US foreign aid by country (via Wikipedia).
The latest reports sound exactly like Pakistan is breaking up with America – ‘A senior US official said “Pakistan has told us very clearly that they are re-evaluating the entire relationship.”‘ ‘Mushahid Hussain Sayed, summed up the anger that he said many harbored: “We feel like the U.S. treats Pakistan like a rainy-day girlfriend.”‘
Girlfriend is perhaps not the right word. In Pakistan, as in Egypt, the US relationship is more akin to prostitution or blood money than anything else. The US pays off a military elite while being despised by the body politic in general. Despite giving almost $2 billion in aid to Pakistan, citizens there have a 73% unfavorable opinion of the country. That can only go on for so long.
What it essentially sounds like now is the Pakistan is breaking up with the US, while the US government doesn’t quite get it.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani called “red lines” for a new relationship…
“Nothing is happening on counterterrorism right now,” said a senior Pakistani security official. “It will never go back to the way it was.”
[to which the US responds]
“It is better to have a predictable, more focused relationship than an incredibly ambitious out-of-control relationship,” said one Western official. (NYTimes)
This is pretty predictable break up talk. One party is like ‘I’M BREAKING UP WITH YOU’, and the other is like ‘OK, so we’ll go to your mothers for Christmas’.
“It’s not happening,” said Aftab Ahmed Sherpao, a former interior minister…
“We’ve been very forthright in acknowledging that this is a relationship that needs to work,” a State Department spokesman, Mark Toner, said on Friday. (NYTimes)
Pakistan is like NO and the US is still angling for some make-up drone killing.
The Obama administration is desperately trying to preserve the critical pieces of the relationship. General Dempsey asked the Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, in a phone call on Wednesday if the relationship could be repaired, a person briefed on the conversation said. General Kayani said that he thought it could, but that Pakistan needed some space. (NYTimes)
I mean, seriously, this just writes itself.
make up drone killing or drilling :) it’s always about the oil or sex
Ha ha it does sound like that.
More seriously, I think Pakistan is in danger of degenerating into another Afghanistan. A lawless, tribal place inhabited by roving bands of bandits.
No it’s not, you pompous fool.
Bahahaha this is funny… :’)