Posted on 06/03/2002 5:34:10 PM PDT by RJCogburn
The Bush administration seems to be twisting itself into a knot of confusion over the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan, dispatching an array of diplomats to try to "ease the tensions" between the two countries — without doing anything to eliminate the cause of those "tensions."
The actual solution is quite simple. Bush has the means to prevent this war, and he is probably the only person in the world who can do so. All he needs to do is what he should have done nine months ago.
He needs to take over Pakistan.
After September 11, as part of the so-called "Bush Doctrine," the president declared to the nations of the world: "You're either with us or you're with the terrorists." But Pakistan has been with the terrorists for more than a decade — and it has not given up that allegiance.
Remember that Pakistan's intelligence agency helped create the Taliban and put it in power in Afghanistan. Under American threats, Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf made a halfhearted about-face and cooperated with the United States in the war in Afghanistan. But Musharraf has been playing a double game. While he nominally cooperates against al-Qaeda, Musharraf's government has supported the same kind of terrorists — including some members of al-Qaeda — as they wage a terrorist war against India.
That war started in earnest less than a month after September 11, when Pakistan-backed rebels set off a bomb outside the Kashmir-Jammu state assembly building. In December — finding that the world did not care about terrorist attacks on India — the rebels got more ambitious, staging a shooting attack on the Indian parliament in New Delhi. Imagine if Osama bin Laden's operatives stormed the capitol building in Washington, D.C., and you will get some idea of the seriousness of this attack.
Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf announced a "crackdown" on the terrorist groups he sponsored, and he rounded up 200 Islamic militants. This proved every bit as effective as the occasional crackdown Yasser Arafat announces against his terrorist friends. Musharraf kept the militants in jail until the world's attention wandered — which doesn't take long — then let them out again. Since then, they have bombed a bus full of women and children and attacked an Indian army outpost.
If you wonder what makes Musharraf think he can get away with this, consider President Bush's most recent statement on the issue: "He must stop the incursions across the Line of Control. He must do so. He said he would do so. We and others are making it clear to him that he must live up to his word." This is exactly how the administration has talked about Yasser Arafat — who, despite his continued support of terrorism, still gets U.S. funding and political support.
Like the war in Israel, the coming war between India and Pakistan is deeply connected to America's interests. For example, how did the sponsor of Kashmir's terrorism, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, react when an Afghan warlord declared holy war against the United States on Thursday? Hamid Gul, former head of the ISI, told reporters: "There is certainly a lot of sympathy for him in ISI, but that doesn't necessarily translate into material assistance." How reassuring.
A dictatorship whose powerful intelligence service is sympathetic to a holy war against the United States is not an ally in the War on Terrorism. To think that they are an illusion, and like all foreign policy illusions, this one has deadly consequences. Millions of people may die in a nuclear war that America can prevent.
America must come off the fence and take India's side in this conflict. Pakistan's leaders may delude themselves that they can survive India's superior conventional and nuclear capabilities. But they will not dare to oppose the United States, especially now that American troops are stationed in Pakistan and American planes fly freely through its airspace. As former ISI chief Gul puts it, "The Americans are everywhere here right now."
Pakistan's time is up. It can no longer be trusted to fight against terrorism. The country should be thoroughly garrisoned with American troops; our military and intelligence apparatus should direct all efforts toward gaining control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons; we must subject the country to a de facto occupation. We must stop being "allies" and start giving orders.
The Bush administration launched its War on Terrorism by abandoning Israel to a massive wave of suicide bombings. America should not continue this policy by abandoning another victim of terrorism, India, to a brutal nuclear war.
Occupation? No. The US casualties would be horrible.
And, as Patton said, one does not win wars by dying for one's country. One wins by making the other fellow die for his. Ergo, to win, one must cause a great many terrorist fellow travelers die...
Since then, Pakistan has been nothing but trouble. It is an impoverished, unstable, ungovernable mess and a breeding ground and haven for our worst enemies.
I favor undoing the error of 1948, and reunifying India.
Pakistan delenda est.
Do we want to wait 10 years and hand our kids the problem to solve? I don't.
- Musharraf is nothing more than an Arafat with nukes
- Terrorism is ingrained in the Pakistani psyche and establisment
- Their help in the war against terrorism has been marginal at best; in many cases they have have created major stumbling blocks.
- No more coddling of terrorists; be they in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, Africa or at home.
