Red Mosque fiasco

Another great report from The Fanonite, this time on the Red Mosque siege in Pakistan:

The raid on the mosque was avoidable. Negotiations would have ended it. But Musharraf was perhaps keen to establish his strongman credentials. It was only two years back that he had paid Ariel Sharon a tribute, calling the butcher of Sabra and Chatilla “a bold man, a great soldier, a courageous leader”. It is no surprise then that the admirer of Sharon should employ the tactics — and rhetoric — perfected in the killing fields of the West Bank and Gaza. There were all the familiar props — ‘terrorists’, ‘human shields’, ‘weapons caches’ and ‘foreign fighters’. Globalized semantics of the ‘war on terror’.

Meanwhile the US State Department conveys its total support to the dicator that can do no wrong:

The Pakistani security forces have gone in there after exercising a great deal of patience and restraint in offering every possible opportunity for innocents that may still be in the mosque to leave, as well as offering those who have threatened to use violence and, in fact, have used violence in an opportunity to resolve the situation peacefully. And I understand that there have been 40 to 50 deaths of violent extremism -- violent extremists who were in the mosque, as well as about eight Pakistani soldiers and certainly, we mourn the loss of innocent life and those brave people who are trying to bring law and order -- maintain law and order in Pakistan.

Of course, everybody wants to see these kinds of situations resolved peacefully. It's everybody's optimal solution. But it is fundamentally a matter of the -- for the government to decide when negotiations end and when action needs to take place to bring some sort of resolution to the situation. My understanding, it was a situation where they had exercised any number of opportunities for these individuals to resolve peacefully, yet they persisted and they persisted to the point of using children as human shields. So in terms of any update on the situation, as it stands -- operational update -- I think the Pakistan authorities can offer that to you. And if there's anything finally to say about it, any sort of lessons learned, if any, then certainly, we'll offer those if we think it's appropriate.

The mythical narrative persists - it's a volatile situation, you can't negotiate with these terrorist types, and Musharraf is doing the best he can.