Reductio ad borderum

Reducing everything to a matter of borders

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

The special award for gross oversimplification goes to Sajjad Karim, Member of the European Parliament for North West England. According to him:

The lack of secure defined borders whether it be the Durand Line bordering Afghanistan or the line of control in Kashmir is one problem. Until the international community faces the challenge of providing Pakistan with defined borders, a task left incomplete by the British in 1947, we can never hope for a stable, secure and democratically based society.

The best way in which to repay the people of Pakistan for the stance they have taken in putting their country on the front line is to give them this stability. Without this you simply apply sticking plaster where much more is required. More so, programmes aimed at supporting democratic processes or other civil society reforms, while valuable, will always prove to be ultimately temporary and ineffective. [Times Online]Of course, the possibility that a stable, secure and democratically based society might be what is necessary to have secure defined borders did not cross Mr Karim’s mind. Nor did the fact that Pakistanis showed themselves capable of acquiring secure defined borders by ceding territory to China in 1963. In any case, hasn’t the EU tired of irredentism already?

Tailpiece: For you Latin fundamentalists: yes, borderum is incorrect. It should probably be ambitus, margino, but borderum has a better ring to it.

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