Back In The Non-Dumb War Obama Supported

The situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is in a downward spiral that, however bad it looks, is probably worse. 

First, we had reporting over the weekend from David Sanger of the Times about the possibility of loose nukes in Pakistan.

Adm. Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated assurances that the Pakistanis had their nuclear arsenal under control.  However, David Sanger also had this:

Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said.

Some of the Pakistani reluctance, they said, stemmed from longstanding concern that the United States might be tempted to seize or destroy Pakistan’s arsenal if the insurgency appeared about to engulf areas near Pakistan’s nuclear sites....

...The Obama administration inherited from President Bush a multiyear, $100 million secret American program to help Pakistan build stronger physical protections around some of those facilities, and to train Pakistanis in nuclear security.

But much of that effort has now petered out, and American officials have never been permitted to see how much of the money was spent, the facilities where the weapons are kept or even a tally of how many Pakistan has produced. The facility Pakistan was supposed to build to conduct its own training exercises is running years behind schedule.

Today, the Times wrote about the porous Afghan-Pakistan border, based on extensive interviews with a Taliban organizer.  I am sure the US military would be very interested in talking to this source, who could identify villages in which the Taliban is based.  However, this detail struck me:

His guerrillas, in their late teens to mid-20s, are handpicked for their endurance and commitment, he said. Some, like him, were trained by the Pakistani government as proxy fighters against India in Kashmir and have now joined the Qaeda and Taliban cause.

The insurgents in Pakistan, such as Lashkar-i-Taiba, can claim legitimacy as the true fighters for the liberation of Kashmir and will insist that they can take the fight to India in a way that the current timid, accommodationist government cannot.  As a public relations ploy this may or may not be effective but it will surely catch and hold India's attention.  Neither the US nor India could tolerate a Taliban-type takeover of Pakistan but India is likely to be more forceful in opposing it.

Finally, Obama will have to contend with the reflexively anti-war wing of his own party, which is dragging out the comparisons to Vietnam.  Sad to say, the comparison works on one level - by expanding the war in Vietnam into Cambodia and Laos Nixon contributed to instability in those countries.  Similarly, as the US pushed the Taliban out of Afghanistan and the border areas, they pushed them deeper into Pakistan proper. 

After days of rising alarm on the part of American officials, Mr. Gates tried to strike a more sanguine tone, noting that the Taliban move into the district of Buner, near Islamabad, had “set off an alarm bell” in Pakistan.

“I think they have seen the situation in the west as largely of our making as we drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan,” Mr. Gates said of Pakistan’s leaders, “and now they’re beginning to see these guys have designs on the Pakistani government.”

We can't afford to lose this war but may not be able to win it.

FROM THE TIME VAULT:  I have been saying for years that it's all about Kashmir.  Ooops.  Pakistan's military and their ISI have been in bed with the Taliban and terrorist groups for years.

Comments

[Rick Ballard]

"Sad to say, the comparison works on one level - by expanding the war in Vietnam into Cambodia and Laos Nixon contributed to instability in those countries."

What the hell was that damned fool Nixon thinking when he routed the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos and Cambodia. What a dummy.

[verner]

I saw Hillary on TV being interviewed about the PAK nukes a few days ago.

She said, and yes I'm serious, that if the Taliban took over, they would have the keys to the Pakistani nukes.

She looked like a damned deer in the headlights.

These idiots have not a clue what they're doing. Any "real" US administration would have a pact with India, Israel, NATO etc., to take out the Pak nuclear arsenal the minute the Taliban got within 5 miles of Islamabad.

[Danube of Thought]

It is a certainty that this situation will continue to unravel. Those people know they have absolutely nothing to fear from Commander-in-Chief Obama.

[sammy small]

“I think they have seen the situation in the west as largely of our making as we drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan,”

The mujihadeen (precursor to the Taliban) have been in Pakistan at least since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. It would make more sense to say we "drove them back" into Pakistan.

[Bill in AZ]

"Bernanke: Economy should pull out of recession later in '09"

Bernanke painting more brown shoots green.

[clarice]

Naybe India and Israel will take our place as the world's policeman as Obama continues his vacation from history.

[Jane]

I think we are already coming out of the recession. Everything else is/are Obama inflicted wounds.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

I say we focus on this as strictly a law enforcement problem and send the entire DoJ to Swat to handle it.

[Dave]

"That's not the Pock-i-staaahn I knew".

[Neo]

As badly as that hurt Pelosi, what apparently pushed her into a panic was the feedback she and other Democrats are getting from the CIA. Pelosi learned that her actions, and those of President Obama and other Democrats over the past ninety days have so damaged CIA morale that the agency’s ability to function could be in danger.

