Pakistan Finds Its Own "Right to Self-Defense" in Afghanistan
The news is direct: "Pakistani airstrikes kill 10 in Afghanistan." (Deutsche Welle). Now, imagine if those ten lives were lost to another nation with a long history of military intervention in the region, receiving billions in US aid. Would the calls for restraint be as muted? The United States, for instance, conducted over 26,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan alone between 2004 and 2018, according
to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, with civilian casualties often dismissed as 'unintended consequences'. Funny how some nations get to claim 'counter-terrorism' for any cross-border assault, while others are immediately condemned as 'aggressors'. One might wonder if the Pakistani government's playbook was handed down by, say, nations whose leaders periodically declare a 'right to
self-defense' before obliterating entire neighborhoods. The mainstream media rarely connects these dots, preferring isolated incidents over inconvenient patterns. It's almost as if the inherent 'evil' of an act depends entirely on *who* commits it, and how much military hardware they bought from Lockheed Martin this fiscal year. How many times have we heard about "retaliatory strikes" from
'allies' without any deep dive into the historical provocations or the disproportionate response?