Pakistan Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir said the following today: • “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States,” • ”There should be no doubt that Pakistan has a capacity to ensure its own defence.” Assuming he’s speaking on behalf of Pakistan, I’d declare war today. We should all be able to agree that one of two things happened; 1) Pakistan knew Bin Laden was living in the country, or 2) Pakistan didn’t know he was there. Combine of whichever one of those two cases you choose to believe with their attitude that they don’t have a problem (“There should be no doubt that Pakistan has a capacity to ensure its own defense,”) and it’s clearly a hotbed for terrorism. Now, if they readily admit that they are incompetent and don’t have the capacity to ensure its own defense, I retract all of my statements. Given that Bin Laden was living there, I have to think he was not the only high level al-Qaeda operative on their soil at that moment. I hope we have some intelligence on other high level terrorist there and we repeat the same type of raid today, tomorrow, and the next day. If Pakistan has the gall to release any sort of statement after those raids, we drop one, very targeted missile on their president’s head.
If India hates Pakistan as much as it’s said here on AF, Indian AFers probably hope the US levels Pakistan to teach them a lesson.
Incompetence by itself is excusable as long as they admit it. Defiant incompetence is not only inexcusable, it dangerous. Also, the quote “there should be no doubt that Pakistan has a capacity to ensure it’s own defence” leads me to believe that they didn’t view Bin Laden as a threat to their own defense which in my book is commensurate with harboring the most wanted terrorist in history.
Sounds like this is just a media show. If Mr. Bashir was in a closed door meeting with Hillary Clinton, I’m sure that his tone would be different.
ohai Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Sounds like this is just a media show. so is m&e’s posting. if he was a national security advisor discussing the likely US response with the president, he wouldnt be jumping around like a nutcase suggesting to launch a missile at the president of a US ally with nuclear capabilities
If they didn’t have nuclear capabilities I wouldn’t be the concerned. It is because they have nuclear capabilities that I am concerned. This is a nuclear state that is either knowingly harboring terrorist or is defiantly completely incompetent. Mobius Striptease Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > oha i Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > – — > > Sounds like this is just a media show. > > so is m&e’s posting. if he was a national security > advisor discussing the likely US response with the > president, he wouldnt be jumping around like a > nutcase suggesting to launch a missile at the > president of a US ally with nuclear capabilities
The paksitani government is just responding to local pressure by resorting to cheap populism in the papers. They need to say things like this to appease their local population. Their government if fully aware of how corrupt and incompetent they are, but they have to look after number one: their re-election. In order to get elected in a country like pakistan you need to resort to cheap populism and bash america after a thing like this. Secondly, countries like Pakistan and India are so entrenched in their own bureacracies that there is very little a politician can actually do to change Pakistan’s working relationship with the United States. Bureaucrats and politicians in places like Pakistan are equal opportunity in as far as they will take money from whomever offers it. So, we’ll be able to keep working with them as long as we pay them however we want to. But we shouldn’t expect them to be honest, loyal, or effective in that partnership just like you shouldn’t expect a whore that you rent for the evening to really actually love you come morning. While India does hate Pakistan (and vice versa) they are not going to be any help with this. If India wanted to invade Pakistan they could do it in a heartbeat. They would absolutely maul Pakistan. It wouldn’t even be close. But India and Pakistan actually like their war just the way it is. The big victims in the Indian/Pakistani conflict are primarily the cattle of kashmiris who each side takes turns shelling. Since human life is dirt cheap here blowing up their cattle is much more effective. Going after their homes is a waste of time, as those are made of mud/rocks/sticks usually. So yep, poor old Betsy gets it from a howitzer. In this way India and Pakistan get a nice convenient stalemate with collateral damage in someone elses back yard and do not really worry too much about it. They get to stay proud, because its not like they have given up, but they don’t really have to deal with the real problem. India is far too pragmatic to go spending the billions a war in Pakistan would take. After the 11/26 terrorist attacks they could have done something. They chose to get over it very quickly - which in my opinion is the right thing to do. The US should learn a lesson from this. Next time a terrorist attack happens, I hope we just shrug our shoulders and get over it. September 11th, as horrible as it was, could have just been a blip in our lives on a macro level. We, unfortunately in my opinion, chose to make it a big expensive ordeal. When we have the next terrorist attack lets just do what India does and ignore it and get back to work. Of course, we can still send the CIA and Seal Team Six to go kill the guys, but that’s about as much as I’m willing to invest in counter-terrorism at this point. A lot of people have asked me if i thought the bin Laden thing was illegal? I said, i don’t care if it was. If there is any military action I wish we would do more of, it is extra-legal state sponsored murders. But I’m probably in the minority on this opinion.
Just shrug our shoulders at mass murder? You’ll get what you tolerate.
Yes, that is correct. That is what I am suggestion. Shrug your shoulders and move on with your life. Do not get in big expensive war that destroys value. If possible, cheaply send special forces to kill the bad guys, but don’t advertise it.
“Any similar action violating the sovereignty of Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of military/intelligence cooperation with the United States,” …yea this is BS. Besides, if the US is really capable of flying helicopters and launching a 40mins assault on a house down the street from a military base without anyone noticing anything then the US really has nothing to worry about anyway.
