Film at 11: Gray Lady single-handedly attacks all of Pakistan!

There is a familiar level of hyperbole in Pakistan’s response to a recent New York Times editorial “that said there was evidence of complicity by the ISI intelligence agency in sheltering bin Laden, of ties to the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people and of involvement in the abduction and murder of Asia Times Online journalist Saleem Shahzad.” This is the same country where protesters cast Pope Benedict XVI’s call for the reform of Pakistani blasphemy laws as “an attack on the hearts of Muslims.” Wow. Not even Chuck Norris is that hardcore.

But such language is often not empty rhetoric in Muslim countries, but rather sets the stage to answer such “attacks” with various disproportionate responses. If nothing else, such outrage at one editorial from one newspaper is a sign of weakness and instability, and seriously misplaced priorities. “Pakistan army says New York Times report is a ‘direct attack’,” by Sheree Sardar for Reuters, July 10:

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (Reuters) – Reports in the New York Times criticizing the Pakistan army and the powerful intelligence agency is a “direct attack” on Pakistan’s security, the army spokesman said on Saturday.

Major General Athar Abbas, the Pakistan army’s chief spokesman, repeatedly criticized the Times’ reporting and said it was part of a calculated plan by “unnamed officials” to “weaken the state.”

“This is a direct attack on our security organization and intelligence agencies,” he told Reuters in a rare on-the-record in-person interview. “We consider ISI as a strategic intelligence organization, the first line of our defense.”

The U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been on a downward spiral since last year, but the decline accelerated after the killing of two Pakistanis by a CIA contractor in Lahore in January and the U.S. raid to kill Osama bin Laden, which Pakistan complains it was not told about and says was a breach of its sovereignty.

Abbas was responding specifically to a July 8 editorial that said there was evidence of complicity by the ISI intelligence agency in sheltering bin Laden, of ties to the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people and of involvement in the abduction and murder of Asia Times Online journalist Saleem Shahzad.

The ISI, or Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, is Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence service.

Long suspected of maintaining militant ties it nurtured in the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. raid that killed bin Laden in a Pakistan garrison town raised concerns that Pakistan was playing a “double-game” with the Taliban and al Qaeda.

“This whole reporting through media, quoting unnamed officials, anonymous sources, is part of a design to undermine the authority and the power of the organization in order to weaken the state,” Abbas said.

He declined to specify exactly who the unnamed officials were, although the New York Times specified they were American officials.

The editorial called for the removal of ISI chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha and said: “The United States needs to use its influence to hasten Mr. Pasha’s departure. … The ISI has become inimical to Pakistani and American interests.”…

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