All praises for Allah Karim; 
   

Immeasurable Darood-o-Salam on Rasool-Ullah Salalaho Allaihe Wasalam [SAWS], and may blessings and peace be upon his family and his company, and the successors who came after him and the community of those who follow his path – may they be greeted with peace.

Prayers for everyone !

May Allah Karim SWT Bestow upon you the highest rewards for what He made you do for us, May He SWT rest you in peace during BARZAKH and after the Judgment Day. Aameen.

Nation is celebrating your birthday with a change of guard at your Mausoleum (Pray to Allah Karim SWT that it goes for a change of heart and deeds as well), through statements paying you homage (Pray that it takes time to see its own statement of deeds towards your Pakistan), via write ups like this one to remember you (Pray that it sees the writing on the wall written through its irresponsible performance for the last six decades after you left it), through electronic media talks and print media supplements (Pray to Allah Karim SWT that it finds time to read the volumes of everything mis...............).

You were the chosen one and we have not measured up to the task once you left us (good for you because we have a very poor record of treating our benefactors). We have proved to be unworthy heirs. We could not retain even that which Allah Karim SWT granted us through you. 

We know that you were pronounced dead by your Doctor in 1946 but Allah Karim made you live to see your assignment completed. We accept that physically we are very fit, very healthy (mentally sick though entire nation is) yet we have not completed a single assignment till date.

We know that you were all rules and nothing else; only indiscretion (as per outsiders) you ever committed was to drive to the house of Viceroy asking him "get me my Pakistan else I get your India destroyed" after your Doctor had told you that you were dead as far as he was concerned. Unfortunately (for your information) we never believed in rule of law and have no intent to do so any time in future.

We know that even your worst enemies can not point a spot on your character - (moral, financial and as a leader). We  for your information are covered under black stains in every sphere of life.

You didn't allow your brother to use your name on the visiting card 'as Governed General had no brothers - M A Jinnah had'. We do not hesitate to use the name of Allah Karim SWT for our dirty stuff.

The list of our blemishes is long but we haven't lost hope because as your friend and mentor Allama Iqbal RA had said:

All praises for Allah Karim; 
   

Immeasurable Darood-o-Salam on Rasool-Ullah Salalaho Allaihe Wasalam [SAWS], and may blessings and peace be upon his family and his company, and the successors who came after him and the community of those who follow his path – may they be greeted with peace.

Prayers for everyone !

I witnessed something in the morning today - worth sharing:

A little thought on the entire episode yielded:

  

All praises for Allah Karim; 
   

Immeasurable Darood-o-Salam on Rasool-Ullah Salalaho Allaihe Wasalam [SAWS], and may blessings and peace be upon his family and his company, and the successors who came after him and the community of those who follow his path – may they be greeted with peace.

Prayers for everyone !

I came across this beautiful Hadith-E-Qudsi about Allah Karim's Infinite Mercy provided we do not join others with Him: 

Allah Karim, ever Mighty and Majestic is He, says: 

All praises for Allah Karim; 
   

Immeasurable Darood-o-Salam on Rasool-Ullah Salalaho Allaihe Wasalam [SAWS], and may blessings and peace be upon his family and his company, and the successors who came after him and the community of those who follow his path – may they be greeted with peace.

I really am, at a loss to understand as to why we have decided to kill everything which is associated with life and humanity? The heinous and heartless murder of poor men and women working for a noble cause defies any logic. Murderers are at large and everywhere. I don't know till when we will keep on singing RAAG MALHAAR when our JHONPARIA is at fire? 

What is going around is nothing but MAKAFAAT-E-AMAL (fruit of our deeds). Allah Karim Says in Quran:

[Since they have become oblivious of Allah] FASAAD (mischief and corruption) has appeared on land and in the sea as an outcome of what people's hands have wrought: and so Allah will let them taste {the evil of} some of their doings, so that they might return to the right path. AR-RUM (30) : 41.

AND HIGH TIME IT IS TO RETURN TO THE RIGHT PATH

Before signing off let me also quote few verses from SADA-E-DARD of great scholar and seer Dr. Muhammad Iqbal RA:

