Life, Liberty & The Pursuit of Happiness

What Good, Honest Men are Saying & Why It's Scaring Me...

by Reena Kapoor

I listened to a very well-regarded financial planner yesterday. He is an honest man - a very honest man - and a trustworthy one. He always starts by telling his clients that he does not know -- and cannot know -- the future. His practice thrives because he gives good advice in terms of telling his clients about the options and risks and implications of different financial strategies and HOW he would make decisions (factors to consider, etc.) and NOT WHAT decisions he would make.

Idiot's Guide to Pakistan's Security Forces

by AW

In Foreign Policy, Nicholas Schmidle writes a tongue-in-cheek Idiot's Guide to Pakistan that is more specifically a guide to the numerous army factions, border security forces, security agencies and paramilitary groups operating in Pakistan. Though punctured by humor, this article gives a clear sense of a country on the verge of collapse.  Securing the tribal areas was a problem even the colonial British could not address.

If you see a newspaper dateline from a town inside FATA, chances are that the Pakistani Army organized a field trip for reporters. Those traveling unaccompanied into, say, South Waziristan have either a death wish or a really good rapport with the Taliban, who effectively run North and South Waziristan and large portions of the other agencies and frontier regions. The recalcitrance of the tribesmen is hardly something new. In the words of Lord Curzon, the former viceroy of India: “No patchwork scheme -- and all our present recent schemes, blockade, allowances, etc., are mere patchwork -- will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steamroller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.”