Part One is here, and Part Two is here.
We did not “walk away” from Pakistan. The government, that is, the military who essentially have always held power in Pakistan, took and took whatever aid they could cajole out of the Americans, and then always came back for more. They took whatever economic aid they could as well, and that economic aid allowed the “failed state” -- always on the brink of bankruptcy -- of Pakistan to nonetheless not only quietly arrange for stealing nuclear secrets from the West, but pay the enormous costs of the nuclear weapons program that led to the building not of one but of dozens of “Islamic bombs,” as they were proudly called, and not only in Pakistan.
The United States did not “walk away” from Pakistan once the Soviet army had left Afghanistan. The country of Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, who were formed by, trained by, supported by, the government of Pakistan. Pakistan also helped the Taliban get back to Afghanistan and seize power once the Soviets had left, and to make that country a hell for its citizens, or for all but those who were the most fanatical Muslims, and to make it a haven for “the Arabs” who arrived, and set up their Al Qaeda camps, and treated the local Afghanis with such contumely. There was no reason at all for the Americans not to “walk away” from Pakistan, for Pakistan completely betrayed the Americans and its own solemn undertakings to them in this case, and then in the case of the long-term betrayal of promise after promise made to the Americans.
Those broken promises led to the Pressler Amendment, and then to renewed outrage from Congress (see the long quotes from Senator Glenn in part two) once it was clear that Pakistan was being allowed, with the State Department’s connivance, to keep fooling the Americans -- that is, the American people, though not the group of apologists for Pakistan who continued to reign, as apologists for other Muslim states still reign and call far too many of the shots in the State Department and elsewhere in our government.
Robert Gates has been the Secretary of Defense in both the Bush and the Obama Administrations. And that is telling, because both Administrations have failed to recognize, and thus failed to address the threat, not of a handful of “extremists,” but of the ideology of Islam, and the worldwide manifestations of that ideology. Those manifestations cannot possibly be made to disappear, though the power of Muslim states, especially their military power to inflict damage, can be kept within manageable bounds. That is why preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons should be the main focus of American policy, and such prevention should certainly include military action -- not an “invasion” but a series of attacks so damaging that the project will not, for many years, be resumed. And during those years many inside and outside Iran can work to end the malevolent regime in power. Those who argue that such an attack will cause a “rallying around” the Islamic Republic have failed to recognize what effect the events of the past few months have had on Iranians, how enraged are so many against this regime, and enraged enough to now recognize the need, for themselves as well as for others, to prevent this regime, which they no longer confuse with Iran itself, to keep the military dictatorship of the Revolutionary Guards from acquiring nuclear weapons.
That attack should be by the United States. It should certainly not be left up to Israel, not least because the Israelis simply do not have the capability the Americans have, and because Israel is in the neighborhood. As Israel once made a tacit alliance with the secular regime of the Shah, it might yet again make a tacit alliance in the future with whatever secular regime follows upon the Islamic Republic. But that would be difficult if Israel had been the one responsible for destroying the nuclear project, which would cause some in Iran to see it as the cause of national humiliation. Part of the pre-Islamic narrative available to the Iranians include tales about Persian support for the Jews, and while that seems unimportant to us, it is part of a narrative that has to be emphasized if the Iranians are to find a way out of the dead-end of the “gift of the Arabs” that has done so much damage, over the past thirty years especially, to Iranians and to Iran.
When the Bush Administration wasted so many men, so much money, so much materiel, in Iraq, Robert Gates was for much of that time the Secretary of Defense. And now that the Obama Administration has come in, with Obama in Cairo not only seeing but raising Bush’s poker-faced nonsense about Islam as a “religion of peace,” but at least abandoning the messianic sentimentalism of Bush when it came to thinking that the Americans could bring “freedom” to “ordinary moms and dads in the Middle East,” Robert Gates is still there, and he still has not thought it necessary, apparently, to rethink the whole business. He has not started to think about Islam in Western Europe, for example, and not merely to take the same idiotic strategy -- winning hearts, winning minds, extending “prosperity” (which means tens of billions of American dollars), and keeping polities “unified” (which means the Americans have to somehow get the various ethnic and sectarian factions to lie down, like so many lions with so many lambs). He is simply moving the whole business from Iraq to Afghanistan, and with help -- help! -- expected from the meretricious government of Pakistan.
To be continued.
Well-written and reasoned, Hugh.
Thanks.
Gates's remarks are part and parcel of Obama's apologetic approach, as though what the Mullahs do depends crucially on our own actions and attitudes and not on their own ideology and motivations.
Hugh, I concur that that the Pakistan plays a double game with USA, pretending to help USA and at the same time they would never willingly help USA eliminate Al Qaeda/Taliban leaders, who are probably protected by Pakistani Army generals. For Pakistani generals, it makes sense to prolong the conflict by protecting the Al Qaeda leaders and yet deliver the odd Al Qaeda operatives to keep the faith of USA and the economic/military aid flowing. All Islamic states are dangerous in owning nuclear bombs with no exceptions. It is like allowing a deranged/rabid Gorilla to possess a fully automatic machine gun. Why didn't you suggest destroying Pakistani nukes as well - with or without Indian/Israeli consent? Surely, that is the best course of action to protect the humanity..
