i have this annoying mild cold. my nose is stuffed up and that's about it, i don't have any other symptoms. it's been going on for days now and i look wistfully back on the days where i could breath through my nostrils. i never realized how good i had it back then.
so yesterday i spent much of the day sitting on my ass waiting to get rid of this annoying cold. i finished my latest read: Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan. the title is a little misleading as it sorta implies that pakistan is caught between two different things, when, in fact, jihad (in the book used almost exclusively to refer to the afghan resistance against the soviet union in afghanistan and the various militant and/or terrorist activities that came out of it) and afghanistan are inherently tied together. the basic message of the book is that the u.s., the gulf states, and the various leaders of pakistan over the past 30 years (both democratic and military leaders) all have managed to create the disaster that is afghanistan and the jihad movement it spawned. i've read versions of this story before, since 9-11 a lot has been written about how the u.s. helped to create the people who now threaten us. but the book really made it clear just how bad american policy has been towards the region for the past three decades. (the author was a reporter who covered the war in afghanistan against the soviets. it is interesting to read, for example, how the c.i.a. tried to help the mujahidin in their struggle against the u.s.s.r. by building a network of underground bomb-resistant tunnels in the mountain of tora bora. these same tunnels, still difficult to bomb, were where osama bin laden sought refuge from american forces in 2002. they were ultimately what he used to escape from the americans and their allies).
in some ways it put the present administration in perspective. as disasterous as bush's foreign policy has been, it reminded me that bad foreign policy decisions did not start with the 2001 inauguration. reagan, bush 1, clinton, as well as the current administration all made choices that contributed to the growth of the jihad movement. while the clinton administration was really the first to realize that these groups pose a serious danger to the u.s., it still managed to make things worse. meanwhile, pakistan, fixated on the kashmir struggle, only encouraged the groups that are now calling for the overthrow of pakistan's government. don't get me wrong, i still think the current administration could have done a lot better there (for example, by not going to iraq and diverting resources from afghanistan), but no one comes out of this book looking good.
