It Would Have Been Better Had He Been Found in a Camping Tent
The most wanted man of the past decade was found not in a cave or camping tent but in a mansion-like compound right next to a military academy. You can’t make this stuff up, which is why life will always be stranger than fiction.
Osama bin Laden. Terrorist mastermind. Dead. Shot by a single bullet fired from a U.S. Navy Seal’s weapon. He wasn’t hiding in a camping tent in the wilds of Afghanistan but living rather comfortably, if still austerely, in a Pakistani garrison town not far outside that country’s capital city of Islamabad.
One chapter closes…and another opens. U.S.-Pakistani relations are at their lowest point ever…basically because the man wasn’t found to be living in some camping tent, on the run, but safely esconced in an affluent military town of high-ranking Pakistani Army retirees! How could one of our most important allies in the war against Al Quaeda be found to have had hosted its leader all these years??
It’s simply a matter of incompetency or duplicity – there’s no other possible answer, really. Somebody in their security establishment knew exactly where he was or their whole security establishment isn’t worth anywhere near the millions of dollars in aid money America gives it every year.
It will be very interesting to see how both sides come together after this incredibly important period. Mutual recriminations are to be expected, but the real show will be to see how the alliance proceeds. Neither side can afford to completely cut off ties with the other – yet neither side can really trust the other, either. How to work together given these facts?
On a case-by-case basis, without losing sight of the overall strategic (long-term) goals. Easier said than done, of course, but that is the only way to go forward – and forward we all must go, Pakistani and American.
At least for now.
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