Peace Prize, Obama and the Muslim World

First published Dec 21, 2009. It grieves me to acknowledge that Obama is more of a flex-politician and less of a statesman that I had hoped he would be, his speech this evening was certainly the gung-ho type of speech that pushed the audience forward, but no one knew where, for how long or why. I was reminded of the recreation of facts that the Republicans used to do through King George the Worst and his three Knights of Darkness, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft/Gonsales.

“War!”; gathering intelligence intelligently

  The man who blew himself up and took 7 CIA men with him should help teach us in the US, the same lesson…yet again! But if the lesson learnt is that we should not trust Arabs and Muslims, then all seven CIA lives, all American lives before them and all lives that will be taken in the future, will have been totally wasted.  

What should the US have learnt, this time, as they should have, a long time ago? There is no substitute for good intelligence-gathering and good intelligence-gathering does not come through the eye of a satellite, the cross-hairs of a drone or, from a rented stranger, it comes from good friends. But first, let us see how the US deliberately alienates Muslims across the world.  

Rise of Muslim Extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan

(Originally written on July 16, 2007). At last count, about 100 people had been declared killed in the siege of Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad, Pakistan. Once inside, the Army, which led the attack on the barricaders inside the Mosque, found not just a few pistols and rifles, they found machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers, hardly something that qualifies as religious or peaceful.

Pakistan’s conflict in Swat

The way the United States is conducting the pursuit of its policy will only bring more war and destruction to Afghanistan and Pakistan and is also guaranteed to spread into India.