I don't agree with:
- American invasion of Pakistan...not yet. I would prefer a joint Indian/US/British/Russian effort to neutralize the nukes, but China will not take that lying down.
I'm amazed sometimes at the usually sensible conservatives who want an all out war -- whether in this instance or the Middle East.
War is always a tragedy. If there is another way, it is conservative and sensible to find it.
But America can't do this, either.
It can't get anymore blunt and mater-of-fact than this! The longer we coddle this "ally", the deeper we dig our own grave. Musharraf should be dropped like a ton of bricks. He is the cover to Al Qaida, thru the ISI.
Yes, I agree.
The results of our empire-busting policy since 1919 have been poor. I think the Arabs (and we) would be much better off with them as part of a multinational state, and we would certainly be better off with India's western frontier being Iran.
(As an Irish-American, I can see the point of the Indian desire for independence. However, independence -- as opposed to dominion status -- may have been the wrong course for India, just as independence -- as opposed to home rule -- may have been the wrong course for Ireland. Without independence, it is possible Ireland might not have had to be divided, and the same might be said of India.)
It wasn't clear in 1948 what a disaster Pakistan would eventually turn out to be. Jinnah and his immediate successors were basically secularist nominal Moslems, and they ruled Pakistan accordingly. The Moslem officers who came to command the Pakistani Army were much more clearly gentlemen than their Indian counterparts, and the British ruling class, with their class prejudices and their historical policy of divide and conquer, judged them accordingly. Unfortunately, those gentlemen have no more proved able to resist a totalitarian ideology than the Prussian gentlemen who dominated the German officer corps through the Nazi time.
Care to back that statement up Dog Gone? Got any "facts" you care to present? Got any kids in uniform? Ever wear one yourself?
The analysis in that article is correct. I have worn the uniform. In a month, after her graduation from high-school, so will my daughter. Her chances of not becoming a casualty in the war against fanatical Islam is greatly enhanced if one of the primary breeding grounds for it is a smoking hole in the ground by the time she finishes basic training. Not only does that remove the "islamic bomb" from the geo-political chessboard, but it will serve as a wake-up call to the rest of the world that there are severe consequences to allowing terrorism, of any kind, anywhere, to persist. Then, and only then, will europe et off its fat ass and take it seriously. It might also let the supporters of terror in Iran and Iraq know what awaits them if they don't knock it off.
I say we pull our troops out of Pakistan tomorrow, run interference on the Chinese, and tell India to end it once and for all. Because if they don't, sooner or later some Islamic nutburger is going to punch the button in pakistan and start it on far less favorable terms.
"The side whose capacity for retaliation was vulnerable must react in a crisis in ways which would heighten the likelihood of cataclysm; a country whose strategic forces were not secure could be driven, even against its will, to strike first rather than await the opponent's attack which it would know it could not survive." - Henry Kissenger, to Senate Foreign Relations Committee, July 31, 1979.
"In the final analysis the military profession is the art of prevailing...." - Henry Kissenger.
But here's an example of what I'm talking about:
For example, how did the sponsor of Kashmir's terrorism, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, react when an Afghan warlord declared holy war against the United States on Thursday? Hamid Gul, former head of the ISI, told reporters: "There is certainly a lot of sympathy for him in ISI, but that doesn't necessarily translate into material assistance."
Gul is a very vocal, pro-Taliban Pakistani who has been out of a job at the ISI for over a decade. How is he a spokesman for how the ISI reacted today?
Here's another:
Under U.S. pressure, Musharraf announced a "crackdown" on the terrorist groups he sponsored, and he rounded up 200 Islamic militants. This proved every bit as effective as the occasional crackdown Yasser Arafat announces against his terrorist friends. Musharraf kept the militants in jail until the world's attention wandered — which doesn't take long — then let them out again.
The actual figure was 2000. Maybe he made a typo. It is true that about 1200 were eventually released after swearing an oath not to participate in jihadi activities. But it ignores the fact that some 800 hardcore types are still being kept in detention. And it assumes that the all the original 2000 were terrorists and that the Pakistanis couldn't have arrested anyone who was just a terrorist wannabe. Which is absurd.
The idea that the USA could send troops to occupy a country of 140 million people and somehow clean it up is just plain nuts. If we suddenly tell Musharraf that he hasn't been a good partner, sorry, and we're taking your nukes, we can frickin' forget getting any cooperation from any Islamic country ever again. I mean NONE.
This article is stupid. It's some sort of fantasy for the reality-impaired.
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