The New Republic

If we were harboring a wanted criminal who murdered some 3,000 Pakistani's and we were only pretending to be their ally, we probably wouldn't want them coming here either.

- Nusholtz

December 5, 2011 at 5:37pm

Which proves that an on-line magazine can continue to exist even though nobody reads it (except for Greenwald's friends).

- rayward

December 5, 2011 at 5:46pm

Good to see you again, Isaac.

- liberalref

December 5, 2011 at 7:37pm

(1) When the hell has any _American_ ever been interested in the "...interests of any Pakistanis other than the ruling military caste..."? For America, Pakistan will ideally be run for the benefit of American foreign policy, damn the casualties and damn the effects of Pakistan's internal stability - that was the point of the Salon article. Take a look at the fighting over the Swat region in 2007, which is always portrayed as Taliban-versus-the-army, without any noting of the longstanding exploitation of the peasantry in that area by the rich landowners who run the region. That had a lot to do with the persistence of the taliban in Swat - but when will you ever see that addressed in Western media like TNR? (2) If the Pakistanis had arrested bin-Laden, it would've substantially limited America's ability to shoot him in the head and dump him off an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean. This would've been sufficiently inconvenient for both sides that I doubt an arrest was ever in the cards. But that's OK - Chotiner's post has to continue TNR's long tradition of slagging the ragheads, and anyone who might try to make their actions comprehensible, so what else could he say?

- SMacEachern2

December 5, 2011 at 9:40pm

Your (2) makes no sense, Smac, as it suggests without naming it that there is a third explanation between (a) the Pakistani intelligence services didn't know he was there and (b) they did know he was there and kept mum. What is that explanation? And why is making the point that there is only (a) Pakistan military and intel are clueless, or (b) they deliberately let Bin Laden hide out there, "slagging the ragheads"?

- ironyroad

December 6, 2011 at 10:06am

ironyroad: Slagging the ragheads is a fine old tradition at tnr.com, one begun and directed as far as I can see by Martin Peretz and one that you've played a part in yourself (Islam as promising 'a 1970s Bay Area sex party' after death, for example). Making Muslims look as scary and as alien as possible is a significant raison d'être for the site. Chotiner's post extracts a couple of phrases from a much longer article on the stylised, artificial kabuki-drama over security that the USA and Pakistan have been mutually involved in for the last 10 years, taking no account of the context in which those sentences were written and in order to dismiss it. Much easier to assume that the Pakistanis are idiots than to think that they might have any valid security concerns at all. As for my #2... It's entirely possible, indeed likely, that some elements in the Pakistani government/military (within the ISI, likely) knew where bin Laden was and were running interference for him, while others did not. There was a significant period earlier this year when _America_ knew where bin Laden was, whether or not some elements of the Pakistani government did. Once America had a pretty good idea where bin Laden was, why didn't they privately tell the Pakistani government that, and demand that the Pakistanis arrest him, perhaps mutually? It's unlikely, in that case, that they would really fear his being moved, as they'd put a good deal of resources and surveillance into the region... but if he was arrested and turned over to America, he might actually have to be kept alive. That would not have fit the goals of either the American government, or of a lot of the Pakistani government.

- SMacEachern2

December 6, 2011 at 11:09am

Well if SMac sees no daylight between "longstanding exploitation of the peasantry in that area by the rich landowners who run the region. That had a lot to do with the persistence of the taliban" and joining a jihad against and supporting those who are killing American troops, then I guess there's not much more to be said.

- Nari224

December 6, 2011 at 11:40am

It seems to me that your speculative scenario in which the U.S. informed Pakistan that we knew where Bin Laden was would not have neutralized the implication of such an announcement: to wit, either (a) the Pakistanis were clueless to the point of absurdity or (b) they had known and deliberately gave refuge to a mass murderer at the top of the wanted list of their purported ally. Which is the point I made originally, and, assuming (b) is the case, their response would have been that of a guilty party. But I certainly think that a religious vision that involves the sudden availability of a large number female virgins upon the male martyr's arrival in paradise can be quite legitimately described as a "1970s Bay Area sex party" (although now that I think about it, the analogy is unfair to the sex party, which offered a less grimly patriarchal opportunity for sexual enjoyment).

- ironyroad

December 6, 2011 at 12:46pm