[Peace-discuss] Obama's Xmas Eve

[C. G. Estabrook]

	US Contemplates More of the Scarcely Believable in ‘Afpak’
	by William Pfaff, December 17, 2009

PARIS — The writer David Halberstam, author of a cruel analysis of the people
who gave America the Vietnam War, The Best and the Brightest, observed that "no
matter how small the initial step, a policy has a life and a thrust of its own,
it is an organic thing. More, its thrust and its drive may not be in any way
akin to the desires of the president who initiated it." He had a hard time
making his Vietnam-era interlocutors agree, as part of being one of the military
and civilian best and brightest is that you didn’t need advice from journalists.

It is another characteristic of official life that you are discouraged from
applying lessons from experience and history (in the military case, before that
experience has been incorporated into field manuals and regulations placed in
front of you).

This rumination is motivated by the scarcely believable news that the people who
are running the war in Afghanistan are contemplating an air attack on a Pakistan
city in order to kill one of the most important figures in Pakistan’s own
foreign and security policy.

Pakistan, as most sensible people know, is in the grip of forces that could tear
the country apart if that happened — which would make it the third nation, after
Iraq and Afghanistan, to be devastated by the United States since that fateful
day in September 2001 when the so-called war on terror began.

The idea is for the United States to bomb Quetta, one of Pakistan’s principal
cities, capital of its largest province, Balochistan, which already experiences
separatist forces. Quetta is a major Pakistan military base, home of the
century-old Command and Staff College inherited from the British army.

A reported American threat is not just one of sending drones over this city of
850,000 people, with missiles meant to kill Mullah Omar, leading figure in at
least one branch of the Taliban; senior al-Qaeda figures also supposedly in
Quetta; and Siraj Haqqani, called the most important Taliban leader in the
country, whose men are supposed to pose the biggest threat to NATO forces in
Afghanistan.

Haqqani is also, as it happens, a major and longstanding Pakistani strategic
asset and ally. He will be a vital factor in the regional reconciliation and
strategic settlement that will follow America and NATO’s defeat. That is the
most important objection to the supposed plan.

The Pakistanis believe that the NATO expedition in Afghanistan is an
ill-conceived and futile affair from which, after killing and being killed in
large numbers, and accomplishing nothing useful, the Europeans and Americans
will depart, just like the U.S. retreated from Lebanon under Ronald Reagan,
after the 1983 attack on the troops’ barracks in Beirut, and Bill Clinton pulled
U.S. troops out of Somalia not long after losing the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993.

After the foreigners leave, Pakistan will find itself once again in the awkward
geopolitical and militarily dangerous situation in which nature and the vagaries
of man have placed it. Its avowed great enemy is India, with which Pakistan
shares a very long eastern border, with Iran to its west, and Afghanistan on its
long northwestern frontier. A friendly Afghanistan therefore offers strategic
depth in case of Indian attack, and access to Central Asia, while Iran is a
corridor to the Middle East. This is the sort of thing they teach at the Quetta
Command and General Staff College.

The American generals seem to be saying to Pakistan: You henceforth will ignore
your own national security interests and devote yourself to our interests,
whatever the cost to you. You will hand over all of the Taliban leaders and men
in your country, and place your army under our strategic control. Otherwise, we
will bomb your cities.

Why, according to the Los Angeles Times, "senior U.S. officials" think this is a
good plan, I cannot for the life of me tell you. I think it is a way to wreak
further havoc in the region and do fundamental damage to the United States itself.

(c) 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> During the campaign, Obama's U.N. representative sneered at how ineffective 
> Bush was at killing Pakistanis.  (His drone attacks were "baby steps," she 
> said.) She said Obama would much expand attacks on Pakistan, and he has.
> 
> Pakistan is the real object in the "eastern front" of the Mideast war because
>  US planners fear that opposition from Pakistan -- 2/3 of US population, a 
> larger army, and nuclear weapons -- could seriously compromise US control of 
> the region & its energy resources.
> 
> I think the Pakistani supreme court's attack on president Zardari this week 
> is motivated at least in part by fear that the pliant Zardari can be 
> manipulated by the US.  --CGE
> 
> 
> Ed Mandel wrote:
>> Does this mean that President Obama, 2009  Nobel peace prize recipient, has
>>  now started a war with Pakistan?
>> 
>> *************************************
>> 
>>> Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 08:32:32 -0600 From: galliher at illinois.edu To: 
>>> peace-discuss at anti-war.net Subject: [Peace-discuss] Obama's Xmas Eve
>>> 
>>> "A pair of US drone strikes, using multiple drones and nearly a dozen
>>> missiles, attacked Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency today, killing at
>>> least 17 people and wounding an unknown number of others." December 17,
>>> 2009
>>> 
>>> 
>>> While the Shepherds watched their flocks by night All seated on the 
>>> ground A high-explosive shell came down And mutton rained around.
>>> 
>>> --Saki, 1915 _______________________________________________