There's a lot going on in the world today. My friend Cowboy always asks me why I get caught up in turbulent current events, particularly the international ones. He theorizes that you can't do anything about them, so why worry about them.
It's not that I worry exactly, but I like to know what's going on in the world. Mrs. El Fisho used to travel the world in her occupation. She's on, I believe, her third passport. She's been through a revolution in South America, she's worked in such obscure places as Angola for extended periods of time, and her travels have taken her to every continent except Antarctica, but her travels and travails across and throughout South America have taken her pretty close to that one.
I myself am not so well traveled. I've stayed at home with the kids over the years, and worked my own government job. I've been to Mexico numerous times, although not in the past nearly three decades. And I've been to the Bahamas once. Unless you count Oklahoma as a foreign country, which I do, and through which I recently traveled as fast as possible on a recent vacation. I'll explain the Oklahoma reference in a later post regarding our Spring Break Vacation this year.
A great example is why I still have a google alert for Raymond Davis, the CIA employee/operative/consultant/contractor who was arrested and detained for some time last year in Pakistan for killing two attackers in a clear case of self-defense.
If you don't recall the Raymond Davis situation, I'll briefly recount my obviously biased version of the same. First, although my more liberal friends strongly disagree with me, Raymond Davis is an American Hero. He put his life on the line for our government to protect our way of life and combat terrorism at it's source. And he got jailed for a number of months after the shootout in Lahore.
Working out of the American embassy in Lahore, Pakistan, which can generously be described as a hotbed of Islamic Anti-American terrrorism, he was driving in his car performing some type of intelligence mission. From the pictures, if true, published in the various so-called Pakistan online news outlets, the equipment he had with him indicated to me he was performing some type of triangulation of cell phone calls in attempts to locate terrorists of some sort.
Perhaps he was even working on the location of Osama Bin Laden, since at the time Raymond was attacked Osama was alive and living in his Pakistani hideout, replete with a virtual marijuana plantation behind his compound and a full complement of pornography in print, digital and dvd. Old Osama was not exactly the model muslim.
Attacked by armed motorcylists, which is a standard assassination technique in places like Pakistan, Raymond being a special forces type of guy let fly with his Glock 19 and "Glocked" his erstwhile assassins. Speculations ranged from the extremes that they were islamic terrorist operatives to being operatives for the Pakistani Government Intelligence Agency. Unfortunately, the Pakistani's have shown some complicity in working with terrorists against American interests, so I can't totally discount that theory.
TO paraphrase what was best said by Robert Deniro in the recent flick Killer Elite...Raymond's aim was true, and his would be killers went on to their virginal paradise in the great beyond. Not being a Muslim myself, I hope they went to the Pearly Gates where they were judged by old Saint Peter and placed on that red express-to-hell elevator that only heads in the down direction.
Although Raymond Davis radioed or called for help from the Embassy, his distance from it precluded a rescue team from reaching him before the local populace and so-called law enforcement took Raymond into custody. It speaks to the character of Raymond that he didn't take on these masses with the firepower the Pakistani news pictures portray him as having with him. He was only defending himself from murder and only did what he had to do in self defense, so he did not open fire on the large number of Anti-American citizens that surrounded him and assisted in his capture.
In any event, I was glad the the US did what was necessary to prevent physical harm (greater than he probably suffered) or death of Raymond while held captive. Although I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, I have come to believe in the years since Obama's election that Hillary is responsible for solving numerous international conflicts and problems. She didn't let Raymond Davis get forgotten and she got him out, undoubtedly with the help and efforts of many other patriots.
So going back to the original focus of this post, which is that the Raymond Davis griping from the Pakistani media still continues to this day. They wrongly blame him and the other incident in which justice found Obama hiding in Pakistan in a location that at least some Pakistani government officials had to know about, given what I've read in more credible forms of media reports.
Let me say at this point that I'm doing what I as a law enforcement official frequently decry others not to do, and that is believe media reports. But some reports had to be true, and others undoubtedly had some elements of truth, even the hyperbole laden Pakistani media reports. I'm not employed in international or national intelligence, I'm just an average American who keeps up with international events and has read enough about our intelligence activities in other countries and of our battle against terrorism and terrorists that would destroy our American way of life to be able to determine what I believe to be the most reasonable explanations of events.
Surely I'm wrong on some accounts, but I believe I have a better understanding because I use the same technique to review these news reports as I do in my law enforcement duties, where I have found that the truth is often somewhere between two opposing stories and differing details.
So more than a year after Raymond was abducted by the Lahore police and elements of various intelligence agencies regarding his defense of himself, the Pakistani media still buzzes with their mostly highly propagandized versions of events that bear little if any resemblence to the truth as we know it about the events of Raymond's situation.
They scream and yell about his activities and about how Seal Team number 6 brought a heroic dose of justice to Osama Bin Laden, who had been owed a come-uppance by America since well before 911. It upsets some Pakistanisgreatly that we didn't consult their intelligence and army elements with our Osama plans, despite the fact that sheer common sense defies the fact that they didn't know he was living in their country.
I am aware than many Pakistanis welcome the American government meddling in their corrupt government. They yearn for the freedom and guarantee of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in their country. I attended college with a nice Pakistani gentlemen who feared returning to his county after completing his education in America, and this was some years ago. He had an arranged marriage waiting for his return, but fortunately they were in love with each other, and this union is not what he dreaded. He dreaded the return to a country where rhetoric and lies are used to incite an emotional populace against freedom as many in the world know it.
I often wonder what has happened to my good Pakistani friend, who was by the way of the Christian persuasion. His departure was well before the advent of email and cell phones, and thus I don't have an email or cell number for him, and although Billy Ray and I both knew this gentleman well and and worry about his current safety as a right thinking Pakistani, we have no idea what happened to him in all of these intervening years. I wish I had the resources and the capital to track him down but I don't. And I'm not likely to visit Pakistan to search for him to determine the hopeful well-being of a long gone friend as I have my own family here take care of and the ends do not justify the risk.. I've tried searching the internet for him with no success. In my heart of hearts, I hope that sometime over the past few decades he mananged to return to his beloved America with his bride and hopefully his family to live a different and better kind of life, but something tells me he was committed to his country and trying to make it a better place and stayed there. Perhaps one day I'll find out what happened to my Pakistani friends.
Many of my pro-American friends worried about the safety of Raymond Davis during his months of captivity, as did I. I couldn't help myself but I followed the event of his captivity and ultimate release with a ferver. This is one of those events that my friend Cowboy says I waste my time on. I disagree. Situations like the Raymond Davis.
The Raymond Davis situation was just one of the many efforts to help our country fight terrorism. Raymond is now, as I understand it, back in the US of A and back with his family. I hope he is happily living a great life.
When I think of Raymond Davis, I think of the exchange given in the triple XXX movies where Samuel Lee Jackson comments on the facial scars he bears, when he says something like it is a small price to pay for putting foot to ass to protect America.
Just as the Pakistani media and indeed, probably the government, uses the Raymond Davis situation as fodder to inflame it's populace through tortured version of those events, so should it remind us that we have many Americans like Raymond around the world attempted to ensure that our way of life continues. I salute Raymond Davis and have self-dubbed my Glock 19 as "The Raymond Davis Model". It's the least I can do to thank this man for defending my country and keeping my family safe.
I hope you feel the same way.
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Amen!
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