Was Mumbai Massacre Fostered In Part By Bush Regime Policies Toward Pakistan?
As investigations begin into the Mumbai massacre, the complexities of the situation will emerge.
And the Bush regime's failed foreign policies could be a part of the answers that emerge from the inquiries.
Patrick Cockburn writes at Counterpunch: "The origins and motives of the men who slaughtered so many people in Mumbai will emerge in the coming days. But already the butchery should be underlining one of the greatest of the many failings of the Bush administration post 9/11. Pakistan was always the real base for al-Qa’ida. It was the Pakistani ISI military intelligence which fostered and partly directed the Taliban before 2001 and revived it afterwards. It is Pakistan which has sustained the Islamic Jihadi fighters in Kashmir where half the Indian army is tied down. Yet the Bush administration in its folly allied itself to General Pervez Musharaf and the Pakistani army post 9/11 ensuring that Jihadi groups always had a base.
"It is self-defeating hypocrisy for the west to lecture the Indian government now about not over- reacting and not automatically blaming the Pakistani government or some part of its security apparatus for Mumbai. The way in which the Pakistani military has allowed Kashmiri and Pakistani militants free range in Pakistan created the milieu from which the attacks this week came. It may be that the monster the ISI created is no long under its control, but it is ultimately responsible for what has happened.
"The real political background to Mumbai is succinctly summed up by Ahmed Rashid in his excellent book ‘Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.’ In Pakistan, he writes, ‘a nuclear-armed military and an intelligence service that have sponsored Islamic extremism as an intrinsic part of their foreign policy for nearly four decades have found it extremely difficult to give up their self-destructive and double-dealing policies.’ Unless Barack Obama can persuade them to do so he will achieve no more as president than Mr Bush."
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