Getty ImagesPrime Minister David Cameron flaunts his ignorance of history. Again. He's only been in the job for a matter of weeks and already is proving himself as gaffe-prone as BP's Tony Harwood.
He's said he would take on China in a nuclear bust-up, stated that Britain played second fiddle to the US in 1940, and now he tells Pakistan it isn't doing enough to combat terrorism:
"To be fair to the Pakistan government, they have made progress in chasing down militants and terrorists in Pakistan that threaten their own country and threaten others. But we need them to do more and we should work with them to do more because as I said yesterday, it's not acceptable to have those within Pakistan who are supporting terrorist groups that can do so much damage to their own country and to British people whether in Afghanistan or back home in Britain."
In India to sell military hardware, Cameron has insulted poor beleaguered Pakistan by tellling them to get their finger out. Considering it was the CIA who trained up Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda forces in the early 1980s during the Cold War with the Soviet Union and then left the region with the problem once the USSR was defeated, it's a stunning bit of hypocrisy for us to be blaming them.
What started as Taliban resistance to the US has now gone national as the Pashtun people have been radicalised by indiscriminate killings. By October 2009, the US had killed 14 Al Qaeda but 700 civilians. That is not a ratio designed to win hearts and minds.
It's us who have brought the Afghanistan war to Pakistan.
As ex-cricketer and former Indian MP Imran Khan said last year:
" ... it’s just a blatant lie. How can they say that Pakistan has to be stabilized and then Afghanistan will become [stable]. Surely, stability in Afghanistan will stabilize Pakistan. In fact, a CIA ex-station chief of Kabul, Graham Fuller, actually wrote in the International Herald Tribune that unless and until NATO leaves Afghanistan, Pakistan is going to descend into radicalization and chaos which is absolutely right, because we had no Taliban in Pakistan."
While Cameron drones on, Imran Khan has filed a petition in the Supreme Court to declare the use of drones in his home land illegal.
In his petition, Khan asked the court to declare as illegal and unconstitutional all acts that take away the fundamental rights of citizens, the provision of facilities and logistics to any foreign country, any alliance for mass destruction due to drone attacks inside Pakistani territory. Such acts should also be declared a violation of the United Nations charter, the universal declaration on human rights, international laws and international humanitarian laws. Khan said the respondents should be directed to lodge complaints against the killings of innocent Pakistanis, destruction of their properties and displacement from their homes at appropriate international forums. He also asked the court to direct the respondents to take all preventive measures against the drone attacks to protect the life, liberty, dignity, property and other fundamental rights of citizens.
Back in India, Cameron has just done a nuclear deal worth billions with his hosts. I wonder how his arms shares portfolio is doing.
