Major Good News from Pakistan!
For a long time now I have been worried that war with Pakistan, which for most of the War on Terror was offering de facto shelter to the Taliban and hence behaving as a hostile Power, was becoming inevitable. Such a war would, of course, be a Very Bad Thing for America: Pakistan is a traditional American ally, and its defection to the enemy would instantly give the Terrorist States nuclear weapons.
The fall of Musharraf worried me further. Musharraf had been a dictator, but a seemingly pro-American one. And I'm well aware that, in the Muslim world, "the people" are often the ones most in favor of psychotically-belligerent foreign policies, from which "the elites" restrain them (*).
That is why this article by Stephen Brown in Front Page Magazine cheered me up immensely.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F3F48A82-6B59-4D6A-9CA5-CBB008ACED34
It summarized things which I had been starting to notice peripherally, and made the point that the new Pakistani President is hostile to the Taliban and desirous of avoiding war with India.
Musharraf had betrayed his alliance with America -- and human civilization -- in favor of his relationship with the Taliban:
In reality, Musharaff was never America’s staunch ally in the terror war, as the media portrayed him after his resignation. Unlike the United States and its allies, Musharraf never regarded the Taliban and al Qaeda as enemies of civilization that had to be destroyed, but rather as tools to be used in Pakistan’s showdown with its arch-enemy, India.
Musharraf was obsessed with his fantasy of winning "the next war" with India:
And it is Pakistan’s ongoing conflict with India, with whom it has fought three wars, which dominated Musharraf’s thinking and actions as well as his relationship with America while in office. In her book Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan, Mary Anne Weaver wrote Musharraf, whom she interviewed, spent his “entire adult life battling India.”
In other words, Musharraf wanted to continue the insane and pointless vendetta with India, a country with which -- if Pakistan merely stopped attacking her -- it would be easy to live at peace. (The parallel with the Mideasterners and Israel is obvious, and derives from the same basic insanity at the root of modern Islam).
Musharaff had repeatedly betrayed America in dealing with the Taliban, because he wanted to AVOID destroying them:
... rather than destroy the Taliban, Musharraf wanted to preserve it. He envisioned using its jihadists directly against the Hindu foe in the next war and also against any Indian attempts to surround Pakistan in Afghanistan. Pakistan had used Islamic fighters from its tribal regions in its 1947 war against India when, led by Pakistani army officers, the tribesmen almost conquered Kashmir.
This means that Musharraf was, in fact, on this issue close to certifiably insane. He was so blinded by the humiliation of repeated defeats by India (most notably in 1965 and 1971, though also to a lesser extent in 1991), that he, a military man, was actually deluded enough to believe that the Taliban would do anything but be blown to bloody shreds if thrown against the modern war machine of 21st-century India. Furthermore, he apparently believed that a "next war" in which Taliban-style terrorist tactics were used against the Indian people, would end in a Pakistani victory, rather than the crushing of Pakistani forces on the battlefield -- and, possibly, the nuclear annihilation of India. And, most damningly, he failed to appreciate that this would inveitably mean losing Pakistan's American alliance, and gaining American enmity.
The new Pakistani leader, however, General Ashfaq Kiyani, seems to have decided to rejoin Civilization and smash the Taliban foe:
Pakistan’s military launched a full-scale assault against the Pakistani Taliban. With former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf now out of the way, Pakistan’s new military chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, wasted little time in sending the army in force against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban’s proper name).
The offensive has been highly successful so far:
... the Pakistani Taliban has been “routed” in the Bajaur tribal agency, a Taliban-al Qaeda stronghold. The Pakistan army reported killing more than five hundred Taliban combatants while another 3,000 have fled into Afghanistan and 300,000 civilians have become refugees. Government forces almost nearly captured Ayman al Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command. On the army side, 20 soldiers are dead with another 50 missing.
Note the attrition rate, which among other things proves how mad were Musharraf's fantasies of winning a war with Taliban support. The truly amazing thing is that Musharraf continued to cling to his delusion even after the Taliban were so easily driven from Afghanistan back in 2001-2002. This is why I'm now starting to think that Musharraf was not merely misguided, but literally insane: he couldn't see that he had been wrong even after it was almost rubbed into his face.
In further proof of Kiyani's seriousness:
Suffering setbacks, the Taliban had asked for a ceasefire, which the government, to its credit, rejected. Reflecting the new attitude in a post-Musharraf Pakistan towards Islamist militancy, the Pakistani government says it will not negotiate with the Tehrik-i-Taliban until it lays down its weapons.
The ease with which the Taliban is being crushed is very encouraging. It means that all we need do is exert strong pressure on Kiyani to keep up the attack, regardless of what the Taliban does, and the Taliban will be driven from Pakistan.
This means that within a matter of months, we could have Osama bin Laden and the surviving members of his vile cabal in our hands, or dead.
We're within sight now of defeating the enemy who orginally started this long war ...
... and maybe Pakistan won't commit Suicide By India after all!
