Barack Obama has definitely won the post-vote sound-bite war. Campaigning in Denver, he told people to “stay calm.”
“Things are never smooth in Congress,” Obama said. “Understand that it will get done, that we are going to make sure that an emergency package is put together, because it is required for us to stabilize the market.”
He continued, “It’s sort of like flying into Denver. You know you’re going to land, but it’s not always fun going over those mountains.”
It’s vague and it may be pie-in-the-sky, but it’s intended to reassure and anything is worlds better than John McCain’s sniping through his economic advisor.
As a campaign moment, this crisis has been slipping out of McCain’s hands since the news about Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch first broke two weeks ago. He’s thrown the kitchen sink at it, and it’s all been wrong. He said the wrong thing, then he did the wrong thing, and then he cemented his failure by ceding the economic part of Friday’s debate to Barack Obama. It’s not surprising then that his first reaction to today’s impasse was one of frustration and disgust. Nor is it surprising, for that matter, that Obama’s reaction was laid back and hopeful. That’s just where this race is right now.
Colonel Kilcullen’s new book, Accidental Guerrilla goes into great detail about the Afghan situation and its relationship to Pakistan. The FATA tribal areas were ungovernable when Winston Churchill wrote The Malakand Field Force in 1897. The same villages are discussed. Afghanistan is extremely primitive outside Kabul. The al Qeada jihadists have infiltrated the tribal society in the FATA far more effectively than they were able to infiltrate in Iraq where they alienated sheiks and finally stirred up the Anbar Awakening. We were able to assist the tribes and won that fight. Afghanistan and Pakistan are one problem. The Pashtuns are sort of like the Kurds. Their nation crosses two sets of borders. Pakistan was always a bad idea. It may not survive. If it does collapse, Afghanistan is hopeless. The Russians are freezing us out of the northern “stans” and we will be isolated there.
Obama wants to quit the winnable war and invest in the one that can’t be won. Stalemate is the best we can hope for.
I agree with you overall, but you have misquoted the NYT article, which said,
“The new laws, for instance, would not ban education of females or impose other strict tenets espoused by the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
I view Pakistan’s sporadic “cooperation” with us, their frequent inability to find or keep in jail various jihadis and terrorists, their “surprise” at the massive, years-long nuclear proliferation activities of their own employee, Dr. A.Q. Khan, their unwillingness to let us move troops from Pakistan into Iraq during the war, and a whole host of other actions and inactions as the application of the deceptive tactics of “Takiyya” (dissimulation) and “Kitman” (mental reservation), a charade that the Qur’an gives religious sanction to, and even makes mandatory in certain situations, whenever Muslims deal with “unbelievers.”
For a very learned, succinct and penetrating overview of the world view, strategies, tactics and ultimate aims of Islam, I suggest reading the recent House Armed Services testimony presented by Ramond Ibrahim, editor of the “Al-Qaeda Reader,” (http://armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/TUTC021209/Ibrahim_Testimony021209.pdf ) just a few days ago.
We have deluded ourselves if we believe that the Pakistanis are in any way our allies, even our allies of convenience. They are playing us, taking our considerable aid and, in the process, are blocking or blunting many of our efforts to attack our Muslim enemies; Pakistan will move fully and openly into the camp of Islam when it will best serve the cause of Islam.
An unmistakable pattern and sequence of events is emerging:
“Pakistan’s sporadic “cooperation” with us, their frequent inability to find or keep in jail various jihadis and terrorists, their “surprise” at the massive, years-long nuclear proliferation activities of their own employee, Dr. A.Q. Khan, their unwillingness to let us move troops from Pakistan into Iraq during the war, and a whole host of other actions and inactions…”
“Pakistani officials concluded a peace deal with a Taliban-linked group that will lead to the enforcement of Islamic law in a part of the country that is supposed to be fully under government control.”
“there are reports that Taliban members are increasingly becoming al Qaeda members and contributing to a lethal “shadow army” that is, according to Bill Roggio in the Washington Times, “well trained and equipped, and has defeated the Pakistani Army in engagements in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Peshawar, Khyber, and Swat.”
It appears that the Pakistani Army is being overrun by the Taliban…
Pakistan’s recent release of Dr. A.Q. Khan…
This pattern of events logically leads to the clear possibility of the Taliban taking over Pakistan and, with nukes they become another North Korea, in that they cannot be attacked conventionally. If more and more of the Taliban are becoming members of al Qaeda, then the possibility arises of al Qaeda effectively gaining control of a nuclear arsenal…
But not too worry! Surely Pres. Obama will demonstrate the requisite fortitude and resolution to confront and contain an al Qaeda controlled Pakistan…
“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. [Yet] There may even be a [still] worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish, than live as slaves.” – Winston Churchill, “The Gathering Storm.”
Churchill’s wisdom notwithstanding, he lived in a time when western liberal pacifism had not gained the ascendancy to maintain governmental, suicidal, ‘policies’ of appeasement.
China and Russia are using Islamic terrorism, Iranian nuclear ambitions and the resultant, greatly increased nuclear proliferation that will inevitably follow to continue to destabilize and drain the west. Arguably, it’s a strategy that is working.
We can lose this war and it may yet be the American ‘experiment’ which is “consigned to the dustbin of history” and humanity may yet experience another dark age.
For it’s only in the movies where the bad guys never win and, in the real world, bad guys don’t let the good guys get back up once they’ve been knocked down…
Meanwhile, the ‘band’ plays on and the useful idiots in the MSM and apathetic members of the American public sleep on…
This was all sadly predictable when Obama was urging us to throw Musharraf under the bus, claiming that Pakistan would be healed by democracy. Before this, I’d thought Obama might be a realist, but open hearing this I realized instead he was just an utter fool.
The only positive aspect is that this development marries India to us. Pakistan has been a failed state since partition. I just hope that Obama doesn’t fumble away this relationship.
#1 “Pakistan was always a bad idea”. Well that is helpful.
I dont think having them under India would be ay more productive.
Winston Churchill was extremely hostile to the independence of India & on his visit to USA in 1932 feared assassination by Indian nationalists.
But India happened & then Pakistan & then Bangladesh.
There is one special Pakistani citizen -& quite possibly Pakistan’s most handsome man -Imran Khan.
I defer to his judgement.