Just before the weeklong annual public holidays in Pakistan on the occasion of Eid, the US ambassador Anne W. Patterson decided to end a self-imposed moratorium [for security reasons] on television appearances on Pakistani talk shows.
Ambassador Patterson chose a nonaggressive host, the elegant and polite Dr. Moeed Pirzada of Dunya News, based in Lahore.
It was Saturday, Sept. 19. Dr. Pirzida's show was a safe platform for her to target Pakistan's primetime television viewers without real interruption.
But I was stunned to see her at all.
Ambassador Patterson chose a nonaggressive host, the elegant and polite Dr. Moeed Pirzada of Dunya News, based in Lahore.
It was Saturday, Sept. 19. Dr. Pirzida's show was a safe platform for her to target Pakistan's primetime television viewers without real interruption.
But I was stunned to see her at all.
Exactly eight days prior to Ms. Patterson's appearance, I had contacted her office and offered to play a gracious host to her on my show on Geo's Aag TV.
I offered her a chance to give her version of on US interference in Pakistani affairs and prove people like me – the alleged 'anti-Americanists' – wrong. I said I'll be there along with Dr. Shireen Mazari, the columnist Ms. Patterson and at least one of her predecessors tried to silence by accusing her of endangering American lives.
This is how I reasoned this offer in my email to Ms. Patterson's office:
It will be nice for the ambassador to sit down with two Pakistani policy hawks who have their strong reasons for opposing the expanded US presence in Pakistan. It’ll also be useful for the Ambassador to address a large constituency among Pakistanis that follow Dr. Mazari’s work and mine, I call them Pakistani nationalists. Let’s try to make sense of the misconceptions and the grievances and address the grey area.
Ahmed Quraishi, email to US ambassador's office, Islamabad, Sept. 4, 2009.
When a US diplomat heard this, his first reaction was, 'You must be joking!'
Only I wasn't. I was fresh from accusing Ms. Patterson of using her influence to try to intimidate a Pakistani newspaper to block the columns of Dr. Mazari, a known critic of US policies. [See Mazari vs. Patterson]
So, no surprises when I received an email the same evening, 'Unfortunately, the Ambassador will not be able to do the show.'
Which is fine. Wasn't expecting anything else. Some US diplomats and some of their Pakistani minions have been accusing concerned Pakistani citizens like me of anti-Americanism. But I was content that I tried to get Ms. Patterson's perspective. I tried to be fair. I am sure Pakistani citizens are within their right to strongly disapprove of, and question, the mess that Washington has created in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Eight days later, I found Ms. Patterson on TV sitting with the amiable Dr. Pirzada. [Thank you for rubbing it in, Ms. Patterson!]
She said many things on the show that went unchallenged, especially regarding the presence of mercenary security 'firms' in Pakistan and the expanding US presence here. But the best part was the following line:
Pakistan is being projected negatively in the US media while America is being projected negatively in the Pakistani media.
US Ambassador Anne Patterson, Dunya News, Sept. 19, 2009
She tried to show that somehow anti-Pakistanism in the US media was a result of the bad press America received in Pakistan. And that's a brazen lie unworthy of a seasoned diplomat like her.
It is easy to forget that for the past two years and half the US media has been whipping up a virulent form of anti-Pakistanism, misleading the world with biased stories about how Pakistan has become the next Iraq, how Pakistan is unable to handle its nuclear arsenal, and how Islamabad was about to fall to some 60 terrorists who would somehow take over the world's only Muslim nuclear power.
The underlying theme in this US media campaign against Pakistan has been that this nation couldn't handle its problems and needed the mercy boots of US and UK soldiers marching through its streets for salvation, a la Afghanistan and Iraq.
This campaign started some time in 2007 and peaked in 2008 before dying down a natural death with the ouster of George Bush and Dick Cheney from Washington. But Bush and Dick leftovers in the political, military and intelligence circles in Washington are keeping this anti-Pakistanism alive. You can see it in the occasional outbursts against Pakistan and its military and intelligence. You can also see it in the silly lectures of self-styled 'Pakistan experts' in Washington who churn out empty rhetoric like how the Pakistanis don't know that India isn't really a threat and how serving a failed US agenda in Afghanistan should become the ultimate goal in life for every Pakistani man, woman and child.
The India bit is the best part. Knowing the real and serious problems that exist between the two, Washington and its military and intelligence deliberately expanded Indian political and intelligence presence in Afghanistan, a country that Washington can never tightly occupy without Pakistani help.
So there is a pattern to the way the US media created a scare over Pakistan. Some treatment to dish out to an ally.
The anti-American sentiments in Pakistan today have multiplied several times in the eight years of the crude American meddling in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. In fact these sentiments were far lower a couple of years ago when the US media began demonizing Pakistan at the behest of influential quarters within the Washington policy establishment.
