Saturday, October 27, 2012

Drones and apple pie

Imran Khan should thank his lucky stars and stripes he wasn't given an unexpected side-trip to Damascus when he showed up at Toronto International Airport last night.

US immigration officials working in the Canadian city detained Khan when he was attempting to board a flight to NYC. Khan is the former cricket star, the Wayne Gretzky of Pakistan if you will, who is in the process of reinventing himself as a populist politician in the world's second most dysfunctional democracy.

He has been an outspoken critic of America's "drone 'em good and drone 'em often" terror campaign which has caused hundreds of civilian casualties in Pakistan.

According to Khan he was unrepentant during his interrogation. Since his opposition to drone attacks is  a central plank in his campaign he assumes American authorities were well aware of it when they issued him a visa.

This is the kind of heavy-handed stupidity that has become the hallmark of America's dealings with the rest of the planet. Khan is the kind of guy who, all things equal, is a natural ally of the West. Incidents like this will only alienate him and at the same time increase his popularity in Pakistan.

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