The Pakistani Defense Minister Is Wrong: Biden’s Ridiculous Remark Proved Imran Khan Was Right
It was precisely because former Prime Minister Khan was correct about the US installing its proxies into power in Pakistan that Biden felt comfortable enough to so unprecedentedly disrespect that state as a whole by fearmongering about the safety of its nuclear program. He knew that he could do so with impunity since that post-modern coup regime wouldn’t dare directly condemn him, nor meaningfully distance itself from his country as a sign of principled displeasure.
Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif reacted to US President Joe Biden’s ridiculous remark fearmongering about the safety of his country’s nuclear weapons by declaring that “the narrative which Imran Khan weaved around the US conspiracy has once and for all ended.” The innuendo is that Biden wouldn’t have disrespected that South Asian state if it truly was responsible for installing that post-modern coup regime into power as an imported government like the former premier claimed.
This is an inaccurate interpretation of what just happened and arguably counterproductive to the cause of those same authorities that Defense Minister Asif represents. To explain, Biden didn’t say anything negative about the regime, which that official himself acknowledges has overseen the improvement of bilateral ties over the past few months. Rather, the US President disrespected the state of Pakistan as a whole, which is a key difference that the Defense Minister either hasn’t realized or wants to downplay.
According to his assessment, “I don't believe that just one statement [from the US President] has upset the bilateral ties between the two countries, which have improved over the past few months and the two countries should keep the cohesion intact.” There’s admittedly some truth to that since Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari scrambled to make excuses for Biden instead of condemning his unprecedented fearmongering.
Quite clearly, the post-modern coup regime will likely never take the initiative to meaningfully distance itself from its foreign patron as a sign of principled displeasure no matter what the latter says or does. Displaying fealty to that declining unipolar hegemon is its top priority, even at the expense of signaling that those authorities lack any sense of national self-respect after the most powerful man in the world just spread totally discredited fake news about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear program.
Excuses for his unacceptable behavior are more important than unambiguous condemnation, precisely because Biden disrespected the state of Pakistan and not them or their post-modern coup regime personally. Technically speaking, they’re supposed to represent that selfsame state, but their muted reaction to the American President’s ridiculous remark suggests that they don’t truly feel that this is their legitimate role. If they did, then they’d have responded as fiery as former Prime Minister Khan did.
What Biden just did was nothing short of a power play to show the Pakistani people that his country can say whatever it wants about theirs with impunity since their pro-American post-coup regime wouldn’t dare directly condemn him, let alone take the initiative to meaningfully distance itself from the US as a sign of principled displeasure. America has masterfully manipulated this rising South Asian state into an economic-financial trap by exacerbating its preexisting related systemic challenges to the point of crisis.
It did this by orchestrating the post-modern coup against former Prime Minister Khan as punishment for his independent foreign policy, especially its Eurasian dimension and his refusal to host US bases or grant overflight rights to its drones for attacking Afghanistan. The socio-political processes that this regime change unleashed worsened Pakistan’s economic-financial challenges up until that point and thus provoked the present crisis that’s placed the country in a position of dependence vis a vis the US.
Islamabad is now dependent on Washington’s so-called “goodwill” to receive IMF and other forms of aid, hence why it won’t proverbially bite the hand that’s offering to feed it, albeit not out of selflessness but with military-strategic strings attached. While Pakistan still to its credit retained its policy of principled neutrality towards the Ukrainian Conflict, it’s arguably still drifting back into the US’ general “sphere of influence” as part of America’s planned grand strategic reorientation of South Asia.
It was therefore precisely because former Prime Minister Khan was correct about the US installing its proxies into power in Pakistan that Biden felt comfortable enough to so unprecedentedly disrespect that state as a whole by fearmongering about the safety of its nuclear program. He knew that he could do so with impunity since that post-modern coup regime wouldn’t dare directly condemn him, nor meaningfully distance itself from his country as a sign of principled displeasure.
Every single time that the US previously disrespected Pakistan under its former leader, that country sharply reacted by proudly reaffirming its national self-respect. It also strengthened its strategic autonomy in response by actually accelerating the steps it was taking to pragmatically reduce its hitherto disproportionate dependence on America. Nowadays the exact opposite is in effect since both its Defense and Foreign Ministers are desperate to retain relations with the US no matter what.
Although Defense Minister Asif preceded his statement about this unprovoked scandal supposedly discrediting the former Prime Minister’s interpretation of early April’s events by claiming that they’re being made “On a lighter note”, he almost seems to take joy in the fact that this happened. After all, the Foreign Minister already tried blaming Imran Khan for this by quipping that “I believe this is exactly the sort of misunderstanding that is created when there is a lack of engagement.”
