I can understand your continued obfuscation, but at least don't pretend you've "shown" anything.
You continued to refer to the article being published in a "Pakistani newspaper" not acknowledging that it was written by an Indian. Now, he may be a "lesser" Indian in your eyes for sharing the facts he shared, but as we discussed earlier, that is your opinion.
Hime being a lesser Indian is your assertion. I have neither said it nor implied it. Putting words in my mouth now??
And when a newpaper publishes an article after purchasing it from the writer, its the newspaper who owns and controls that article. Most of the time, the article goes under the editors blue pen before getting published. Hence its the newpaper which is credited or ridiculed for such pieces and not just the writers. And thats why more people remember the names of the newspaper publishing an article and not the writer who actually wrote it..
As for pots calling kettles black, you mounted the high horse of self righteousness and started chanting "hypocrisy, hypocrisy". I'm afraid far greater hypocrisy is on display in the daily fare from India's news sources.
Again..
your opinion
Chants by definition repeate singular words. If you go through last couple of posts, you will find yourself more prone to that habbit..
Really? The Pakistan Army annexed "the whole area of Pakistan"? Against whose will? Were they fought off by not, 159 million, not 15 million but even by 1 million Pakistanis? After all, according to your media, Pakistanis have no problem taking on armies, whether they are Indian, American or Soviet The truth is that mithai was distributed in the streets at each one of these instances. The most recent one is still fresh in my memory, when Gen. Musharraf replaced Nawaz Sharif. Lahore, which is supposed to be a bastion of support for PML-N, was ecstatic. Folks were out on the streets dancing and celebrating. Mithai stores did phenomenal business.
Lame reasoning to justify an illegal act of land grab. A lot of people in Pakistan are said to have distributed sweets when 3000+ Americans were murdered in a terror strike on 9/11. Did that make that act legal and democratic and acceptable..
You can concoct these ludicrous, form-fit "dictatorship" stories and try to sell them to people who don't have a friggin' clue about this region, but your absolutely nonsensical statements above, and the ludicrous characterization of the Pak Army "annexing" Pakistan is utter hogwash.
You are now simply degenerating the discussion into name calling rants which you incorrectly accused me of earlier.
Again with the "bloodless"? I sketched out the chain of logic for you, but you didn't get it. Sorry, but I am not going to draw you a diagram.
Because there is no diagram in the world that can justify an illegal act of a coup that throws out a democratic govt using force of arms, replacing it with a dictatorship on which people have no control..
Yes, if the bank teller, owners and board members want to hand over the cash to the "robber", then he isn't a robber anymore.
Yes.. Then it is a fraud or a scam since the money belongs to the share holders / owners. The difference being that while the 1st one is a violent crime and second one is white collar one. Both are crimes nonetheless. Same with coups. Whether violent or bloodless, they are both crimes.. Despite whatever spin doctoring you may want to do around them ..
Oh, but I thought Pakistani citizens were supposed to be armed to the teeth? I thought ordinary Pakistani citizens were responsible for fighting the Indian Army in Kashmir, the Americans and Soviets in Afghanistan and God knows who, where else. Where did all these citizens go and where did all the "openly available" arms and ammunition selling in shops all over Pakistan, go?
Huh!?? where did this come from..?? Whether its Mujahids in Afghanistan or LeT etc in Kashmir, they are not normal Pakistani citizens by any strech of imagination. As per assertions of the govts in question, they are highly trained terrorists / militants / insurgents / freedom fighters nurtured and trained by the Pakistani armed forces (the same ones that enforce the coups and annex the whole country) to fight Indian /Soviet/NATO forces in countries around Paksitan. Now since these guys are mentored by the armed forces of Pakistan, they surely wont protest when their aakas take over the control of the country. Gives them even more power. But see, what that more power has done to them. The disciple has outgrown the master..
Drop this one, Karan, unless you are particularly excited at the prospect of being facetious. The vast majority of ordinary people in Pakistan have always supported the Army coming into power. And by the way, the Army has always had a very good idea of popular sentiment. You can call Army takeovers in Pakistan "coups", but unless you change the meaning of the word "democracy" to be something other than "The power of the people", you can't sell these takeovers as anything but reflective of a majority sentiment.
Why doesnt then army puts up a candidate in the elections. It sounds absurd.. I know, but still better than imprisoning/murdering the political leaders and annexing power repeatedly (50% of 62 years of Pakistan's existence)
Another interesting observation. If Pakistani public so loves the military dictators, how come none of retd Pakistani army folks ever reach political leadership positions.
Its the standard mistake Tech.. You mistake the silence of majority being overpowered by a Vociferous minority distributing sweets as popular sentiment. If that was not the case, the population of Pakistan would have not voted in the numbers it did in democratic elections of Pakistan. And niether would have distributed sweets again at ouster of Musharraf..
My country is an immense source of happiness for me... and always will be.
As it should be. But I dont think we are debating the patriotism of Pakistani people here. That is beyond doubt..
With which countries? The Pakistani dialogue with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, China, Japan etc. is completely different from our dialogue with the US, which in turn is quite different from our dialogue with the EU.
Does David Cameron ring a bell??
Since this entire thread is premised on an article written in context of Obama's India visit, let's just go with how Obama characterized Pakistan in response to one of the questions he was asked in Bombay about why Pakistan "is so important an ally to America" [sic]:
Obama said: "Pakistan is an enormous country. It is a strategically important country not just for the US, but for the World. It is a country whose people have enormous potential but it is also a country that has some of the extremist elements present within it. That is not unique to Pakistan. And the Pakistan Government is very well aware of that."
