PAKISTAN- IS A SOVEREIGN NATION

THE DOCTOR IS IN
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LAS VEGAS - Hello America, and how's the world treating you?

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently visited Pakistan and she refused to answer some of the reporters questions when asked her why the United States is firing missiles into Pakistan and killing hundreds in the civilian population.

Pakistan, an alleged ally has experienced bombings by the United States drones and a large part of the population there resent the attacks on their citizens. The United States shoots these missiles directly into Pakistan and so far, approximatley 700 civilian deaths have been reported because of the attacks.

Many in this country, like myself, and others around the world beieve that the United States is violating International law by such missile attacks.

We have never delared war on Pakistan and I would think that these constant missile attacks are being made against a sovereign nation. Pakistan is not a nation that attacked the United States. We are not at war with Pakistan and we have never legally declared war against Pakistan.

I do not believe the United States can rationalize the missile strikes as "hot pursuit" when they willy-nilly send the missiles into Pakistan. In any event, hot pursuit usually only applies to action on the high seas.

To the best of my recollection there has never ever been an act of hot pursuit into another sovereign nation. However, I think the United States will argue that attacking an ally and taking out alleged targets in Pakistan is "hot pursuit" just because they chose to do it and can do it.

These missile attacks are clearly not self-defense and I believe it would be hard to argue that we, the United States, has a right to attack another sovereign nation. To my way of thinking the missile attacks appear to be illegal. To date I do not see any stated authority which would allow the United States to attack another country that is not at war with us.

Some powers around the world believe that what we are doing in Pakistan is a war crime. I submit that if North Korea or Iran or any other power would do the exact same thing that we are currently doing to Pakistan we, the United States, would be screaming bloody murder to high heaven and say that such an act is a war crime and would take retaliation measures against those countries.

At the end of World War II we were one of the first countries to claim that waterboarding was indeed a war crime and we did prosecute individuals for the crime of waterboarding but when the United States have prisoners waterboarded, we don't acknowledge it is a war crime. It's no secret that individuals from other countries are brought before the world court facing war crimes but the United States refuses to allow anyone from our country to be prosecuted on war crimes. It appears there is a lot of "don't do as I do, but do as I say" when it comes to facing up and wanting to be treated like we treat others.

I have no doubt that if some other country fired missiles into our country we would not stand for it and would declare war on the aggressor in a heart beat. Yet, we have an attitude that we can go where we want and do what we want all over the planet.

These deadly missile strikes and the United States pre-emptive actions against other countries is unwarranted. We can dish it out but we can't take it. I believe that we should cease the missile attacks into Pakistan. Let the Pakinstan government and it's military deal with the Taliban and al-Qaida.-And, that's my opinion.

Bradley W. Kuhns, Ph.D., O.M.D.
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Dr. Kuhns can be reached by e-mail at:
bradleykuhns@gmail.com