Part 3: No Room for the Evils of the World

After work, she would drive home along US Highway 85 into Las Vegas, listening to country music and passing peace activists without looking at them. She rarely thought about what happened in the cockpit. But sometimes she would review the individual steps in her head, hoping to improve her performance.
Or she would go shopping. It felt strange to her, sometimes, when the woman at the register would ask: "How's it going?" She would answer: "I'm good. How are you? Have a nice day." When she felt restless she would go for a run. She says that being able to help the boys on the ground motivated her to get up every morning.
There was no room for the evils of the world in Meyer's home. She and her husband, a drone pilot, didn't talk about work. She would put on her pajamas and watch cartoons on TV or play with the baby.
Today Meyer has two small children. She wants to show them "that mommy can get to work and do a good job." She doesn't want to be like the women in Afghanistan she watched -- submissive and covered from head to toe. "The women there are no warriors," she says. Meyer says that he current job as a trainer is very satisfying but that, one day, she would like to return to combat duty.
'I Can't Just Switch Back and Go Back to Normal Life'
At some point, Brandon Bryant just wanted to get out and do something else. He spent a few more months overseas, this time in Afghanistan. But then, when he returned to New Mexico, he found that he suddenly hated the cockpit, which smelled of sweat. He began spraying air freshener to get rid of the stench. He also found he wanted to do something that saved lives rather than took them away. He thought working as a survival trainer might fit the bill, although his friends tried to dissuade him.
The program that he then began working on in his bungalow in Clovis every day was called Power 90 Extreme, a boot camp-style fitness regimen. It included dumbbell training, push-ups, chin-ups and sit-ups. He also lifted weights almost every day.
On uneventful days in the cockpit, he would write in his diary, jotting down lines like: "On the battlefield there are no sides, just bloodshed. Total war. Every horror witnessed. I wish my eyes would rot."
If he could just get into good enough shape, he thought to himself, they would let him do something different. The problem was that he was pretty good at his job.
At some point he no longer enjoyed seeing his friends. He met a girl, but she complained about his bad moods. "I can't just switch and go back to normal life," he told her. When he came home and couldn't sleep, he would exercise instead. He began talking back to his superior officers.
One day he collapsed at work, doubling over and spitting blood. The doctor told him to stay home, and ordered him not to return to work until he could sleep more than four hours a night for two weeks in a row.
"Half a year later, I was back in the cockpit, flying drones," says Bryant, sitting in his mother's living room in Missoula. His dog whimpers and lays its head on his cheek. He can't get to his own furniture at the moment. It's in storage, and he doesn't have the money to pay the bill. All he has left is his computer.
Bryant posted a drawing on Facebook the night before our interview. It depicts a couple standing, hand-in-hand, in a green meadow, looking up at the sky. A child and a dog are sitting on the ground next to them. But the meadow is just a part of the world. Beneath it is a sea of dying soldiers, propping themselves up with their last bit of strength, a sea of bodies, blood and limbs.
Doctors at the Veterans' Administration diagnosed Bryant with post-traumatic stress disorder. General hopes for a comfortable war -- one that could be completed without emotional wounds -- haven't been fulfilled. Indeed, Bryan's world has melded with that of the child in Afghanistan. It's like a short circuit in the brain of the drones.

