Pakistan Arrests Mastermind of Mumbai Massacre

Today, December 8th, 2008, the Pakistani government announced that it raided a terrorist training camp in Lashkar suspected to be the base of the group which killed over 170 people in Mumbai, India, last week. During the raid, they managed to capture a man named Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, who is suspected of being one of the masterminds of the massacre in Mumbai.

Such swift justice from Pakistan, a nation that has been openly hostile towards India for decades, speaks volumes about the competence of the Bush administration in the war on terror. Since Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's most important people have been hiding in Pakistan, the Pakistani government has not really done much in helping the US find them and bring them to justice, and we are supposedly their allies. Yet they seemed to bend over backwards for their arch-rival India, and swiftly staged a successful raid on a group that by all accounts were some of the best trained terrorists ever encountered.

Did the Bush administration even care about finding Bin Laden and the remaining Al Qaeda officers, or did Pakistan conduct the raid against the Mumbai attackers because they feared nuclear retaliation from India if they did nothing? If the Bush administration was serious about Al Qaeda, they could easily have gotten Pakistan to do what they did for India, and they could have done it years ago. The fact that India got such a quick favor after their attack by terrorists, and the Bush administration could only get lip service for 7 years, speaks volumes about how poorly the Bush administration has dealt with our foreign allies. Our allies seem to give their enemies better treatment than they give us.

Perhaps the arrangement with Al Qaeda and the Bush administration is similar to the arrangement that the Guild of Calamitous Intent has with Dr. Venture in the fictional cartoon series, The Venture Brothers. It's explained that the guild limits what super-villains are allowed to do to protagonists, to allow them to co-exist and allow both protagonist and villain to do their own thing without actually killing each other. Perhaps George Bush solicited Al Qaeda's help in becoming our nemesis, mainly so George could get the status he sought. In the Venture Brothers universe, super-scientists and other protagonists often solicit villains to gain status. Their managed conflicts keep each other alive while developing new super-weapons and gaining fame.

That may explain why the Bush administration hasn't managed to get Bin Laden or other Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan for the last 7 years. Al Qaeda is engaging in "controlled costumed aggression" with Bush, and both are bound by the guild's honor code. That way, both sides get the prestige and notoriety they seek, without actually killing each other. Henchmen are occaisionally killed, but the arch villains and protagonists, and their immediate family members stay protected.