{"id":186729,"date":"2013-11-05T00:05:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/11\/05\/heck-of-a-job-barry\/"},"modified":"2013-11-05T00:05:00","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T05:05:00","slug":"heck-of-a-job-barry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/11\/05\/heck-of-a-job-barry\/","title":{"rendered":"Heck of a Job, Barry\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What a surprise we do another drone strike, a &#8220;success&#8221;, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2013\/11\/04\/world\/asia\/in-pakistan-death-by-drone-turns-a-villain-into-a-martyr.html\">transformed the person that we assassinated from public enemy number one to a martyr and hero<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">In life, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Public Enemy No. 1: a ruthless figure who devoted his career to bloodshed and mayhem, whom Pakistani pundits occasionally accused of being a pawn of Indian, or even American, intelligence.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">But after his death, it seems, Pakistani hearts have grown fonder.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Since missiles fired by American drones killed Mr. Mehsud in his vehicle on Friday, Pakistan\u2019s political leaders have reacted with unusual vehemence. The interior minister, Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, denounced the strike as sabotage of incipient government peace talks with the Taliban. Media commentators fulminated about American treachery. And the former cricket star Imran Khan, now a politician, renewed his threats to block NATO military supply lines through Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa \u2014 a province his Tehreek-e-Insaf party controls \u2014 with a parliamentary vote scheduled for Monday.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">Virtually nobody openly welcomed the demise of Mr. Mehsud, who was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians. To some American security analysts, the furious reaction was another sign of the perversity and ingratitude that they say have scarred Pakistan\u2019s relationship with the United States.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">\u201cIt\u2019s another stab in the back,\u201d said Bill Roggio, whose website, the Long War Journal, monitors drone strikes. \u201cEven those of us who watch Pakistan closely don\u2019t know where they stand anymore. It\u2019s such a double game.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">To many Pakistanis, though, it is the United States that is double-dealing, and sentiments like Mr. Roggio\u2019s exemplify typical American arrogance. Shireen Mazari, a senior official in Mr. Khan\u2019s party, has urged the Pakistani military to shoot down drones. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Does anyone <b>really<\/b> really think that this makes us any safer?<\/p>\n<p>It might <b>temporarily<\/b> increase the safety of our imperial contingent in Afghanistan, but our incessant drone strikes, and the resultant terror that this engenders in the population creates people who want to kill us.<\/p>\n<p>It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What a surprise we do another drone strike, a &#8220;success&#8221;, and transformed the person that we assassinated from public enemy number one to a martyr and hero: In life, Hakimullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, was Public Enemy No. 1: a ruthless figure who devoted his career to bloodshed and mayhem, whom Pakistani &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1133,1151,982,1076,1152,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assassination","category-south-asia","category-stupid","category-terrorism","category-uav","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186729"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}