Michael Glenn Mullen Quotes
In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani Army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan’s opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional interest.
Michael Glenn Mullen, Navy Admiral & Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff Testimony, Senate Armed Services Committee, 2011, [See {80488}.]
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is diplomatic language for a very stern warning. Pakistan supported terrorist organizations because 1) they used the terrorists as their proxies in their continuing conflict with India. The terrorists were a de facto asset of the Pakistani Intelligence Service. 2) Many Pakistani citizens were ultra-orthodox Muslims and believed in the religious objectives of the terrorists and even shared a religious belief in the propriety of the terrorist methods as long as they were being applied to non-Muslims or Muslim heretics. 3) Much of the militant infrastructure was in the tribal, frontier areas of the country where the government was relatively weak. 4) The militants had taken the position that if the Pakistan government tried to curtail their jihad efforts, then the government and its supports were heretical Muslims and were, under Sharia—Islamic Law—proper targets for their terrorism activities. The number of Pakistani Muslims that the terrorists murdered was far greater ironically than the American or European Christians and Indian Hindus that had been killed. A decade later, the Pakistani authorities were split over those who realized that the terrorists were most dangerous to the Pakistanis themselves—and especially the government officials—and those who believed that the terrorists should have continued support because of the 4 reasons above.
Azad Kashmir is that part of the disputed territory of Kashmir that was under Pakistan’s control, as opposed to the part of Kashmir that was under Indian Control.
ISIS and other terrorist organizations were using these platforms for propaganda, and recruiting. See {36908}, {36909}, and {36911} for the views of the companies who Carlin claimed were being exploited. See {583142} for the message Carlin believed that was being transmitted.
Slogans taken from posters listing 10 people targeted by Muslim extremists. Most were people who had said or published material that some fundamentalist Muslims had decided were offensive to Islam. One was Charlie Hebdo, the French Publisher who Islamic terrorists murdered later. Note the Americanisms that the terrorist propagandists adopted. The Wanted Dead or Alive was taken from the posters of the American West of the 19th century. The "Yes we can" was lifted from the Barack Obama 2008 campaign slogan. The "Bullet A Day Keeps the Infidel Away" is a takeoff on the American saying "An apple a day keeps the Doctor away." One of the reasons for these Americanisms was that the founding editor was Samir Khan, self-described American traitor.
He was out of office when he made this statement.
This quotation is used by some non Americans to illustrate a hypocrisy and double standard that they see the United States arguing for in dealing with terrorism. The PKK terrorists have been infiltrating from Northern Iraq (Kurdistan) into Turkey for years. Kissinger and most American leaders tried to dissuade the Turks from militarily moving into Iraq to cut off the terrorists there and deal the border. They preferred an international policy approach. However, after 9-11 when the U.S. mainland was attacked by terrorists, the United States not only reacted unilaterally, but invaded Afghanistan and Iraq supposedly to nullify the terrorists.
The column was written in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist murder of hundreds of school children and adults in Russia. The newspaper was the largest Arab newspaper in the world.