Let me put in the complete statement you refer to and also a subsequent one...
QUESTION: Sir, my question to you is why is Pakistan so important an ally to America, so far as America has never called it a terrorist state?
THE PRESIDENT: Well -- no, no, it's a good question. And I must admit I was expecting it. (Laughter.) Pakistan is an enormous country. It is a strategically important country not just for the United States but for the world. It is a country whose people have enormous potential, but it is also, right now, a country that within it has some of the extremist elements that we discussed in the first question. That's not unique to Pakistan, but obviously it exists in Pakistan.
The Pakistani government is very aware of that. And what we have tried to do over the last several years, certainly -- I'll just speak to my foreign policy -- has been to engage aggressively with the Pakistani government to communicate that we want nothing more than a stable, prosperous, peaceful Pakistan, and that we will work with the Pakistani government in order to eradicate this extremism that we consider a cancer within the country that can potentially engulf the country.
"We will continue to insist to Pakistan's leaders that terrorist safe-havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks (must) be brought to justice,"
"
"Our strategy to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda and its affiliates has to succeed on both sides of the border. That is why we have worked with the Pakistani government to address the threat of terrorist networks in the border region."
And this goes exactly to my point. Whenever Pakistan is spoken of, whether in good light or bad, the networks of terrorism and extremism within Pakistan is always the 800 pound gorilla in the room..
Yes, as we've clearly established, it came from the rear end of an Indian journalist.
Its interesting that the mainstream newspaper of Pakistan choses to publish articles that come out of the backside of an Indian journalist which no Indian publication finds good enough to use. And before you launch into the chant of press censorship etc.. what he says is in no way worse than what Arundhati Roy said and the Indian papers lapped it up...Brings me to the original point of the credibility of Dawn to comment on Indian internal matters..
It was also a republican president who called the Indian Prime Minister a "*****" and characterized the Indian people using, shall we say, less than civil terms.
So going over 40 years back eh?
You go back long enough if the history and the forefathers of Americans (Democrats or Republicans) ruled both India and Pakistan. Or even going back further, we were all apes. (some of us still are
)
But I hope you get the drift. Republicans are known to be more aggressive towards terrorism and are a little less tactful than democrats in handling allies. aka bombing to the stone age call..
See, we shall
By "bombing Pakistani citizens", you mean the US drones based in Pakistan under joint oversight of the Pak-US intel team that is helping take out criminals and terrorists? The same drone strikes for which humint is provided by the ISI?
Thanks for your concern, but I think US help on this front is a good thing.
I dont know whether Pakistani Govt was lying earlier when they protested the drone strikes by NATO forces or are lying now to save some face once NATO has refused to budge from the Drone operations. Either way, the Drone strikes were initiated not at Pakistan's request but as a strategy by NATO to reach the areas where they couldnt go on the ground and where Pakistani Army refused to go to avoid harming their strategic assets aka Afghan Taliban.
But which ever way, as I said in the inital post on this, I would rather have my country paying US for techno goods she buys for civilian / defence use vs. US paying my country for permission to bomb its territory to attack its own citizens (at least most of them), which its army doesn't want to attack because of its own compulsions.
Growth rate from 1990 is on a downward trend??? Wasn't it doing pretty well through 2007?
Not really.. Saw this in another thread. Some interesting points by Foxbat..
http://www.defence.pk/forums/econom...s-higher-gdp-than-pakistan-4.html#post1225039
Please remember that India grew at the "Hindu rate of growth" - the term that economists used to describe slow growth - for decades. A few years of good growth and things appear much better. The same applies to Pakistan or any other economy for that matter. If you were to remove any one of two or three variables, you will see that the real growth rate in Pakistan has been much higher than the 4.3 percent for 2010. (
Business Recorder [Pakistan's First Financial Daily])
For example, the most obvious one is the campaign in Afghanistan (not just US presence, but *campaign*). The other two are the floods and the earthquake. In both cases, acts of God are acts of God and can happen at anytime, anywhere. Other than tabloid jockeys simply trying to get a rise out of the audience, no one with a sane mind believes that 4.5% is the forever-more growth rate for Pakistan. According to the IMF, 8+% in a few short years is the likely scenario.
I neither claim to know nor predict future. I also subscibe to your earlier comment where you chastised my for talking about future and 8% growth of India (despite my not even approaching the subject). Future is what it is and we will know when we get there. However what I am talking about is the past trend..
If Pakistan gets out of the mess caused by its policy of using insurgents and extremism as proliferated by Zia, and grows 8-10% in future, then great.. But we will see it when we see it..
India did badly for 50+ years. Pakistan has done badly for the past 5 or so years. Once again, per capita income and GDP growth rates change every year... nothing is set in stone.
Exactly..Nothing is cast in stone. All we can do is look at the trend and thats what I did.. You may have another view of that, but hey, both of us can have our respective
OPINIONS
Based on objective metrics, Pakistan is better off today than it was in 1990. Nuclear deterrent, higher per-capita income, much improved infrastructure, significant developments in manufacturing capacity, increased agricultural output and ongoing agricultural modernization, significantly larger number of universities etc. are just some of the metrics.
Pakistan 2010 > Pakistan 1990.. No doubt if looked at in isolation. But looking at how other countries in the region moved in this time, the lost decade doesnt just apply to the Pakistani armed forces, but to the whole economy, in my view..