There's an amusing irony here: As long as the jihadis attack Hindus in Kashmir, that's fine, but when they turn around and attack Mushie, that's not okay. See, those who live by the sword, die by the sword.
Islamic dictators are always against terrorism - as long as it's a threat to their own rule.

Posted by: jewdog at November 10, 2007 10:02 AM

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates all but declared any U.S. security review to be toothless. "Pakistan is a country of great strategic importance to the United States and a key partner in the war on terror," and urged a "law-based, constitutional and democratic rule as soon as possible."

That's like saying, "Look Moose, we have to publicly invoke our Wilsonian supremacist delusion of "make the world safe for democracy" but maybe democracy will bring the Nazis to power. That's not good. It's especially not good if the Nazis get their hands on nukes". That fear is a large part of why the Moose has been/is coddled and a blind eye is turned to his coddling of the Jihad crack-heads. It's not working out as planned. It looks like the Jihad crack-head beasts are about to eat the Moose.

The two current supremacist Western concepts of democracy and multiculturalism don't work with Nazis. It's time to re think some of our supremacist concepts.

Posted by: Frank at November 10, 2007 10:12 AM

So, they want to end up with a jihadi strongman as opposed to a "pro-Western" strongman at the nuclear controls?

Because anything weaker than Musharraf will only slip toward that kind of chaos.

Bhutto may be a pleasing stopgap and sop to those fixated (like Rice and Bush) on the mythical unicorn called "democracy" (which is meaningless withhout a foundation built on a strong and decent Constitutional Law and Bill of Rights), but Benazir's too weak to face those fanatics who want to start the apocalpyse.

Posted by: profitsbeard at November 10, 2007 11:25 AM

"Pakistan is a country of great strategic importance to the United States and a key partner in the war on terror," Mr. Gates said..."

Or not. Let 'em prove it, before we make such dangerous assumptions. If Musharraf lacks the courage and ability to hold his own, he's as useful as a headless hammer.

What? They don't care to prove it? Fine. In that case, we can step back and let them sink into their own morass.

It's like we've built a house too close to the ocean, and now we're complaining about how the tides are washing the foundation out from under it.

Is there really anything at all in Pakistan that America needs, and cannot do without? (Besides Naseem?)

Posted by: Abscedere at November 10, 2007 11:51 AM

American aid to Muslim countries and would-be polities, once started, apparently can never stop. The American government is afraid to cut such aid, for fear of the reaction of the Muslims who receive it. In other words, that aid is classic Jizyah, "Protection Money" paid by the "Protected Peoples" ("protected" from Muslims themselves) to their Muslim masters, everywhere that Islam dominated and Muslims ruled. That "dhimmitude" has already been internalized all over the Western world. We never think to ask why we should be giving any aid at all to people whose ideology causes them to regard us as their enemies, though all we want is to be left alone by them, all we desire is not to have them change our legal and political institutions from within, or attack other Infidels, whether those Infidels are in Dar al-Harb, or living under Muslim rule in Dar al-Islam.

The only example of a very short-lived attempt to cut the Jizyah was that brief period when the West ceased aid to the "Palestinians" once Hamas obtained power. But now that the Western powers, straining at the bit to resume such aid, have relied on the fiction that there is a world of difference between the Fast Jihadists of Hamas (bad) and the Slow Jihadists of Fatah (good), the aid spigot has been turned on with an eager-to-please smile, as long as that aid goes to the Slow rather than the Fast Jihadists, who both share the same goals when it comes to Israel: they want that Infidel state gone, and differ only on timing and on tactics. They are Muslims and what's more, Arab Muslims whose ethnic identity is wrapped up entirely in Islam, and reinforces rather than possibly playing off against it (as it does with those who are Kurds, or Berbers).

It needs to be pointed out by someone in public life that the aid to Muslim states has taken on, in the psychology of both the demanding recipient (always taking as if by right, and always ready to express fury if any of that aid is removed) and the self-abasing donor (always fearful of diminishing or ending such aid), the classic Jizyah paid by non-Muslims to Muslims, in lands ruled by Muslims.

The rich Arabs have already been the beneficiaries of the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, having received ten trillion dollars since 1973 alone from the sale of oil. It is wealth entirely undesereved, unmerited, the result of an accident of geology. No effortby those rich Saudis and other Arabs was or is necessary. They did not discover the oil or a use for the oil. They did none of the drilling, none of the building of oilfields, none of the building of oil pipelines, none of the furnishing of oil tankers or the captains and the crews for those tankers, and they can scarcely take care of the oilfields and natural gas fields without extensive aid from non-Muslims, who do everything from oversee the oil pumps -- despite the so-called "saudification" that has been so limply attempted -- to putting out fires (there is no Muslim Red Adair).

Yet for some reason not a peep has come from the Western government about the rich Arabs helping the less rich Arabs. Why, when Saudi Arabia alone takes in more than a billion dollars a day from the sale of oil, it is not paying for all of the "reconstruction" in Iraq and the aid to Pakistan -- don't the Saudis, our "staunch allies in the 'war on terrorism'" have the same desires we do, to prevent Al Qaeda in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan? Or don't they?

Let's read the decadent billionaires of the Jazirat al-Arab the riot act, and threaten them in all the ways we have to threaten them, but beginning by pointing publicly to all of their fantastic wealth, and their incredible belief that it is up to Infidels to take care of poor Muslims. It isn't. Not in Dar al-Islam. And not within the Infidel lands themselves.

Posted by: Hugh at November 10, 2007 12:33 PM

All those nukes in Pakistan...

We better have a plan to take them out.

Posted by: greatcometof1577 at November 10, 2007 12:41 PM

@ HUGH

What do you think will happen in Pakistan if the General falls?

Posted by: Big Luke at November 10, 2007 1:43 PM

What was Mullah Omar's popularity rank, in comparison? He could be the black horse in this race.

Posted by: Archimedes2 at November 10, 2007 4:14 PM

What would have happened if the Western response to the oil embargoes and quadrupling of oil prices had been to ban all business with the Arab oil potentates, forcing them to learn how to pump their own oil or else leave it in the ground?

Who would have blinked first?

(I'm afraid it would have been us.)

Posted by: PMK at November 10, 2007 6:04 PM

jewdog--and you-all,

Speaking of the sword--living or dying by it,

http://islamic-danger.blogspot.com/2007/11/not-with-sword-but-with-penis-and-womb.html

Posted by: unicorns62000 at November 10, 2007 6:13 PM