Hillary to Pakistan: US taxes everything that moves...

Hillary said two things of note to the Pakistani press:

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where [the leadership of Al Qaeda] are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.”

That’s to the point. But do the “really want to?”

and

“We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan.”

She put this statement in the context that taxing everything that moves is a very good thing and that Pakistan ought to start doing the same to address the demands their population growth will place on their infrastructure needs. What if Pakistanis, as many in the US, don’t want to tax everything that moves and doesn’t move? Is Pakistan’s national government the only entity over there capable of producing anything for the public good? That is the philosophy of our own politicians. It is not a good thing that our politicians are exporting their sense of human helplessness that only a national government can overcome.

Here is the story from Pakistan’s “Daily Times”:

LAHORE: The leadership of Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she added.
“Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know... As far as we know, they are in Pakistan,” Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in Lahore, AFP reported.

“The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world... We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she said.
“You do have 180 million people. Your population is projected to be about 300 million. And I don’t know what you’re going to do with that kind of challenge, unless you start planning right now,” she said.
“If we are going to have a mature partnership where we work together” then “there are issues that not just the United States but others have with your government and with your military security establishment”.

It is true that Pakistan needs to get its security system in order before we “have a mature partnership.” Unfortunately I believe their security system is just about where most of their population wish it to be – applying “rope-a-dope” on the United States.