Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Blame-Others-For-Our-Problems Problem In Pakistan

I have nothing whatsoever to add to this fantastic article in Dawn. Read the whole thing.

8 comments:

Butterscotch said...

Along with delusional she could have added doomed too
This is a nation in the state of denial. How the likes of Zaid Hamid Shaheen Sehbai Dr Mizari are destroying young minds and worst of all, even the educated enlightened literate class seems to be getting influenced by their constant conspiracy theory ranting.
In short words, this is a doomed nation and i seriously have nothing to share here but my disgust and utter shame.
At least dawn is taking up Zaid Hamid's case..sigh ..one slim hope you know!!
The other day i read this excellent article in dawn and used some material for my comments. First two lines were painful enough
Check this
"Abdus Salam’s 15th death anniversary went unnoticed recently. The 25th death anniversary of Waheed Murad that fell on the same day was celebrated with fanfare. They say nations which do not honour their great men cease to produce them"
(DAWN 6th dec 09)
One couldnt have given a better description of this nation

Sami blew the right selector said...

Can't believe you're writing about this trivial shit when our test 11 in Australia could have ALL 4/5 of the following heroes

Salman Butt, Imran Farhat, Faisal Iqbal/Shoaib Malik, MOHAMMAD SAMI-WTF

Nabeel said...

Hajrah Mumtaz is completely right - too many of our people blame America and deliver sob stories when it comes to personal accountability. It's ABSOLUTELY UNBELIEVABLE how so many educated, truly educated not just literate, people still believe that America is almost solely to blame.

I just had an argument a few hours ago with my sister (graduated from the best business school in Karachi,about to get a certificate from one of the best in Toronto,an old hand at fighting for women's rights,blah blah-this is only relevant for context)about how we have to stop demonizing America.

We were debating why Obama got the Nobel and she said he's a douchebag for promising so much in the Cairo speech to Muslims and then sending 30,000 more killers to Afghanistan. And naturally, I'm like wtf? Those soldiers are targeting extremists not 'Muslims'! She started ranting about how the Taliban is an American invention to keep the US military complex rolling and how it's just the latest decoy after Communism collapsed and how Pakistan is just a victim of the American army's lust and....

what. the. fuck. is. wrong.

by the way,I don't know if you watched the video yourself,but it's not a great work by any stretch of the imagination. it's biased and does a great job of painting exactly the wrong picture of Pakistanis.

Brett said...

She started ranting about how the Taliban is an American invention to keep the US military complex rolling and how it's just the latest decoy after Communism collapsed and how Pakistan is just a victim of the American army's lust and....

Nationalistic blinders tend to be some of the most vicious and pervasive, and even educated people aren't immune if they haven't looked at the issue in-depth. Or at least, I'm assuming that was the case - you didn't mention whether or not your sister is particularly religious.

If it's any comfort, the dislike is usually mutual by many of the Americans who actually give a damn about what's going on in that part of the world. Many of them either think Pakistan is this frail construct that's going to fall to the Taliban any day now and dump nuclear weapons into terrorist hands, or that Pakistan is actively fanning the resistance against US efforts in Afghanistan behind their backs.

Of course, this may simply be part of a bigger trend. I'm reminded of what Daniel Drezner (one of the bloggers at Foreign Policy's website) mentioned when he taught a class to a broad group of international students, including many from the Developing World. One of the things he found striking was how many of the students (he mentions one student from Ghana in particular) seemed to have this view that the US was actively meddling and manipulating virtually everything going on everywhere. If you have that type of view, then perhaps it isn't a surprising jump to go from that to "the Americans are the ones stirring up all the problems at home".

Ahsan said...

Yeah I remember reading that Drezner post. Didn't surprise me one bit.

Nabeel said...

No,religion has nothing to do with it at all. Not something she cares about.

well articles promoting the view that Pakistan could fall to the Taliban are published by the very organization you mentioned-Seth Cropsey wrote about it less than a week ago.

actually i do think that the US has needlessly interfered in certain situations - incidentally ahsan just mentioned this a few days ago too, talking about how the US seems to be stretched thin - but i don't think it's as bad as the conspiracy theorists assume.

Anonymous said...

Cyril's got a great post too this week

http://www.cyrilalmeida.com/2009/12/10/dawn-grow-up-guys-by-cyril-almeida/

Brett said...

actually i do think that the US has needlessly interfered in certain situations - incidentally ahsan just mentioned this a few days ago too, talking about how the US seems to be stretched thin - but i don't think it's as bad as the conspiracy theorists assume.

I agree that they meddle a lot, but the main problem with the conspiracy theorists is that they think US meddling is

A)deep, as in they're meddling in every little issue, and

B)competent.