Hugh:
"The United States did not “walk away” from Pakistan once the Soviet army had left Afghanistan. The country of Afghanistan was taken over by the Taliban, who were formed by, trained by, supported by, the government of Pakistan.
Pakistan also helped the Taliban get back to Afghanistan and seize power once the Soviets had left, and to make that country a hell for its citizens, or for all but those who were the most fanatical Muslims, and to make it a haven for “the Arabs” who arrived, and set up their Al Qaeda camps, and treated the local Afghanis with such contumely.
There was no reason at all for the Americans not to “walk away” from Pakistan, for Pakistan completely betrayed the Americans and its own solemn undertakings to them in this case, and then in the case of the long-term betrayal of promise after promise made to the Americans."
Nation building or trying to sawe failed states in the Islamic world has utterly failed and should never be tried again. You cannot make political deals with islamofascist states and any deal you make will come back and haunt you.
Instead we should stay away and let the failed Islamic states bear the full burden of all the negative consequences of further Islamic radicalization. That is a policy of consequence pedagogy plus containment and it seems to be working to our advantage in Iran and to some extent in Pakistan - not because of US assistance but in spite of the billions spend:
"Effectively challenging the militants will require a sea change in the views of Pakistani citizens and their leaders, who have been conditioned by decades of war and tension with India to believe that the real danger lies to their east instead of their west.
Fortunately, if there is a silver lining to the militant atrocities that have plagued Pakistan in the past year and a half, it may be that such a change has begun. The Taliban's assassination of Benazir Bhutto; Al Qaeda's bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad; the attack on the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore; the widely circulated video images of the Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl; a cell phone video recording of militants executing a couple for supposed adultery--each of these has provoked real revulsion among the Pakistani public, which is, in the main, utterly opposed to the militants.
In fact, future historians may record the Taliban's decision to move from the Swat Valley into Buner District, only 60 miles from Islamabad, as the tipping point that finally galvanized the sclerotic Pakistani state to confront the fact that the jihadist monster it had spawned was now trying to swallow its creator.
Indeed, lost in all the disturbing pictures of the Taliban advancing on Islamabad are three seismic shifts in the Pakistani political landscape whose importance is rarely discussed today in the U.S. press.
First is the lawyers' movement, which lies outside of the control of Pakistan's traditional hidebound party system and was instrumental in pushing dictator General Pervez Musharraf out of power last year.
Second is the explosion in independent Pakistani TV stations, which are largely pro-democratic and secular.
Third, the alliance of pro-Taliban religious parties known as the MMA was trounced in the 2008 election, earning a miserable 2 percent of the vote, while support for suicide bombing among Pakistanis has plummeted from 33 percent in 2002 to 5 percent in 2008.
(Quoted from The Drone War By Peter Bergen, Katherine Tiedemann, New America Foundation
The New Republic, June 3, 2009).
Seems to me that a recent poll conducted in Pakistan showed an overwhelming support for radical Islam, and Sharia Law. Seems the large majority agree with the Taliban, just not their tactics.
Obama does not care about the continued existence of the political entity called the United States. If he did, he would not be racing so hard to completely bankrupt it and to emasculate it.
The Islamic world is in a defacto state of war against the United States (and against all free men in all free nations). Obama is also at war with the United States, a nation whose history and heritage he reviles as a brutal, neo-fascist empire.
Obama sees Pakistan and the rest of the Islamic world as yet more downtrodden victims of racist Western colonialism, and he wants to make up for that supposed historical outrage by giving away the store. Like all lefties, he acts like money grows on trees and that there will always be an infinite supply of wealth to spread around. But he knows that his reckless spending will create huge deficits and future fiscal crises, one after the other. He is counting on that.
He will continue to ramp up socialist programs at home and to flood the Islamic world with military, economic, and humanitarian aid until the coffers run dry. When that money runs out, he will have an excuse to withdraw the troops from everywhere and cut defense to a small fraction of its current funding. Once that bloodletting is done, he will have completed his plan to cripple forever that evil, racist empire, the United States of Amerika.
The Taliban, and Pakistan, and Iran have nothing to fear from the Obama administration. There will be no cutbacks in jizya foreign aid, there will be no attack on Iran's nukes, and there will be only token resistance to Islamic aggression. That token resistance will continue to use the "police" model of foreign relations (under UN international supervision, of course), instead of the "perpetual war" model that Islam uses.
We are losing that war, because our previous leader didn't know who he was playing, and our current leader is playing for the other side.
Gates needs to be slammed.
Good work, Hugh!
Dissecting his vacuousness with vigor.