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Anti-Pakistan Rant. Like the phoney Iraq War Propaganda?

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by glynch, May 8, 2009.

  1. glynch

    glynch Member

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    From my nightly watching of ABC News ( agreat way to see what propaganda we are to believe) it seems to me that there is a push to make us all think that the Taliban in Pakistan is some sort of existential threat to Pakistan, and laughably, Americans. Americans will certainly fall for the usual line that those dumb Pakis, Afgans, Iraqi, AArabs etc. are too dumb to realize a real threat that we the smart ones understand, but they are too dumb to see.

    ********
    Officials Admit Pakistanis Reject US Priorities

    by Gareth Porter, May 08, 2009
    Email This | Print This | Share This | Comment
    The advances of the Taliban insurgents beyond the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in recent weeks and the failure of the Pakistani military to counter them have brought a rare moment of truth for top national security officials of the Barack Obama administration.

    Accustomed to making whatever assumptions are necessary to support ambitious administration policies in the Middle East, those officials have now been forced to face the reality that the Pakistani military leadership simply does not share the U.S. view that the radical Islamist threat should be its top national security priority and that the divergence is not going to change anytime soon.

    U.S. officials have largely responded to the dawning realization with statements reflecting anger and peremptory demands, but at least one key policymaker — Defense Secretary Robert Gates — is hinting that there are strict limits on the U.S. power to change Pakistan’s strategic assessment of its security interests.

    ...
    But when the Pakistani army seemed unable or unwilling to resist the Taliban control of the Swat valley in April, those assurances suddenly began to ring hollow in Washington. During a trip to Pakistan in early April, Mullen himself was apparently shaken by the lack of determination on the part of the Pakistani government on the Swat valley. Mullen was "as grave as I have ever seen him," said the source close to the chairman.

    The rhetoric from top administration officials quickly became nearly apocalyptic. On Apr. 24, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused the Pakistani government of "abdicating to the Taliban" and warned that the deterioration of security in the country poses a "mortal threat" to the U.S. and the world.

    In an interview with Fox News, Clinton invoked the threat of the Taliban getting control of the "the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan" and warned, "We can’t even contemplate that. We cannot let this go any further…"

    The same day, Gen. David Petraeus demanded that Pakistan reconfigure its military forces to deal with counterinsurgency operations rather than to continue its traditional focus on rival India.

    Also on Apr. 24, however, Gates implied that the Pakistanis did not share the U.S. view of what their priorities should be.

    "My hope is that there will be an increasing recognition on the part of the Pakistani government that the Taliban in Pakistan are in fact an existential threat to the democratic government of that country," said Gates, making it clear that no such recognition was yet apparent.

    Then, on Apr. 30, Petraeus seemed to threaten dramatic changes in U.S. policy if the Pakistani government and military did not take more concrete action within two weeks.

    The administration also continued to raise the issue of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons being at risk. On May 4, National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones declared in an interview with BBC that if the Pakistanis were "not successful" in the fight against the Taliban, "obviously the nuclear question comes into view." He said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of the Taliban would be "the very, very worst case scenario."

    But the effect of Obama administration heated rhetoric was to further distance the leadership of Pakistan’s military from the strategic interests of the United States.

    In a highly unusual public statement on Apr. 24, Army Chief of Staff Kayani "condemned pronouncement by outside powers raising doubts on the future of the country."

    The next day, Chief of Air Staff Marshal Rao Qamar Suleman said the Pakistan Air Force would "continue to maintain its optimum readiness to undertake all types of missions against all internal and external threats." That was a clear reference to the threat from India, which the United States was trying to get Pakistan to downgrade.

    Finally, after Petraeus’s statement giving Pakistan two weeks to shape up or face some unspecified consequences, the military leadership held a meeting May 1, which the chairman of Pakistan’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Tariq Majeed, later said "took place against the backdrop of widespread propaganda unleashed by the western media about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons."