And now Ambassador Anne W. Patterson has the gall to sit on a Pakistani TV show and tell us that Pakistan is getting bad press in America because America is getting bad press in Pakistan.
Let me tell you a little bit more why your country is getting bad press in a way it didn't before, Madam Ambassador:
1. US brokered a political deal to bring to power the most financially corrupt politicians to power in Islamabad in exchange for their pledge to serve American interests
2. US has killed some 700 innocent Pakistani men, women and many, many children through CIA-run drones in order to kill some 20 or less terrorists from al Qaeda, and mind you, terrorists of questionable value and importance
3. US crossed its ally Pakistan by empowering the most anti-Pakistan elements in Kabul [Last week, Gen. Stan McCrystal has tried to appease Pakistanis by warning that India's increasing influence in Afghanistan will create problems, as if India did this without the knowledge of the United States in Afghanistan in the past eight years.]
This is what I would have told you, Ms. Patterson, had you appeared on my show. You made the right choice by declining the invitation.
[Thomas Houlahan – A former US Marine - dished out a scathing critique of the 'coward' diplomats from his country on my television show. Watch him here]
What a scaredy this lady is. A person who is not lying is never afraid to face the media.
ReplyDeleteShe looks so much like the aunt next door , i have to think twice when commenting on her conduct. but i guess the Americans, no matter how old or young, cannot be trusted at all.
Over in America the media is spinning Pakistan as a stalwart ally that cannot be abandoned in its darkest hour. Changing the mission is one of our specialties and Pakistan has become one more excuse to escalate the deteriorating war in Afghanistan. Everyone's heard about the Great Game - this is the Great Head Game.
ReplyDeleteI think Pakistan is also playing the fool with the Americans. It is diverting the millions of USD aid to corruption and proxy fight agaist neighbouring countries using jihadis.
ReplyDeleteIf Anne Patterson shows up again on a Pakistani TV channel, the very simple question that we need to ask her is to explain why the USA is in Afghanistan in the first place. The relentless American propaganda about the Big Lie of “9/11”, and the subsequent “authorisation” by the United Nations, has so far managed to clobber the world into a whimpering state of incoherence. Isn’t there a single Pakistani in a position of influence who would ask the USA government to provide evidence for its amazing conspiracy theory of what took place on that fateful day? The feeble and ineffective UN was deceived and lied to just as it was in the case of Iraq’s non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction”.
ReplyDeleteThe time has come for us Pakistanis to pluck up courage and say loud and clear to the USA government that we wish to test its pack of lies about the 9/11 events in an international court. It must provide explanations for the countless contradictions and the failure of verifiable facts to fit the official story line. To change inconvenient details over the years simply discredits the already discredited official story still further. For example, once it was realised that the cell phone technology did not exist in 2001 to enable passengers to contact their loved ones by cell phone from a high altitude in a fast moving plane, those claims of fictitious telephone conversations were simply dropped! The USA must also come clean on the evidence that has been either destroyed or suppressed, and it must provide credible evidence and witnesses as opposed to producing written “confessions” of the accused extracted through torture. Independent assessment of what is widely believed to be manufactured evidence must also be permitted.
People of Afghanistan and Pakistan must demand that the truth about the criminal activities which resulted in the cold-blooded murder of some 3000 American citizens (possibly, some Pakistanis among them?) on 9/11 must be uncovered because it is those events which have been used as justification for the overt invasion of Afghanistan and the covert attack on Pakistan. The American actions in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to have resulted in the deaths of over two million human beings. Far from feeling remorse at this wanton butchery and apologizing to the world, the USA has stealthily widened its duplicitous and murderous activities into Pakistan. Right now it is busy spinning lies about the presence of “Osama, Mullah Omar and Taliban” in Quetta of all places, where they have miraculously shifted from the inaccessible mountains in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. As before, the corrupt and cowardly Pakistani leadership is too tongue tied to ask for proof or even to wonder aloud why the silly fools have forsaken the safety of the remote tribal region and become easy prey to the USA military in a large city such as Quetta.
The story of 9/11 is quite simply extraordinary. Please refer to the seminal books by David Ray Griffin: “The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11” published in 2004; and the updated version published in 2008 in light of developments and revelations since 2004, “The New Pearl Harbour Re-visited: 9/11, the Cover-up, and the Exposé”. You may also be aware that the lawyer John Farmer, who drafted parts of the infamous Kean Commission report on 9/11, has just published a book in which he has said that that report is worthless as it is based on a pack of lies (I have not read John Farmer’s book – my comments are based on reviews). There are several other books which make an honest attempt to investigate the reality behind the lies. You can Google and make your own selection. There is also a vigorous Truth Movement with its own website (www.911truth.org), whose membership consists of scientific and professional experts in various fields, public personalities and other sincere seekers after the truth suppressed by the evil Bush-Cheney clique.