Heads, He Loses
I’m not the first to wonder if it is mere coincidence that an American is kidnapped by Muslim terrorists in Pakistan just after Dianne Feinstein opens her fat yap about Predator drones being based in Pakistan:
Kidnappers threatened on Friday to kill an American employee of the United Nations within 72 hours and issued a grainy video of the blindfolded captive saying he was “sick and in trouble.” A letter accompanying the video delivered to a Pakistani news agency said the hostage, John Solecki, would be killed unless authorities released 141 women it said were being held in Pakistan.
The video and the demands indicated that Solecki, the head of the U.N. refugee agency in Quetta, a city near the Afghan border, was alive and that his captors wanted to negotiate.
Solecki, who appeared blindfolded and with a shawl draped over his shoulders in the 20-second clip, said his message was addressed to the United Nations.
“I am not feeling well. I am sick and in trouble. Please help solve the problem soon so that I can gain my release,” he said.
The kidnappers have identified themselves as the Baluchistan Liberation United Front, suggesting a link to local separatists who have waged a long insurgency against Pakistan’s government rather than to the Taliban or al-Qaida, which are fighting U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
Still, the death threat heightened fears for Solecki’s safety, coming just a week after Taliban militants apparently beheaded a Polish geologist abducted in another border area of Pakistan after the government failed to respond to demands for a prisoner release.
To be fair to Sen. Feinstein (why?), if they’re willing to behead Polish geologists and American aid workers, then they are the problem, not us. I’ve made that point many times before, but rarely in defense of a liberal politician. But it still holds true.
Then let President Obama reconsider his disparaging comment about Afghan President Hamid Karzai. It is not Karzai who is out of touch with his country, but Obama himself.
And the Baluchistan Liberation United Front is out of touch with civilization and humanity.