    That extraordinary series of statements indicated that the Pakistani military had no intention of caving in to overt pressure from Washington.

    The negative effect of the administration’s rhetoric did not escape Mullen, who has traveled to the country 11 times since becoming Joint Chiefs chairman in 2007. In an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington Post published May 3, Mullen said, "My experience is that knocking them hard isn’t going to work. The harder we push, the further away they get."

    Mullen’s dismissal of the idea that tough words were going to move the Pakistanis in the direction desired by the administration were followed by a May 5 interview by Gates with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in which Gates talked openly about the conflict between Pakistani and U.S. priorities.

    Responding to Zakaria’s point that the Pakistani Army has thus far shifted only 6,000 troops from its border with India out of an army of about a half million, Gates acknowledged that the Pakistani strategic focus is overwhelmingly still on India.

    "For 60 years Pakistan has regarded India as its existential threat, as the main enemy," he said. "And its forces are trained to deal with that threat. That’s where it has the bulk of its army and the bulk of its military capability."

    Gates also suggested that the Pakistanis were not particularly worried about the Islamist threat from the Pashtun region, because they count on the fact that the largest ethnic group, the Punjabis, "so outnumber the Pashtuns that they’ve always felt that if it really got serious, it was a problem they could take care of."
    Having essentially explained that Pakistan has a completely different set of strategic interests from the United States, Gates repeated the standard administration line that "the movement of the Taliban so close to Islamabad was a real wake-up call for them."

    Gates and other administration officials are certain to continue suggesting that the Pakistani government and military really do share the U.S. urgency now about the threat of Islamic radicalism. But for the first time they are questioning the basic premise of the whole "AfPak" strategy, which is that the United States can somehow induce Pakistan to fundamentally change its view of its strategic interests.

    http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2009/05/07/officials-admit-pakistanis-reject-us-priorities/
     
  2. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    I don't think those analogies work.

    I mean it's undisputed (unlike say with Iraq) fact that Pakistan is nuclear armed.

    It's also undisputed that the Taliban (with ISI support) operate pretty freely in the NWF

    It's undisputed that the Taliban has been advancing eastwards in Pakistan as far as territory controlled.

    Finally - the Pakistanis themselves, if you give public opinion surveys any credence, have finally come around to believing that (read Fred Kaplan's excellent article from slate on this yesterday) the Taliban are a real threat to their own existence.

    Those factors (along with many others that I haven't enumerated) cast serious doubt on your analysis.
     
  3. s land balla

    s land balla Member

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    Pakis is a deragatory term, look it up.
     
  4. glynch

    glynch Member

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    I mean it's undisputed (unlike say with Iraq) fact that Pakistan is nuclear armed. So the wmd scare is not quite so contrived. However, the question is whether our policies are destabilizing Pakistan. Is it really in our interests to foment a major civil war in Pakistan which Obama and his neo-con military advisers left over from the Bush regime seem hell bent on provoking.


    As far as the ridiculous propaganda about the Taliban being 70 miles from Islaaamad, well duh. We have driven the Taliban into their Pashtun cousins homeland, which has always been 70 miles from Islaamabad. Maybe there is a reason that Pakistan has allowed the Tribal Areas to be semi-independent.
     
  5. glynch

    glynch Member

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    I used in on purpose, well aware of its negative tone. (See AArabs, which I also think is ignorant) to show the ignorance of Americans who think they are superior to everyone else.
     
  6. ChrisBosh

    ChrisBosh Member

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    Just to add to this.....there are 600,000 Pakistani troops, with tanks and jet fighters....10,000 men with old machine guns arn't about to take over a country.

    Also, the Shia's and Sufi's for one arn't going to stand and watch, neither are the rich and ruling class, who would rather not see Taliban law and order. Nothing points to them being a REAL threat.

    The only thing that is of concern is the infighting of those that are fighting for power. However, as long as the army stands united I guess it doesn't matter either....
     