That was an obvious reference to his post-modern coup regime’s weaponized information warfare narrative that the former premier was supposedly “anti-American” and not pro-Pakistani. That false notion is being aggressively imposed upon the Pakistani people by their imported overlords to make them wrongly blame him for the prior deterioration in bilateral relations and not rightly regard it as the natural consequence of US bullying that any self-respecting state should be fiercely proud of.
Imran Khan can’t be blamed for what Biden just absurdly said like the Foreign Minister implied, nor did the most powerful man in the world just discredit the former Pakistani leader like its Defense Minister claimed. The aforementioned interpretation of events is nothing but the latest form of Hybrid War/Fifth Generational Warfare (5GW) being waged by the US-installed post-modern coup regime on the minds of the Pakistani people in order to maliciously manipulate their perceptions about everything.
It's for all these reasons why Defense Minister Asif is wrong. In hindsight, he should never have sought to score cheap political points against former Prime Minister Khan by bringing him up in his response to Biden. Doing so was obviously a mistake because it inadvertently harmed his post-modern coup regime’s legitimacy even more than it already was. He and his fellows should have given Biden a befitting response worthy of a self-respecting state like Pakistan instead of a meek one full of excuses.
The blaze of sun wrung pops of sweat from the old man’s brow, yet he cupped his hands around the glass of hot sweet tea as if to warm them. He could not shake the premonition. It clung to his back like chill wet leaves.
The dig was over. The tell had been sifted, stratum by stratum, its entrails examined, tagged and shipped: the beads and pendants; glyptics; phalli; ground-stone mortars stained with ocher; burnished pots. Nothing exceptional. An Assyrian ivory toilet box. And man. The bones of man. The brittle remnants of cosmic torment that once made him wonder if matter was Lucifer upward-groping back to his God. And yet now he knew better. The fragrance of licorice plant and tamarisk tugged his gaze to poppied hills; to reeded plains; to the ragged, rock-strewn bolt of road that flung itself headlong into dread. Northwest was Mosul; east, Erbil; south was Baghdad and Kirkuk and the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar. He shifted his legs underneath the table in front of the lonely roadside chaykhana and stared at the grass stains on his boots and khaki pants. He sipped at his tea. The dig was over. What was beginning? He dusted the thought like a clay-fresh find but he could not tag it.
Someone wheezed from within the chaykhana: the withered proprietor shuffling toward him, kicking up dust in Russian-made shoes that he wore like slippers, groaning backs pressed under his heels. The dark of his shadow slipped over the table.
“Kaman chay, chawaga?”
The man in khaki shook his head, staring down at the laceless, crusted shoes caked thick with debris of the pain of living. The stuff of the cosmos, he softly reflected: matter; yet somehow finally spirit. Spirit and the shoes were to him but aspects of a stuff more fundamental, a stuff that was primal and totally other.
The shadow shifted. The Kurd stood waiting like an ancient debt. The old man in khaki looked up into eyes that were damply bleached as if the membrane of an eggshell had been pasted over the irises. Glaucoma. Once he could not have loved this man. He slipped out his wallet and probed for a coin among its tattered, crumpled tenants: a few dinars; an Iraqi driver’s license; a faded plastic Catholic calendar card that was twelve years out of date. It bore an inscription on the reverse: WHAT WE GIVE TO THE POOR IS WHAT WE TAKE WITH US WHEN WE DIE. He paid for his tea and left a tip of fifty fils on a splintered table the color of sadness.
He walked to his jeep. The rippling click of key sliding into ignition was crisp in the silence. For a moment he paused and stared off broodingly. In the distance, shimmering in heat haze that made it look afloat like an island in the sky, loomed the flat-topped, towering mound city of Erbil, its fractured rooftops poised in the clouds like a rubbled, mud-stained benediction.
The leaves clutched tighter at the flesh of his back.
Something was waiting.
“Allah ma’ak, chawaga.”
Rotted teeth. The Kurd was grinning, waving farewell. The man in khaki groped for a warmth in the pit of his being and came up with a wave and a mustered smile. It dimmed as he looked away. He started the engine, turned in a narrow, eccentric U and headed toward Mosul. The Kurd stood watching, puzzled by a heart-dropping sense of loss as the jeep gathered speed. What was it that was gone? What was it he had felt in the stranger’s presence? Something like safety, he remembered; a sense of protection and deep well-being. Now it dwindled in the distance with the fast-moving jeep. He felt strangely alone.