===
(*) Interestingly, Iran is one of the few Muslim countries in which the situation is reversed: it is the theocratic elite ruling the country through their Islamic Revolutionary Guard thugs who want to launch suicidally-aggressive wars, and a fairly-Westernized populace that to some extent holds them back from such adventures.
The fall of Musharraf worried me further. Musharraf had been a dictator, but a seemingly pro-American one. And I'm well aware that, in the Muslim world, "the people" are often the ones most in favor of psychotically-belligerent foreign policies, from which "the elites" restrain them (*).
That is why this article by Stephen Brown in Front Page Magazine cheered me up immensely.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F3F48A82-6B59-4D6A-9CA5-CBB008ACED34
It summarized things which I had been starting to notice peripherally, and made the point that the new Pakistani President is hostile to the Taliban and desirous of avoiding war with India.
Musharraf had betrayed his alliance with America -- and human civilization -- in favor of his relationship with the Taliban:
In reality, Musharaff was never America’s staunch ally in the terror war, as the media portrayed him after his resignation. Unlike the United States and its allies, Musharraf never regarded the Taliban and al Qaeda as enemies of civilization that had to be destroyed, but rather as tools to be used in Pakistan’s showdown with its arch-enemy, India.
Musharraf was obsessed with his fantasy of winning "the next war" with India:
And it is Pakistan’s ongoing conflict with India, with whom it has fought three wars, which dominated Musharraf’s thinking and actions as well as his relationship with America while in office. In her book Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan, Mary Anne Weaver wrote Musharraf, whom she interviewed, spent his “entire adult life battling India.”
In other words, Musharraf wanted to continue the insane and pointless vendetta with India, a country with which -- if Pakistan merely stopped attacking her -- it would be easy to live at peace. (The parallel with the Mideasterners and Israel is obvious, and derives from the same basic insanity at the root of modern Islam).
Musharaff had repeatedly betrayed America in dealing with the Taliban, because he wanted to AVOID destroying them:
... rather than destroy the Taliban, Musharraf wanted to preserve it. He envisioned using its jihadists directly against the Hindu foe in the next war and also against any Indian attempts to surround Pakistan in Afghanistan. Pakistan had used Islamic fighters from its tribal regions in its 1947 war against India when, led by Pakistani army officers, the tribesmen almost conquered Kashmir.
This means that Musharraf was, in fact, on this issue close to certifiably insane. He was so blinded by the humiliation of repeated defeats by India (most notably in 1965 and 1971, though also to a lesser extent in 1991), that he, a military man, was actually deluded enough to believe that the Taliban would do anything but be blown to bloody shreds if thrown against the modern war machine of 21st-century India. Furthermore, he apparently believed that a "next war" in which Taliban-style terrorist tactics were used against the Indian people, would end in a Pakistani victory, rather than the crushing of Pakistani forces on the battlefield -- and, possibly, the nuclear annihilation of India. And, most damningly, he failed to appreciate that this would inveitably mean losing Pakistan's American alliance, and gaining American enmity.
The new Pakistani leader, however, General Ashfaq Kiyani, seems to have decided to rejoin Civilization and smash the Taliban foe:
Pakistan’s military launched a full-scale assault against the Pakistani Taliban. With former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf now out of the way, Pakistan’s new military chief, General Ashfaq Kiyani, wasted little time in sending the army in force against the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (the Pakistani Taliban’s proper name).
The offensive has been highly successful so far:
... the Pakistani Taliban has been “routed” in the Bajaur tribal agency, a Taliban-al Qaeda stronghold. The Pakistan army reported killing more than five hundred Taliban combatants while another 3,000 have fled into Afghanistan and 300,000 civilians have become refugees. Government forces almost nearly captured Ayman al Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda’s second-in-command. On the army side, 20 soldiers are dead with another 50 missing.
Note the attrition rate, which among other things proves how mad were Musharraf's fantasies of winning a war with Taliban support. The truly amazing thing is that Musharraf continued to cling to his delusion even after the Taliban were so easily driven from Afghanistan back in 2001-2002. This is why I'm now starting to think that Musharraf was not merely misguided, but literally insane: he couldn't see that he had been wrong even after it was almost rubbed into his face.
In further proof of Kiyani's seriousness:
Suffering setbacks, the Taliban had asked for a ceasefire, which the government, to its credit, rejected. Reflecting the new attitude in a post-Musharraf Pakistan towards Islamist militancy, the Pakistani government says it will not negotiate with the Tehrik-i-Taliban until it lays down its weapons.
The ease with which the Taliban is being crushed is very encouraging. It means that all we need do is exert strong pressure on Kiyani to keep up the attack, regardless of what the Taliban does, and the Taliban will be driven from Pakistan.
This means that within a matter of months, we could have Osama bin Laden and the surviving members of his vile cabal in our hands, or dead.
We're within sight now of defeating the enemy who orginally started this long war ...
... and maybe Pakistan won't commit Suicide By India after all!
===
(*) Interestingly, Iran is one of the few Muslim countries in which the situation is reversed: it is the theocratic elite ruling the country through their Islamic Revolutionary Guard thugs who want to launch suicidally-aggressive wars, and a fairly-Westernized populace that to some extent holds them back from such adventures.