Nobody's talking about that.
That wasn't a reason for invading Iraq? For going into Liberia? Serbia? Our embargo against Cuba?
If we don't help Musharraf and the Taliban takes him down, the Taliban gets those nukes. Then what?
I don't like nukes in *either* of their hands. One is just as bad as the other.
....as opposed to sitting around waiting for bin Laden to become the world's first terrorist nuclear power.
Well, it's not as easy as a) acquire nuclear weapons and b) use them. There are a LOT of steps in between (such as testing, acquiring a delivery system, etc) so I believe your concerns are overblown (but not without merit).
Yeah, well, whenever faced with a choice between the two, you always have to pick the lesser one- like it or not.
And that's exactly the mess we got in with Bin Laden, Saddam, Iran-Contra, Noriega, etc. Perhaps if we hadn't failed so many times using this logic I would be more receptive.
You still haven't offered a better solution. That's the bottom line. If you can come up with one there's a lot of people out there that would probably like to know about it.
Hey -- I hear ya. But giving billions of dollars of *my* tax money to a military dictator who seized power through a coup, then re-wrote the constitution to give himself ultimate control over the entire country, and who regularly threatens his neighbor (India) is incredibly short-sighted.
In short, I have a hard time believing that the ONLY option we have is dealing with Pakistan as our ally. That's as lazy as it gets with foreign policy.
Uhhh. No.
Musharraf wants nukes as a deterrence to India. The Taliban and al Qaeda want nukes so they can set one or more off in the US. Big difference.Well, it's not as easy as a) acquire nuclear weapons and b) use them. There are a LOT of steps in between (such as testing, acquiring a delivery system, etc) so I believe your concerns are overblown (but not without merit).
The testing has already been done. See that's the difference between having to develop the weapons from scratch and simply appropriating a fully functional nuke program. We already know Pakistan knows how to detonate a nuke- this is not in question. The delivery system already exists. It's called container ships. It is impossible for us to track every container ship that comes to America. We can only account for about 1% of them. We cannot account for what might land in Mexico and as you already know, it is impossible for us to police our southern border effectively. Drug cartels from Central and South America have an existing network they use to subvert our nation's borders- a network that is, BTW, much more effective at getting stuff in than we are at keeping stuff out.
This is the problem when we merely consider the continental US. The problem is magnified when we look at how many targets for a truck borne nuke there are out there in the larger world. Imagine one going off in down town Tokyo...
In short, I have a hard time believing that the ONLY option we have is dealing with Pakistan as our ally. That's as lazy as it gets with foreign policy.
Oh it's not our only option. We can nuke them or invade them. At the moment, we do not have the forces to invade. That leaves nuking them. Would you want to do this? I imagine Russia and China wouldn't like that too much. You wouldn't just want to do it without warning those two either- things could get out of control.
There is another solution but it requires Musharraf's cooperation. We need his cooperation to monitor these tribes with whom bin Laden is hiding. We need to be able to violate the sovereignty of Pakistan when necessary so our SpecOps guys can conduct missions in the country. This allows us to keep a lid on bin Laden. This money you see going to Pakistan is buying that sort of thing.
Like I said though, if you have a better idea...