[PeterUK]

The">http://www.janes.com/security/international_security/news/misc/janes011001_1_n.shtml&ei=n0b2SZvLM9jRjAfV3qS9DA&sa=X&oi=spellmeleon_result&resnum=1&ct=result&usg=AFQjCNGesT6-LkvSqe3JVS7u4i2j_6dn1A">The Inter-Services Intelligence(ISI) of Pakistan is the main sponsor of the Taleban.Sorry but you are talking about driving Brer Rabbit into the Briar Patch.

[gus]

Obama is too busy leaking CIA secrets to deal with this at the moment.
Maybe Tim Geithner can handle this.

[matt]

Pakistan has always been a seething cauldron, but now may be reaching the tipping point.The Taliban are practicing class warfare in order to drive the landlords out. If/when they succeed, they are able to recruited entire towns to their cause and once there, the only option to removing them is military. Even then, the resentment creates opposition to the government. This is a page right out of Mao.

The Indians are still furious about the Bombay massacre and are on edge militarily and as a culture. Any further provocation and they will probably react very strongly. I'll bet they know where the warheads are.

The raggies are doing hit and run raids along the border into Afghanistan and have a safe area for the most part in the Northwest. The One wants to cross the border and teach those bad guys a lesson. And the Pakistanis probably have 30-40 nukes. This is not looking good at all.

[PeterUK]

"The Taliban are practicing class warfare in order to drive the landlords out. "

Gasp! You mean the Taleban are Aylinskyite Community Organisers?

[peter (quarto de tequila)]

Well, if one of those nukes goes off, the President will be "furious."

[Cecil Turner]

In related news, dumba** Rahm Emanuel is linking the Palestinian problem with Iranian nukes:

The task of forming an international coalition to thwart Iran's nuclear program will be made easier if progress is made in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has said, according to sources in Washington.

You'd think that somebody in the Administration would twig to the concept that a nuke on the high seas might end up in New York instead of Haifa . . . but apparently that's too complicated. Moreover, linking a critical security problem to the Palestinian mess? Well, we can hope he just wasn't thinking. Because if this is policy . . .

[RichatUF]

Cecil-

It is and it is unsurprising.

A flashback to the campaign trail, a comment of mine that was added to a blog post at American Thinker. Don't know if it is really relevant, but I thought about it ever since Emmanual's threat was made public.

This is the regional dynamic the Obama Administration wants to return to-the same failed Clinton legacy that David Wurmser describes in "Timeto Rethink Middle East Policy"(begins on p. 43 in the pdf-the whole issue is worthwhile).

[clarice]

Rick, what a stroke of genius! Can we appoint a special prosecutor to accompany them? You know--an Elliott Ness with a law degree type/

Cecil, Rahm's statement is about the stupidest thing I've heard all day.

The Saudis and the rest of the Sunni realm want Iran's mullahs gelded no matter what, and the world's magnetic poles will reverse hundreds of times before the Palestinian question is resolved.

[matt]

Cecil;

Emmanuel's comments were criminal. He is linking our support to Israeli concessions to the Palestinians. This is a fundamental change in the relationship between the US and Israel.With all the administration has already done, I think the Israeli's are now keeping their own counsel and will do what is necessary to protect their country. This may include action against American military units if they try to stop them.

Regardless, I think between the AIPAC/Harman case and the rest of it, if I were Jewish, I would never vote democrat again.

[clarice]

Rich--It's time for you to do a whole article--do it on Rahm--you're practically there already.

natt--ahem, the AIPAC case really cannot be tagged to the Dems..It began under Ashcroft and continued thru Gonzales. Holder ended it as you know.

[I wouldn't let Emanuel anywhere near my brakes.]

More and more the whole Obama administration seems to be in fantasy land. The idea that the Iranians would give up 'da Bom' if the Palestinian question were solved is complete lala land. The idea that the Palestinians want their question solved short of complete capitulation by the Israelis is also a laugher. What is the matter with these people? This is just not dwelling in the real world.

[narciso]

This is the 'Johnson bombing pause', on steroids, look in the LUN. The Taliban is the ISI's catspaw, run by the likes of Gen.
Hamid Gul, a dozen years out of office. The freshly minted graduates out of Kottum, (see
the Atlantic is good for something
occasionally, really are no match for a force supported by their own party establishment and foreign powers like the selected Hawalas of Saudi General Intelligence

[Captain Hate]

WTF is with Rahm, who has an Israeli background, no? Even Slick was smart enough to realize the palis screwed him (granted the ultimate egomaniac was only worried about his rancid "legacy" and diverting attention away from his failed handling of the Middle East as a whole; including not only bin Laden but also sending Carville and the rest of his toadies to meddle in Israel politics to get the disasterous Ehud Barak elected) once he was out of office.