You also have to ask why Bin Laden chose to live in Pakistan. I doubt he threw a dart at a map while blindfolded. He made the conscious decision to live there.
murders&executions Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You also have to ask why Bin Laden chose to live > in Pakistan. I doubt he threw a dart at a map > while blindfolded. He made the conscious decision > to live there. If I’m not mistaken, he’s not the first high-ranking Al Qaeda member who chose to take up residence in Abbottabad.
Tikka your post was great, with one notable exception. You come burn my house down with my family in it, you can bet your a$$ I’m not going to just file for insurance, collect on the death of my wife and kids and the damage for my home, and ust shrug my shoulders. No, you go hide somewhere you better build taller walls and have tighter security than Bin Laden, because I’ll be in your window Seals style at some point. I’m with Chi Paul, you get what you tolerate. We don’t tolerate that $hit here.
If you want to look at someone in a powerful position with close links to Bin Laden then look no further than one of your own former presidents! If anything the militant Islamist factions operating around the globe (including pre 2001) were part provided ammunition by US govt agencies going back as far as the 1980’s. Add to this the fact that Pakistan is as much a victim of these extremist groups you’d see how certain countries in the Middle East could be bitter towards what the US has allowed to fester and prosper over so many years. You might say “we don’t tolerate that shit”, in my opinion you don’t as much tolerate it as aggressively approve such actions! I say this more so that I don’t want to see any more bloodshed and loss of civilian life anywhere. I’d resent to see that on US soil as much as I would anywhere else, but let’s be real here folks, an increased military force from the US will see massive civilian losses in the Middle East as well as an increased risk of a similar tragedy to the WTC attacks. What would be the point of that?!
so the CIA was watching the compound from a safe house for months, not knowing that bin Laden was inside? should we expect them to readily admit their incompetence or alternatively, accuse them of harboring a terrorist and drop a targeted missile on Leon Panetta? i dont have a stance on the issue, im just developing m&e’s original topic
But J Cole, I didn’t say shrug your shoulders and tolerate it. I said go ahead and send the Seal Teams in to take people out. Kill whomever we feel like killing; Hell, make it about revenge and bloodlust if you like even. I have no issues there. I’m all for quick effective targeted measures, like we saw last week or in the case of a state sponsored attack using nukes. What I do object to is spending billions trying to build democracies in places that don’t want them and certainly can’t keep them. Anyone that knows anything about Pashtun culture can tell you why democracy is just not meant to be there. These are atavistic people; they are not interested in being us.
I don’t know… are the values of individual freedom and human rights of self-determination really “our values” exclusively? The implication strikes me as being that certain foreigners are simply not responsible enough to be in charge of their own lives, and are so uncivil that they require rule by ruthless and murderous gang. I would also add that without boots on the ground, gathering intel, these targeted strikes are simply not possible, which would, by default, argue for indiscriminate bombings. Japanese and Germans were declared unready for democracy as well, and that wasn’t all that long ago.
Eoghan, You drastically overstate US involvement with bin Laden in the 80s. Yes the US did provide arms to those fighting against the Soviets, but they did so minimally relative to other countries and communism was clearly the larger threat not only the US but to the world at the time. Your implication that a US president had a direct line to bin Laden is absurd as he hadn’t even come to prominence at that point. But that aside, if your point is that the US had to align with some unsavory characters to defeat even more unsavory characters, well, point taken. We did align with Stalin to defeat Hitler after all. >>you’d see how certain countries in the Middle East could be bitter towards what the US has allowed to fester and prosper over so many years. So, here you seem to be saying that the US should not have allowed things to fester, and should have intervened even more? But I thought the US meddles too much?
Ok, some fair points made there. I’ll take back my original point about Bush Snr, with a caveat that his involvement is still somewhat murky and was never publicly recognised by him or his family in the post-2001 era. I’d disagree that communism in itself was a more serious threat to the world, I think the conflict between the ideologies was a threat though. Although I’m glad I don’t personally live in a communist state. By siding with shady characters at all to fight a perceived greater evil it’s like kicking the can down the road, it doesn’t eradicate the problem. Using your analogy you can see that yourself, they sided with Stalin then had a prolonged tense relationship after the conclusion of the war. A similar pattern has emerged in multiple different nations across the world. The West plants new leaders into countries they get politically involved in only for those leaders to fall out of favour and then the west starts a war with them! Don’t be surprised if a similar situation ensues with Karzai in Afghanistan before too long. I don’t think I’ve contradicting myself with my earlier post, although I apologise if I was perhaps unclear. My view is that the US complains of threats from external sources based on problems they are heavily responsible for creating themselves. That is how these problems have festered throughout the years. In my view you would be doing a lot more to protect your own interests by being a LESS military heavy force on foreign soil. You would then be less of a target for religious fanatics like Bin Laden et al. You need to start moving away from the obsession with military strength and military tactics as a power tool/symbol of your nation.
LPoulin133 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > “Any similar action violating the sovereignty of > Pakistan will warrant a review on the level of > military/intelligence cooperation with the United > States,” > > …yea this is BS. So let’s say that Mexican commandos, without US consent, raid some compound in El Paso, TX based off intel indicating that Joaquin Loera (head of the ruthless Sinaloa cartel and at the top of Mexico’s most wanted list) is hiding out in a safe house. You don’t think Americans would be pissed about the incursion and breach of sovereignty?