Andrew Bostom Pakistan

BOSTOM: PAKISTAN ELITE TRAINED IN BOTH TROOTHERISM AND ANTI-AMERICANISM…….

Pakistan is lost. KGS

Pakistan’s Military Elite: Trained in Anti-Americanism, and Believe 9/11 Was A ‘Jewish Conspiracy’

Then U. S. Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson, alarmed by her interaction with trainees  at Pakistan’s National Defense University (NDU), where, after addressing them, she had  “received astonishingly naive and biased questions about America,” wrote a 5/12/2008 memo “LIFE AT NDU: TRAINING PAKISTAN’S NEXT GENERATION OF MILITARY LEADERS,” now published as Wikileaks #153436 by the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.

The memo concludes with Ambassador Patterson’s concern that,

The elite of this crop of colonels and brigadiers are receiving biased NDU training with no chance to hear alternative views of the U.S.

The cable highlights these salient details provided by a US army officer, Col Michael Schleicher, who attended a course at Pakistan’s NDU:

Students are first instructed on classic nation state development, which includes use of Islamic texts.

During his professional and personal interactions with the students, Col. Schleicher estimated that approximately a third of his class was religiously devout, a third of his class was moderately religious, and less than a third of his class was overtly secular.  Of the 135 Senior Course students, only two openly drank alcohol. Col. Schleicher believed the secular students felt peer pressure to appear more religious than they actually were.

Course instructors often had misperceptions about U.S. policies and culture and infused their lectures with these suspicions.  For example, one guest lecturer–who is a Pakistani one-star general–claimed the U.S. National Security Agency actively trains correspondents for media organizations.  Some students share these misconceptions despite having children who attended universities in the U.S. or London. For example, some did not believe the U.S. used female pilots overseas; they were convinced female pilots were restricted to flying within U.S. borders. Others thought the CIA was in charge of U.S. media (and that MI-5 was in charge of the BBC).

More here.

 

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