Pakistan an acronym yet more

With our historic and much-maligned lack of knowledge of other places, most Americans know little of Pakistan which is so much in the news today with al-Qaeda in the hills and unauthorized forays by the US military into the region's sovereign territory.

However, 'sovereign territory' may not precisely describe what most people think of as 'Pakistan' for this area of the world is not a real nation but an acronym devised in the 1930s by *Chaudhary Rahmat Ali.

The acronym stands for: Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, and Indus-Sind, with 'stan' meaning 'land.'

In the Urdu language the resultig acronym means land of the pure; the reason the 'P' comes first is because Pakistan is the property of the Punjabi military caste. This caste loathed Benazir Bhutto because she hailed from Sind so apparently wasn't fit for much.

Too bad for the people of Pakistan because ideas for the common good of any country should be followed no matter their source.

Ahh, the elusive and never-ending War On Terror.

So with Bush's stirring up, the last few years there's been a reorganized, reconstituted al-Qaeda incubating and being protected within the Federally Administered Tribal Regions and the city of Quetta, with the current US administration being foolhardy enough to step right into the quicksand of a centuries-old situation - ancient rivalries best left alone like any ill-advised Middle Eastern foray that should be better thought of before rushing in on fool's errands.

Well, you know that decisions for US Middle Eastern misadventures have never been up to me, of course, but if they were, I'd whole-heartedly follow my mother's sage advice well before the high-handedness of a neocon chicken hawk's druthers:

never go where you're not invited, never stay where you're merely tolerated.

And that, m'peops, would have had the added benefit of keeping Bush43 out of the White House in the first place.

~:~

Cussedly I failed to capture a link for part of the above Pakistan info but I believe some of it came from Wikpedia and some from a Slate Magazine article by Christopher Hitchens, *Pakistan Is the Problem.

Can you ever forgive me?