Hameed Gul is Nuts.
Pervez Hoodby—writing in the Los Angeles Times’ “Current” section —gets alarmist in service of a good argument:
In a recent televised debate between myself and Hameed Gul — an influential Islamist leader, retired general and former head of Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency — my opponent snarled at me: “Your masters [the Americans] will nuke us Muslims just as they nuked Hiroshima. People like you want to denuclearize and disarm us in the face of a savage beast set to devour the world.”
Gul then vented his anger at those — like myself — who opposed Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program. He sees us as agents of America, apostates and enemies of Islam and the Pakistani state.
This extremist general was making a point that resonates around the globe.
[snip]
The making of atomic weapons — especially crude ones — has become vastly simpler than at the time of the Manhattan Project. Basic information is freely available in technical libraries throughout the world, and surfing the Internet can bring anyone a staggering amount of detail.
[snip]
So what will happen when religious fanatics succeed in a nuclear attack? The world shall plunge headlong into a bottomless abyss of reaction and counter-reaction in a horror the human mind cannot comprehend.
Who will the United States retaliate against? Will the United States nuke Mecca? The capitals of Muslim states? What will the United States and its allies do as their people fear more attacks? Will they expel Muslims from the United States and Europe, or herd them into internment camps as was done to Japanese Americans in World War II? Hiroshima signaled a failure of humankind, not just of the United States. The growth of technology has far outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Like a quarrelling group of monkeys on a leaky boat, armed with sticks of dynamite, we are embarked on an uncertain journey.
Gul, by the way, is certifiable.
One viewer who saw the televised debate wrote a letter to Pakistan’s English daily The Nation calling Gul the “Lone Ranger of our ideological frontiers.”
Gul blamed 9/11 on the Mossad, called called for a single Islamic state stretching from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan armed with nuclear weapons, and predicted the United States would attack Pakistan.
Good to know he used to run Pakistan’s security services.
Not surprisingly, UPI considers him a go-to guy when they are looking for someone to cast in the role of “Wild Eyed Muslim.”