The woman who Obama adviser Samantha Power (right) is listening to so intently in this picture is Maleeha Lodhi (left), a former Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., at a Harvard panel last month. The panel was absent neocons, and included Steve Coll of the left-center New America Foundation and Mark Garlasco of Human Rights Watch. Per the Crimson [emphasis mine]:
relationship between Pakistan and the U.S. as precarious and facing
“increasing hostility.”
“A trust deficit has emerged between the two nations,” she said.
She said the U.S. must stop treating Pakistan “as hired help”
rather than an ally. [Barnett] Rubin also called for an increased focus on
Pakistan.
“The war on terror should focus on where terrorists are recruited, trained, and armed, and that is Pakistan,” he said.
Lodhi, however, said she took issue with the phrase “war on terror.”
“There needs to be a change in rhetoric,” she said. “‘War on terror’ was a very unfortunate metaphor that must be dropped.”
Lodhi said that the phrase has led to the popular perception in the Middle East that the U.S. is fighting a war on Islam.
She called for a strategy that was “mutually reinforcing” of the stability of Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“A strategy for the stabilization of Afghanistan cannot lead to the destabilization of Pakistan,” she said.