  7. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    Yea but about 540,000 of those 600,000 are lined up along the border with India, and if the capital falls it's chaos. The problem is not so much a wholesale takeover but a destabilization of sufficient reach so that the insurgents can get their hands on a portion the nuclear stockpile (which I believe is dispersed geographically throughout the country).
     
  8. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    glynch, Swat isn't a traditional Pashtun "homeland." The majority of the 1.8 million people who live in the state may be Pashtun, but there are two other ethnic groups in the state, as well. Swat, traditionally, was a relatively peaceful part of Pakistan and a popular tourist destination, not only for Pakistanis, but for Europeans and others, due to its beauty and terrific skiing. That's being destroyed by the Taliban and their extremist allies, along with the torching of most of the schools for girls by the same folks, which you appear to be happy to turn the place over to. Why is that? What has this got to do with Iraq? The only connection worth making, in my opinion, is that had Bush not lied his way into Iraq and taken so many of our resources away from Afghanistan, Pakistan might not have nearly the problems they are facing today in the area.

    Pakistan has brought a lot of this on themselves, but they deserve our help.
     
  9. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Thankfully someone has some common sense and is not falling for the propaganda onslaught.
     
  10. glynch

    glynch Member

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    Sam, you are usually level headed. "if the capital falls"!!!! Sheesh.

    Hopefully you aren't worrying about Washington DC or Mumbai falling to the "troops" of the Taliban.
     
  11. glynch

    glynch Member

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    You have some points. The connection to Iraq is that I think that we are being fed a steady diet of propaganda/ misinformation about the threat that the Taliban represent to Western Civ--like the propaganda we were fed about wmd and the threat from Sadam.

    I still think Pakistan knows best how to deal with their Pashtun and the neo-cons Obama has let stay on are leading him astray.
     
  12. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    Are you honestly arguing that Pakistan's political leadership sits in a redoubt of strength in Islamabad, and all of us are being alarmists? Because that has never been true for any part of Pakistan's existence.

    Benazir Bhutto ring a bell?
     
  13. insane man

    insane man Member

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    do you honestly think the military establishment, no matter how sympathetic it may be to generic islamists, really would allow nukes to be taken over?
     
  14. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    They haven't exactly done a good job fighting the Taliban so far.....what precisely about them inspires confidence?
     
  15. DudeWah

    DudeWah Member

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    <br>
    I love the opinion that without American help a country will just fold up and keel over to any opposition that it receives from foreign "invaders"...
     
  16. Matchman

    Matchman Member

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    if they allow the taliban to establish extreme islamic law because they were unable to contain them, that shows me the signs of weaknesses on the pakistani government and that needs to be contained before they start invading other parts of the country (which they already did).
    and to those who cited the military strength of the Pakistani military, you must remember we won the Vietnam war because our weapons and military training are light years ahead of the Vietcong?
     
  17. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    Oh I'm sorry, I forgot about Pakistan's distinguished military record, having lost a war to Bangladesh.
     
  18. Qball

    Qball Member

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    Right, cause it was Pakistan vs Bangladesh. NOBODY else was involved.
     
  19. SamFisher

    SamFisher Member

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    They weren't doing so hot before they bit off more they could chew by invading india.

    I can't think of a single thing that Pakistan's military has ever done well, other than collect UN military peacekeeper payments.
     
  20. Qball

    Qball Member

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    So based on the above, you're concluding that Pakistan might fall to the Taliban. We're not talkin about Pakistan going into foreign land btw. You seriously have doubts that Pakistan loses the current battle?

    I'll agree that it's possible for Pakistan screwing this up, but it will be on another level. It won't be because they lost a series of conventional battles to some rag-tag army in their OWN country (for those citing vietnam war references). It'll be more of something like some big baller politician gets assassinated, country goes crazy, taliban uses it against the govt and blames U.S. (like always), blah blah blah. But pound for pound, I can't believe you actually think Pakistan's military will lose.
     

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