God will know His own

Just when you thought things were screwed up enough in South Asia:

(Reuters) - An Islamist leader who had a $10 million American bounty placed on his head this week has been helping Pakistan de-radicalize militants under efforts to stabilize the strategic U.S. ally, a top Pakistani counter-terrorism official said on Friday.

Of course I have no idea how sincere this guy's effort to get heads out of religiously-brainwashed asses is, but taking the statements of the Pakistani government at face value, this situation seems sufficiently absurd to be plausible.

I know that doesn't seem like the best way to make a case for it, but that how things roll in the Global Something On Guys We Don't Like For Some Reason Or Another (GSOGWDLFSROA). I will forgive you if you don't see that acronym sticking, but I think it sums up the current state of play pretty well.

A key thing to remember is that even in the best-case that this is legit, "de-radicalizing" to the Pakis is not the same as it would be to the Yanks. To the former it means that some of the would-be jihadis will get jobs or at least stop attacking their own people. To the latter it would mean that they stop targeting Western troops and interests in that part of the world and beyond. It doesn't take a genius to see that "a" does NOT equal "b".

So? Past and current American practice is to shoot first and ask questions later (though ironically not when their own troops need that fire support in combat) so even money has a Hellfire with Hafiz Saeed's name on it despite whatever anyone else says about him. He may have it coming, but it is at least possible that killing him will be counter-productive on the strategic level. Oh well, I can always hope to be pleasantly surprised and that some investigation will be done before they lock on. On va voir.