[Ignatz]

-The situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan is in a downward spiral...-

No doubt it is, but the situation is hardly improved by TM providing ads in the upper right for;

"Pakistani Girls!
Meet Pakistani girls for marriage and dating."

If a few Predator strikes set those dervishes off what do you think Pakistani girls being ravished by JOM infidels will do?

[bad]

Ignatz, I promise not to ravage any Pakistani men, women or animals.

[matt]

so now it's being reported that the Taliban have dug trenches and are laying minefields in towns in Swat and that 500,000 people have fled the area. It will be interesting to see how they do as defensive fighters. Not their style, really.

[We don't need no stinkin' birth certificates. Do you know who you're talking to?]

Never forget that the Pakistani customs bureaucracy has records of the foreign student at Occidental visiting his college pals in Pakistan, back in the day.

[clarice]

matt, I agree. It appears to be a very stuid move. Why have they just not moved on to Islamabad, I wonder?

[narciso]

The events of 1897, seem if not to repeat but certainly to rhyme. Back then it was the likes of the Mad Mullah of Malakand, who
led the uprising against British outposts in
Chakdara and Malakand, have both of them fallen. A young Winston Churchill, detached
from his regiment, recorded the tale in his account of the Malakand Field Force,
recounted by Charles Allen in his very timely work; God's Terrorists. The problem was solved for a time by the Tirah
expedition, under General William Lockhart, using some 40,000 men. But as I've commented
before, that was a totally different Britain
just like this is a different America.

[clarice]

The "Mad Mullah of Malakand"--that has a nice sort of ring to it.

[narciso]

A more concise history of the region is here,

[matt]

The Talib sense victory, I think. Most of Pakistan is feudal still, so the masses, who are already very conservative, have an immediate connection with their brothers.

Most of the population resides in the cities, however, but both Islamabad and Karachi are for the most part chaotic slums of a very 3rd world nature. As the peasants have been driven off the land, they are the lower class in the cities. Another tool for the Taliban (maybe that's Cat Steven's/Yusef Islam's new album!).

The much larger, but weaker and "more decadent" urban class may not have the will to resist. They are mainly conservative Muslims as well. So with the proper undermining it could be Mao Zedong's march into Shanghai once again. So far, no national leader has shown himself, so who knows if the Taliban can pull it off.

We've given the Pakistanis over $100 million to help them train their people and build a secure facility to store the nukes, but there has been zero accounting for those funds or the whereabouts of the warheads. Money over there seems to disappear magically.

In this case, the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.

[Mike Huggins]

The Talib sense victory

Time to unleash the FBI and the cruise missiles, again. That worked so well the last time. Let us return to those thrilling days of yesteryear (1998): "We're not fooling anybody here," says a senior Clinton aide. "This is going to be tough, and we'll have to be in it for the long run." It took 24 years for Abu Nidal, the world's deadliest terrorist of the '70s and '80s, finally to end up in the custody of Egyptian authorities. It could take just as long to bring the man who's becoming the terrorist of the '90s to justice.

[narciso]

Yes, but that took persons of guile and ambition like Claridge and Twetten, people who were willing to bend or break rules when need be anyone see that happening under cowardly Lion Pannetta. Cofer Black's
Blackwater, sorry XE now, could probably do it. A character very much like Claridge, heading the apocryphal security contractor, aids the hero in Weisman's Direct Action, Instead we have Countrywide Chris Dodd, comparing waterboarding KSM to the Holocaust, in doing so, he is demeaning the name of a truly great man, his father former Nurenberg prosecutor, Atty General
and Senator Tom Dodd. The apple fell into a whole other orchard.

[bad]

Asked whether he cared about a shortage of Jewish Republicans in the Senate, Specter replied: “I sure do. There’s still time for the Minnesota courts to do justice and declare Norm Coleman the winner.”

But questioned outside the Senate chamber Tuesday, Specter said the comment was a mistake.

“In the swirl of moving from one caucus to another, I have to get used to my new teammates,” he said. “I’m ordinarily pretty correct in what I say. I’ve made a career of being precise. I conclusively misspoke.”

Poor old fool. LUN

[Mike Huggins]

Narciso - I don't know much about Tom Dodd, other than what I just read on wiki-waki. Were the allegations about his corruption off the mark? Or is this a case where Dodd the younger did pick up some pointers? Regardless of that, helping to bring justice to those Nazi butchers Koch and Frank would certainly earn him "great man" status.

[narciso]

He had some flaws no doubt, at the end of his long career, but his big failing was that he was a Cold War liberal, in a party
that had no need for one anymore. Who did they end up with folks like Lowell Weicker
the Squibb scion, and Dodd fils, who was the polar opposite of everything his father
was/

[Mike Huggins]

Thanks.

[narciso]

You're welcome mike