Part 2: An Unpopular Job

After graduating from high school, Bryant wanted to become an investigative journalist. He used to go to church on Sundays, and he had a thing for redheaded cheerleaders. By the end of his first semester at college, he had already racked up thousands of dollars in debt.
He came to the military by accident. One day, while accompanying a friend who was enlisting in the army, he heard that the Air Force had its own university, and that he could get a college education for free. Bryant did so well in tests that he was assigned to an intelligence collection unit. He learned how to control the cameras and lasers on a drone, as well as to analyze ground images, maps and weather data. He became a sensor operator, more or less the equivalent to a co-pilot.
He was 20 when he flew his first mission over Iraq. It was a hot, sunny day in Nevada, but it was dark inside the container and just before daybreak in Iraq. A group of American soldiers were on their way back to their base camp. Bryant's job was to monitor the road, to be their "guardian angel" in the sky.
He saw an eye, a shape in the asphalt. "I knew the eye from the training," he says. To bury an improvised explosive device in the road, the enemy combatants place a tire on the road and burn it to soften the asphalt. Afterwards it looks like an eye from above.
The soldiers' convoy was still miles away from the eye. Bryant told his supervisor, who notified the command center. He was forced to look on for several minutes, Bryant says today, as the vehicles approached the site.
"What should we do?" he asked his coworker.
But the pilot was also new on the job.
The soldiers on the ground couldn't be reached by radio, because they were using a jamming transmitter. Bryant saw the first vehicle drive over the eye. Nothing happened.
Then the second vehicle drove over it. Bryant saw a flash beneath, followed by an explosion inside the vehicle.
Five American soldiers were killed.
From then on, Bryant couldn't keep the five fellow Americans out of his thoughts. He began learning everything by heart, including the manuals for the Predator and the missiles, and he familiarized himself with every possible scenario. He was determined to be the best, so that this kind of thing would never happen again.
'I Felt Disconnected from Humanity'
His shifts lasted up to 12 hours. The Air Force still had a shortage of personnel for its remote-controlled war over Iraq and Afghanistan. Drone pilots were seen as cowardly button-pushers. It was such an unpopular job that the military had to bring in retired personnel.
Bryant remembers the first time he fired a missile, killing two men instantly. As Bryant looked on, he could see a third man in mortal agony. The man's leg was missing and he was holding his hands over the stump as his warm blood flowed onto the ground -- for two long minutes. He cried on his way home, says Bryant, and he called his mother.
"I felt disconnected from humanity for almost a week," he says, sitting in his favorite coffee shop in Missoula, where the smell of cinnamon and butter wafts in the air. He spends a lot of time there, watching people and reading books by Nietzsche and Mark Twain, sometimes getting up to change seats. He can't sit in one place for very long anymore, he says. It makes him nervous.
His girlfriend broke up with him recently. She had asked him about the burden he carries, so he told her about it. But it proved to be a hardship she could neither cope with nor share.
When Bryant drives through his hometown, he wears aviator sunglasses and a Palestinian scarf. The inside of his Chrysler is covered with patches from his squadrons. On his Facebook page, he's created a photo album of his coins, unofficial medals he was awarded. All he has is this one past. He wrestles with it, but it is also a source of pride.
When he was sent to Iraq in 2007, he posted the words "ready for action" on his profile. He was assigned to an American military base about 100 kilometers (63 miles) from Baghdad, where his job was to take off and land drones.
As soon as the drones reached flying altitude, pilots in the United States took over. The Predator can remain airborne for an entire day, but it is also slow, which is why it is stationed near the area of operation. Bryant posed for photos wearing sand-colored overalls and a bulletproof vest, leaning against a drone.
Two years later, the Air Force accepted him into a special unit, and he was transferred to the Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. He and a fellow soldier shared a bungalow in a dusty town called Clovis, which consists mainly of trailers, gas stations and evangelical churches. Clovis is located hours away from the nearest city.
Bryant preferred night shifts, because that meant it was daytime in Afghanistan. In the spring, the landscape, with its snow-covered peaks and green valleys, reminded him of his native Montana. He saw people cultivating their fields, boys playing soccer and men hugging their wives and children.
When it got dark, Bryant switched to the infrared camera. Many Afghans sleep on the roof in the summer, because of the heat. "I saw them having sex with their wives. It's two infrared spots becoming one," he recalls.
He observed people for weeks, including Taliban fighters hiding weapons, and people who were on lists because the military, the intelligence agencies or local informants knew something about them.
"I got to know them. Until someone higher up in the chain of command gave me the order to shoot." He felt remorse because of the children, whose fathers he was taking away. "They were good daddies," he says.
In his free time, Bryant played video games or "World of Warcraft" on the Internet, or he went out drinking with the others. He can't watch TV anymore because it is neither challenging or stimulating enough for him. He's also having trouble sleeping these days.
'There Was No Time for Feelings'
Major Vanessa Meyer, whose real name is covered with black tape, is giving a presentation at the Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico on the training of drone pilots. The Air Force plans to have enough personnel to cover its needs by 2013.
Meyer, 34, who is wearing lip gloss and a diamond on her finger, used to fly cargo planes before she became a drone pilot. Dressed in green Air Force overalls, she is standing in a training cockpit and, using a simulator to demonstrate how a drone is guided over Afghanistan. The crosshair on the monitor follows a white car until it reaches a group of mud huts. One uses the joystick to determine the drone's direction, and the left hand is used to operate the lever that slows down or accelerates the unmanned aircraft. On an airfield behind the container, Meyer shows us the Predator, slim and shiny, and its big brother, the Reaper, which carries four missiles and a bomb. "Great planes," she says. "They just don't work in bad weather."
Meyer flew drones at Creech, the air base near Las Vegas, where young men drive in and out in sports cars and mountain chains stretch across the desert like giant reptiles. Describing his time as a drone pilot in Nevada, Colonel Matt Martin wrote in his book "Predator" that, "Sometimes I felt like God hurling thunderbolts from afar." Meyer had her first child when she was working there. She was still sitting in the cockpit, her stomach pressing up against the keyboard, in her ninth month of pregnancy.
"There was no time for feelings" when she was preparing for an attack, she says today. Of course, she says, she felt her heart beating faster and the adrenaline rushing through her body. But then she adhered strictly to the rules and focused on positioning the aircraft. "When the decision had been made, and they saw that this was an enemy, a hostile person, a legal target that was worthy of being destroyed, I had no problem with taking the shot."