For some surprisingly conciliatory (I’ll try to refrain from saying “good”) news coming out of the usual troublespots.
First, it appears that Pervez (Our-Man-in-Islamabad), who is now going to Saudi Arabia, has released thousands of detained political prisoners, and has signaled some level of “softening” in that department– perhaps more will be released. No word that he would meet with former Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif (whom Pervez deposed in the first place) while visiting Sharif’s exile situs of Saudi Arabia. Still… anything even a little calming in nucular-armed Pakistan is a good thing.
And on the other side of the Pakistani border, it looks like Iran will be opening up talks with the United States on the Iraqi security situation, the insanely hostile rhetoric out of Washington on that score has eased, and who knows? Maybe Iran will even talk about its own nucular program. That’s the funny thing about talking, rather than shooting.
Admittedly, with 427 days left of the Bush Administration, any optimism on any subject is probably a fool’s errand. But we’ll take what we can get.
tdog
Not so fast, I’m afraid, TD. Check out the Amy Goodman interview of Adrian Levy and the post that follows it, both at AS today.
It really puts Pakistan – and Bush’s entire foreign policy – into a complete perspective> His Dad, Reagan, the neocons, Valerie Plame, AQ Khan, the Axis of Evil…. Levy ties all of it together and it finally makes sense, albeit a rather twisted underlying logic.
Actually, I did not choose my post title lightly… Pakistan is the focal point for what, thanks to Dubya– and of course his Dad, and mostly the Sainted Reagan, will likely be a much bleaker future than hitherto imagined.
I have read Adrian Levy’s book, and am familiar with the quite literally apocalyptic implications of a third/fourth world basket case country hawking nuclear weapons to the highest bidder (invariably either the Axis of EvilTM proper, or AofE wannabes like Syria, Libya and Saudi… not to mention Sudan, and even AQ itself)– the same basketcase that propped up the Taliban, an now harbors Taliban remnants and the AQ h.q.
As always, I picked up another bad week to give up drinking.