Mass murder attack greets Clinton in Pakistan

NY Times:

A huge car bomb tore through a congested market of narrow alleys and crowded stalls in Peshawar’s old town on Wednesday, killing more than 80 people, many of them women, while 160 more were injured, many of them seriously, local authorities said.

The explosion came about three hours after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, a 90 minute drive away, underscoring the challenges facing American policy in a nation that has become skeptical of Washington’s long-term commitment.

Mrs. Clinton was in closed-door meetings with senior government officials in Islamabad at the time of the explosion in Peshawar. “These attacks on innocent people are cowardly; they are not courageous; they are cowardly,” she declared later.

“If the people behind these attacks were so sure of their beliefs, let them join the political process,” she told reporters. “They know they are on the losing side of history. But they are determined to take as many lives with them as their movement is finally exposed for the nihilistic, empty effort it is.”

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, the bombing was likely to be seen as a response by Pakistani militants to a campaign against them by the Pakistani military in their stronghold of South Waziristan along the Afghan border.

The offensive has already triggered a wave of militant attacks, but Wednesday’s was the deadliest so far.

“The militants want to destabilize the government and intimidate the public,” Mehmood Shah, a retired brigadier and defense analyst based in Peshawar, told GEO news network. As long as the military operation continues, he said, “we can expect such attacks to carry on.”

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What Clinton left out of her remarks is something that also needs to be said. These deliberate attacks on non combatants are a war crime. They are far more horrendous than the allegations against Israel where they actually try to avoid civilian casualties. Why is it that the governments do not even mention the fact that these attacks are war crimes? Yes, they are cowardly and on the wrong side of history, but those engaging in mass murder for Allah attacks should also be labeled war criminals.

While this is also obvious to the media, they will not report it as such if government spokesmen do not speak out on the issue. This failure to speak out is another missed opportunity in the media battle space.