I've got to believe that the Bush administration knows Pakistan is our enemy as well. It's like being in bed with Stalin against Hitler in WWII. It's only a matter of time before the snake bites us anyway, that is his nature. The fact that we are still in a "relationship" with (if you can call it that) Saudi Arabia, the fountainhead of Al Quaeda and Wahhabism, confirms the fact that we have strange partners in this war on terrorism. Schizophrenic in fact.
I suspect the permanent military bases we are building in Iraq are there in order to deal with Iran, Pakistan, Syria, etc. as we proceed down this road in dealing with the madness of Islam in all it's manifestations. However, that's assuming Iraq will become a democracy (of some kind) and friend of the West. Only time will tell. History,in dealing with Islam, unfortunately, has not been promising.
6 posted on
12/10/2005 1:16:06 AM PST by
john drake
(roman military maxim: "oderint dum metuant, i.e., let them hate, as long as they fear")
It is not popular to observe on these threads that our only indispensable enemy in the fight against Islamist terrorism is a rational Islam. Ultimately, stakeholders in a rational society, which also happened to be Islamic societies, must come to an understanding that they must kill Islamist terrorists or die by their hands. I know that it's typical to find an Islamic society today which one could easily identify as "rational". Turkey, Jordan, perhaps parts of Malaysia are moving in that direction.
Before Bush began courting Mussarraf, the prospects were very real that Pakistan would tip into the the same abyss that had swallowed Afghanistan under the Taliban. Now at least those who are officially in power can be said at least in limited measure to be fighting Islamist terrorists They may be doing so halfheartedly to be sure, indeed, they may be riddled with spies and fifth columnists who effectively frustrate much of these efforts. But we are not confronted with the necessity to invade a nuclear power with an army that is clearly overstretched and embark on a campaign which would make the occupation of Iraq look entirely pacific..
One can see progress in Saudi Arabia as the powers that be come to understand that the greatest threat to the Saudi throne comes from the terrorists and fundamentalists. Whether the Saudis can be said to have had a real epiphany or not remains to be seen but I do not think it's naïve to say that what we got is better than what we had..
In this generation's long struggle against Islamist terrorism, our ability to motivate, recruit, and deploy rational Muslims against their crazed brothers is the ultimate key to our own national survival. That is why the undermining of America's image in the Islamic world with stories about Abu Ghraib or secret torture prisons are so terribly irresponsible.
