Re: Secret BBC - Pakistan Double Cross on Terrorism - Full
The USA thoughtlessly throwing vast amounts of cash at poor countries like Pakistan is precisely what is encouraging the Pakistani state and other poor countries never to eradicate and always to sustain Islamic extremist terrorism because Pakistan and the rest reasonably believe that if they had no Islamic extremist terrorists to cause problems for the world then they would not get their corrupt hands on quite so much aid money to spend on, in Pakistan's case, making more nuclear weapons and on other things that the aid recipient country's elite want.
It's not just Pakistan but also Egypt and a host of other countries know that the best way to get their state bankrolled by the USA's aid money is to invest some time and effort in covertly organising Islamic extremist terrorists in their country and in other countries. Then the country puts on a "good cop, bad cop" routine for the USA's pleasure asking for cash to deal with the very terrorist problem which they themselves have created.
So the USA is paying, inadvertently, for and encouraging terrorism which undermines its own national security all the while thinking to itself it needs to pay up "for" national security whereas its foolish payments are really acting against its own national security.
The solution to "Islamic" terrorism is not to pay military aid to Pakistan because the terrorism is being organised not for God but for money.
The US and other NATO countries could force Pakistan honestly to confront and end their business of terrorism by ceasing all military aid and by bombing the Pakistani ISI for their part in organising Taliban terrorism.
By paying military aid to Pakistan etc the USA is simply encouraging the Pakistani state covertly to promote the terrorist perversion of Islam so as to keep that aid money flowing.
A similar argument applies with Saudi and other wealthy states support for Islamic terrorism but in the case of those oil-rich states who don't need aid, what they do need from the US and other Western countries is to maintain business-as-usual and political support rather than any Western intention to pursue regime-change towards democratic republican regimes for the Arabs.
So the Saudi royals and other Arab royals paint the only possible political alternative to the Arab monarchs' "stable" rule as being instability leading to the terrorists the Saudis covertly support seizing power and becoming the official government.
But whether the hidden reason for state sponsors of terrorism is cash for poor country elites or business and political support for rich country elites, the "Islamic" justification only really exists in the minds of the terrorists but since it is the stated reason then unscientific and popular political commentators tend to discuss that to the exclusion of the real political reasons why states sponsor terrorism.
For my ideas of how we can win the war on terror in Pakistan please see my topic in the SWC - "OEF - Afghanistan" forum
How to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan / Pakistan (and win the war on terror) - Small Wars Council