Will India and Pakistan ever finish the cat-fight and get on with a real war? “We live in hope,” like my grandma used to say — but don’t hold your breath. Listening to the Indian and Paki generals shaking their little fists at each other, with their little mustaches going up and down, hearing the Indians talk about how their patience is “almost” exhausted — it just gets me down.

This fag-slapping shit gives war a bad name.

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I sure didn’t expect to be spending Thanksgiving morning sucking down instant coffee and flicking channels between CNN and the BBC. But the attacks in Mumbai are so big and, like they keep saying, “brazen,” that I stayed up late and got up early.

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Zia ul-Haq: the Pakistani Dracula with the dead raccoon eyes.

Well, time to ease out of my chair and get back to work, because people have been yelling at me to finish off that “Islamablog” series I started about the hotel bomb in Islamabad. I warned you it was going to be a sample of what real-time war-nerding is about, and this time, durn it, it turned to be about me getting frustrated with how many possible angles there were here. I started to feel like it’d be easier for me to make a short list of everybody who definitely didn’t have a reason to bomb the Islamabad Marriott instead of trying to decide which of the two zillion good reasons was responsible for the bombing.

In fact, why not? Here’s my short list of who didn’t bomb the Marriott and why:

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This is my third entry on the big blast at the Islamabad Marriott. God, the name says it all: “Islamabad Marriott.” Talk about two words that don’t fit together very well. The town just wasn’t big enough for “Islamabad” and “Marriott,” especially when you see pictures of Marriott’s big sign, in fancy Disney letters. You can have an Islamabad or you can have a Marriott, but you can’t have both—not for long.

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BREAKING WARNEWS!

You’ve probably heard by now that Al Qaeda just zapped the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. A truck blew up while security was going over it with sniffer dogs. At least the dogs died happy, I suppose. Those sniffer dogs aren’t the furious anti-drug or anti-explosive types like you might think. They get a Milk Bone every time they find cocaine or fertilizer bombs, so the last sound heard by the tired foreigners bedding down at the Marriott last night would have been excited yipping and yapping, “Oh boy, this thing is so big they better give me a kennel-full of Liva Treats!”

The early reports are that these Teamster jihadis were looking for the Prime Minister’s house, where everybody who’s anybody in Pakistan was having a big hands-on feast. But they were “discouraged” by heavy security around the mansion and decided to head for the Marriott instead. (more…)

I told you so. Told you nothing would happen with India and Pakistan. Told you the whole idea of “Hindu militants” was laughable.

But Christian militants — that’s a whole ‘nuther thing. Christians are stone killers. You put a Christian and a lion in an arena and I’ll bet Toyotas to Subarus the Christian’ll have the lion for lunch. Just look around you: lions are just about extinct, but the whole world is full of Christians singin’ about God’s love, ready to disembowel anybody who won’t join the chorus. (more…)

Will India and Pakistan ever finish the cat-fight and get on with a real war? “We live in hope,” like my grandma used to say — but don’t hold your breath. Listening to the Indian and Paki generals shaking their little fists at each other, with their little mustaches going up and down, hearing the Indians talk about how their patience is “almost” exhausted — it just gets me down. This fag-slapping shit gives war a bad name. (more…)