 39-year-old psychiatrist was shot four times by police and remains hospitalized.
It is unclear what motivated Hasan and the Army’s chief of staff, General George Casey, is afraid the shooting spree could cause a backlash against Muslims in the military.
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Hindsight is always 20/20.
Foresight though isn’t, because it involves more than just having eyes. It requires having eyes that want to see. And ears that want to hear.
Since Candidate Obama first hawked the Iraq-to-Afghanistan switch-er-roo long con in the 2008 presidential debates, informed foresight should have told all that our military involvement in President Obama’s 2009 Afghanistan was no-win for those that would directly pay for it with their taxpayer money or worse yet, our service personnel with their lives.
So now hindsight wants to kick in after the Ft. Hood massacre by psycho whack-job muslim terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan. Well isn’t that just great.
As it’s currently shaking out though, this is like hitting something while driving along, wondering gee, what did I just hit, with eyes focused solely on the rear view mirror — as you continue driving along at uninterrupted forward speed and direction.
Who knew what and when and what they did or didn’t do re Hasan serves a useful purpose but isn’t going to change hindsight into foresight.
When you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing, in a place you shouldn’t be, you just can’t possibly get good enough at it — in this case identify psycho whack-job muslim terrorists before they do what a psycho whack-job muslim terrorist will do — to turn a no-win policy into anything other than a no-win policy.
Whether someone offs themselves exclusively by jumping off a bridge, or tries to force a suicide-by-cop, or in this case traitorously take out as many of their brothers and sisters in uniform as possible with them as part of solving their own existential dilemma, such reach that behavioral point by letting themselves get inextricably boxed in to that no-win behavior mode.
President Obama is likewise so boxed in, politically. Candidate Obama rode a team of duplicitous horses to election victory. Lead horse on that team was the Iraq-to-Afghanistan war of his necessity. If that weasel now makes with additional troops to Afghanistan, forget trying to understand Nidal Malik Hasan in hindsight and focus on foresight — to see President Obama is a Nidal Malik Hasan in the making, a thousand times over, AS WE SPEAK, IN REAL-TIME.
So why wasn’t Nidal Malik Hasan spotted as a bad apple and so handled? Short answer: The same reason that President Obama’s no-win Afghanistan war of his necessity isn’t CURRENTLY seen for what it is.
To All indies,
Let me clear you all fools specially “khuidude” (so called paid indian scholar) whose poisonous lecture is the same as we are listening from day 1 since the birth of pakistan. For God sake stop this bloody propaganda that “I am Muslim or I m Pakistani and believe that india is far superior than Pakistan……. and India is peace loving…. blah blah blah”; every one knows the bloody hindu mentality and condition of Muslims in India and how they are treated there. As far as democracy is concerened “Why the hell you dont give democratic right to Kashmir? (so called democracy)”, Now lets see your 7 times Army, In 1948 Pak Army defeated you and occupied major areas of Kashmir, when nehru had to run for help to UN and promised that he will give right of self decision to Kashmiris; then in 1965 when hindu “soormas” attaceked Pakistan they were beaten back by a far less equipped and far less in number Pak Army and Indian PM had to beg Ayub Khan to end the war; Yes in 1971 indian Army was able to defeat Pak Army but the only reason for it was the unstable internal conditions of bangladesh where people refused to support Pak Army and thats why Pak Army had to surrender in Bengal, had the bengalis been more supportive in 1971, Miss Gandhi must be the next to beg “War End”