Re: Orlando Fernandes, this is not some backwater country with no strategic importance.  The border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is where the most radical of the Islamists hide and where they are most active in their fight against Western values.
Besides which, if the Radical Islamists happened to take control of Pakistan, the Pakistanis have Nuclear Weapons and we would then have to go to war with Pakistan.
These are long range nuclear weapons, which in the hands of radical Islamic Fundamentalists, would be a bane to the security of the world.
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Enough said about that, the crux of this story is the
fact that despite the promises of the shrub and President Asif Ali Zidari, Pakistan is again plunging
into anarchy and chaos. There is no legitimate reason
to stifle democratic ideals in this country, except for one reason, CORRUPTION!
Why in the world, does the US back the most despotic and repressive regimes, when there are others, who would uphold the true ideals of a democratic republic?  Heaven only knows the mind of those who choose the people to back in our policy of hegemony for the resources of the world.
We must fund the search for alternative fuel sources,
the reason this is so, Leaving the Middle East and its radical elements without the moolah to continue their fight against the ‘decadent and valueless West.’ Whereby we are funding this ‘jihad’ to the tune of billions of dollars each year. Our main source of crude oil, the Middle East wants to have our money but not our values and our way of life.
Problem solved, find another source of energy, that will meet our needs, one which is not based upon fossil fuels and which will spur our economy to greater heights than ever before.
Nawaz Sharif, is another in a long line of ‘presidents’ which have raped and pillaged the economy of Pakistan since the 1948 freedom and separation of India into Pakistan and India.
We are now paying the price of the colonialist view of the world. We cannot any longer, in the Western World afford to think that because a country is not Western in values, that they are a country to be held
and colonialized by any western country that comes along.
This being said, we also, in the West, need to realize that each country can and should choose its own form of government and we should get the hell out
of any Middle Eastern country we now are in.

Octo—-the thing that used to worry me was that humanity’d get off this planet and spread its infection interplanetarily. Against that possibility, I posited an inter-galactic pest-control vehicle stationed in the Van ALlen Belt with instructions NOT to let any earthling vehicles past UNTIL the species had cleaned up its own mess at home.

Now I think humanity won’t endure long enough to become an interplanetary pariah. Like you, I am more worried about the rest of life.

I hold this to be true: Humanity is a cosmic experiment testing whether life can survive intelligence. The Null Hypothesis seems safe…

And here I have been worried that the Israel/Palestine conflict would be the greatest threat to whirled peas.
Let them fly….The world needs a good mutual nuking.
I no longer worry about humanity or it’s fate.
It’s the higher life forms I am worried about now e.g. the bears, whales,dolphins, wolverines, etc.