Attack on Peshawar School

[jordie1892 681]

• At least 126 killed, mainly children, says official
• Six terrorists killed, according to army
• Three days of national mourning announced

http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2014/dec/16/over-100-people-killed-in-pakistan-taliban-school-siege-says-provincial-chief-minister-live-updates

[lepercolony 275]

i'm feeling ignorant and punchy today, so while this is obviously beyond horrific . . . maybe if you're a country that basically harbored Osama Bin Laden, you shouldn't be surprised when the Taliban acts like the Taliban every once in a while.

 

//Pakistan is complicated

///reap what you sow

 

 

EDIT:  alright, that sounded pretty horrible.  lemme clarify:  nothing justifies this.  absolutely nothing.

[phil bottle 9,743]

 

///reap what you sow

 

I'll go along with that,  though I could say the same of an act of terrorism in the UK or US. Governments tend to write cheques that the rest of us have to pay.

[lepercolony 275]

I'll go along with that,  though I could say the same of an act of terrorism in the UK or US. Governments tend to write cheques that the rest of us have to pay.

 

oh totally man.  had them in mind as well.

[Palle 491]

126 kids killed and people argue about politics...

 

.....

 

Seriously?

 

Children are children, no matter what part of the world they live in... It's not their fault they were born in a shitty place.

 

Condolences to all the families.

[lepercolony 275]

126 kids killed and people argue about politics...

 

.....

 

Seriously?

 

Children are children, no matter what part of the world they live in... It's not their fault they were born in a shitty place.

 

Condolences to all the families.

 

true.  in my defense, when i'm being ignorant at least i own it.

[phil bottle 9,743]

This attack will be eaten and digested and shat out just like every other tragedy, empty words and actions will follow and it will happen again and again. 

 

It's tragic, as is the following (taken from WHO). 

 

• Nearly 9 million children under the age of five die every year, according to 2007 figures.
• Around 70% of these early child deaths are due to conditions that could be prevented or treated with access to simple, affordable interventions.
• Leading causes of death in under-five children are pneumonia, diarrhoea and health problems during the first month of life.
• Over one third of all child deaths are linked to malnutrition.
• Children in developing countries are ten times more likely to die before the age of five than children in developed countries.

[Sennex 1,903]

http://news.sky.com/story/1393201/pakistan-reinstates-death-penalty-after-attack

 

No need to make the jump, the URL pretty much says it all

[lepercolony 275]

http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/17/pakistan-peshawar-afghanistan-terrorism-ttp/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=*Editors+Picks&utm_campaign=2014_EditorsPicks_Promo+NYU17%2F12#

 

 

"Pakistan’s military is learning from its mistakes in the past. But it confuses tactical with strategic gains. Pakistani TV channels, perhaps encouraged by the military, interviewed jihadi leaders such as Fazlur Rehman Khalil and Hafiz Saeed to get their response to Tuesday’s carnage. They were presented as legitimate religious leaders. But even though they condemned the school attacks, they regularly advocate violence against targets outside of Pakistan and are not among the country’s top clerics. It is but another reminder that the government in Islamabad has failed to effectively delegitimize jihadi violence against the state. Of course, that’s in part due to a long history of jihadism as an instrument of state policy. No remedy will be forthcoming until the nation’s leaders wake up to the reality that this double-edged sword vitiates the very idea of a sovereign nation-state, creates monsters that threaten Pakistan’s existence, and encourages Pakistan’s neighbors to give the country a taste of its own medicine.

 

Military operations alone won’t make Pakistan safer. For the government to give its citizens the peace they deserve and earn respect in the international community, the business of jihad will have to come to a close."

 

 

when i posted on this topic originally i'm not sure i really had a point . . . if i did though, this article crystallizes it into something much less offensive.  hopefully.

 

i mean, sure, we can feel sorry it happened and "unite" ourselves against killing children by sharing a graphic on social media or something equally meaningless (as if we really needed to unite on that), then proceed to forget about it.

 

. . . or we can take this opportunity to have a difficult discussion about a complicated issue, and observe that the national reaction there has the potential to turn into a cultural wake up call.