Impeach him. Impeach him now.

[elfs]

So, we've lost the war in Afghanistan.

In a treaty that will "end five years of border fighting," Pakistan has signed a peace deal with the Taliban, giving the Taliban complete and unfettered authority over the Pakistani province of North Waziristan. The Pakistani military was taking a terrible beating at the hands of the Taliban and this accord is regarded as a "face saving retreat" by the Pakistan government. The head of the Pakistani military said that if Bin Laden is in North Waziristan, he will not be taken into custody "as long as he is behaving as a peaceful citizen."

So, here's where we are, Mr. Bush: five years after 9/11, what seemed like a successful military prosecution of the terrorist organization that housed and safetied public enemy #1 was left to drift by the draining of troops to a second war, a war of choice with no clear objective. In that gap, Al Qaeda and the Taliban found safe haven in a Pakistani province they have now completely secured.

And unlike Afghanistan, we dare not send troops into Waziristan. It's Pakistani territory all the same, and if we challenge Pakistani sovereignty the government of Pervez Musharraf will collapse. Any following government will be more solidly Islamic, probably Shia', and will have access to fifteen working nuclear warheads and the missles to deliver them, plus the technology needed to build more. If there's one thing the Islamic tradition has going for it, it's patience.

So, here's where we are, Mr. Bush: even more unstable, insecure, and tragically unprepared. Bin Laden is a piker in the course of history: he's killed a few thousand Americans, making his success insignificant compared to the casualty counts of WW1, WW2, the internal brutality of the Soviet Union, or even the American Civil War, and yet we casually compare him to the worst villians of all four. Thanks to our administration's incompetence, he may yet acheive his dream of infliciting real harm.

Comments

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Furthermore, if there's no Pakistani presence in those areas, who's going to be enforcing the U.S.-stay-out edict? The Taliban? I don't see the Pakistani military riding to their rescue after being humiliated like this.
Obvious provocations like cruise missile attacks won't be tolerated, but covert things like Special Forces ops should be easier, if anything, now that the Pakistani military isn't watching the border closely anymore.

Really? You've got the Hezzbollah on one side of Pakistan, you've got the Taliban on the other, and a very fragile pro-American Pakistani government in between, becoming more fragile by the minute. Oh, and a bunch of nuclear bombs. Not tools to make them...they are ready to go.

So, go ahead and send in your Special Forces against the Taliban...assuming that George Bush allows any to be taken away from Iraq (did we forget how many forces he took *away* from the search for Bin Laden to go into Iraq in the first place?). Meanwhile the Hezzbollah rush the Pakistani government into oblivian. Then both *terrorist* organizations get to decide who gets the nuclear bombs first.

Did I mention Pakistan had nuclear bombs? Yeah, those things that Bush keeps on saying that Bin Laden wants and hasn't gotten yet. Methinks that he's getting closer and closer to them all the time...meanwhile, we are still stuck in Iraq, where we never should have been in the first place.

[tagryn]

Given their history, its more than a bit of a reach to think Iran and the Taliban are going to be cooperating in a grand scheme to take down Pakistan anytime soon. If you're refering to the Kashmiri radicals, they don't appear to have enough strength to control even that region, much less the whole of the country.

The "Special Forces" hypothesis refers specifically to using them as small covert teams targeting Bin Laden (which might be a futile thing to keep doing anyway - look how long Eric Rudolph lasted without being found, and that was inside the USA, not the other side of the world). Nobody's talking about using SF to directly confront the Taliban; being used as basic infantry like that isn't their raison d'être, especially without a Northern Alliance-like force to serve as the boots on the ground.

Are the Taliban and the Islamists inside the military and the ISI one monolithic force operating in unison? When it comes to providing aid, probably. When it comes to yielding ultimate control, that's something else entirely. There's many Islamist sympathizers in the Pakistani army, and the ISI still sees the Taliban as a client to be nurtured. But its a looooooong way from that to thinking the current Pak powers-that-be would be interested in turning ultimate control + their nuke arsenal over to them, regardless of what happens to Musharref.

I also think India would have a rather large say into whose hands the Pak bombs ended up, if they thought the current situation there was about to fall into chaos. Think they're going to stand by twiddling their thumbs if it looks like the guys they've been fighting in Kashmir for decades are about to get the bomb? Doubt it.