Will the Pakis get the Sparrow to work on their F-16As?

"Hobo" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"Tom Cooper" wrote:

. But, no: a vast majority of the Pakistanis have
nothing in common with the West, nor any access to it

Pakis have vastly greater access to the West than Iranians.

Can you confirm this by some statistics? How many Pakistani students have
studied on Western universities in the last 30 years, just for example?

I know that the Shah was sending something like 250.000 Iranian students to
study in the USA and Europe between 1970 and 1974 alone, or that there were
over 700.000 Iranians working in German car-factories and mines in the late
1970s alone. I don't know how it is in the USA, but the Europe is still full
of Persian MDs.

It is much
easier for a Paki to study engineering at MIT than an Iranian.

Again: have you any statistics that confirms this?

The Pakis
have more in common with the West than the Iranians because Iran was
never a European colony.

Well, is everything done in the West and in the "Western" manner the best?
Does this mean that everything somebody else does in a manner different than
in the West is automatically wrong?

But, if things of this kind mean so much to you, and this is how you "sort"
countries into "more pro-Western" and "less pro-Western", let me remind you
that in the mid-1970s the Shah of Persia asked a Western journalist, why is
he getting so much bad press about his brutal regime; why isn't the Western
press criticising other local Arab and the Pakistani regimes for their
supression and brutality against the oppostion. The journalist answered:
because we consider you as a part of the West, and the others not.

Clearly, the situation changed since 1979, but I seriously doubt that Iran
ever had to be anybody's colony to get more "pro-Western". As first, the
Iranians are generaly very proud and patriotic, so I doubt they could become
a true colony in the first place. As second, don't forget that -
technically - Iran was actually under the British and then the US rule for
over 70 years, which in turn is one of the reasons why the Iranians started
their revolution in 1979, and quite a few of them still have "very strong"
feelings against the British or the Americans.

Of course, it is certainly so that Pakistan has specific things in common
with the West: the country is one of the main producents of drugs smuggled
into the Europe (together with Afghanistan). This is a fact confirmed by
almost 100.000 Pakistani and Afghani drug-smugglers imprisoned in Iran, as
well as some particularly massive Iranian drug-busting operations along -
and often enough also beyond - the Pakistani border. But isn't the lack of
similar actions on the part of the Pakistani authorities pointing at the
fact that they do not care all too much about the situation, probably due to
all of their care and feelings for the West?

Otherwise, if you really want to know how much Pakistan has "in common with
the West", I strongly suggest you to take a flight to Kharachi or Islamabad
(I think BA has several flights weekly), then rent a 4x4 and take a few days
drive around the country. Just don't forget to ascertain armed escort if you
move anywhere into west or north: you could otherwise get a pretty "western"
feeling there.

The Paki army has legions of quality bagpipers
as a result of colonialization, the Iranian army is a bagpipe free zone.

Well, thank's Lord: I guess the Iranian military really isn't in need of
bag-pipers too (except, of course, you consider bag-pipers a sign of
progress and the widespread high-tech in the country and its military). They
have enough to do with the Mullahs looking permanently over their shoulders:
bag-pipers could just be too much for them to bear.

But, one aspect of this thought of yours is definitely interesting: how
comes it didn't help the Pakistani military to develop the capaility to make
their own Sparrows if they have bag-pipers, and this makes them so much
pro-Western?

I don't buy your argument that the Pakis got the bomb first due to
priorities. The mullahs would trade their mothers for a nuke.

Sigh. OK. So, please be so kind and explain me why haven't they traded their
mothers for nukes so far?

One would think they have had enough opportunity in the last 24 years to
organize such a deal....?

BTW, do you perhaps need few "pro-Western" citates from the members of the
Pakistani military and the establishment?

Tom Cooper
Co-Author:
Iran-Iraq War in the Air, 1980-1988:
http://www.acig.org/pg1/content.php
and,
Iranian F-4 Phantom II Units in Combat:
http://www.osprey-publishing.co.uk/t...hp/title=S6585