Re: Absurdity Continues
I am ambivalent about exchanging people engaged in terrorism activities for soldiers. You need soldiers, you can't just let them die. What message would this send to soldiers fighting when they hear Mush didn't take up the trade?
Rebel X makes a good point.
However, once you've got them, and there is no need to trade them, they should be given proper punishment. People involved in the Lal Masjid nonsense were just let go. They should have been imprisoned. They came over from all over from their villages, threw a tantrum in the capitol and held a 2 week drama that had businesses and civilians in Islamabad suffering the consequences. Someone has to pay for that, and if you start letting people go, you're telling civilians that "your suspended time and business and daily life activities are not important to us"
If I was a civilian living in Islamabad during that episode I would have been so ANGRY at the Lal Masjid goons for taking up my time with that charade. People were shot at by these chor chakays taking a masjid hostage, not to mention the immense damage that the image of Islam suffered nationally and internationally.
But look, like I said in my initial post, I want to open up papers and see terrorists getting nabbed. Enough is enough. If they're spending all this time and energy in capturing a couple hundred people - those people had better not be civilian reporters, lawyers, and activists - they were doing their job. We can agree or not agree with them, but they were doing their job, and they weren't engaging in illegal activity. If Asma Jehangir has engaged in illegal activity by working kids in her factory (is that even against Pakistani law???), then she should be jailed for that reason. She's NEVER been jailed for that reason - she's always gotten in trouble with the government because she's criticized the government. That's not an acceptable reason to get in trouble!
People have a natural right to protest. As long as they're doing it peacefully, let them.
Meanwhile, you have Taliban and civilians in NWFP joining in who are protesting in an entirely HARMFUL way, and who the hell is throwing them in jail? No jee, administrators pray namaz next to those goons. They have no shame if they're not going after them!
Musharraf had better have a bunch of these moronic idiots in jail and the top brasses being shipped off to gitmo, instead of sending innocent scapegoats like they've been doing thus far. Otherwise, this whole emergency business has no legitimacy. He might as well fire everyone and just admit on TV that "Yeah, I want to lead you guys for a couple more years, and US has my back even if they're not publicly admitting it, and that's that".