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Sins of Omission and Sins of Commission Haunt Bush in Pakistan
In the real world, there are consequences. For every action there's a reaction, and often even inaction triggers a reaction.
The unfolding disaster in Pakistan in the wake of the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is in part a reaction to a series of inactions and actions by the Bush administration during the last six years.
Bush and Company took their eyes off the ball and became preoccupied with the sideshow of their own creation in Iraq as things went sideways and backward in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then they outsourced much of the fight against the Taliban and al Qaeda to Pakistani Pres. Pervez Musharraf.
After the attacks on America on 9/11, President Bush quite rightly took aim at al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan that was sheltering the terrorist group responsible for those attacks.
A relatively small group of U.S. special operators rented enough tribal leaders and their armies and, backed by American air power, were able to topple the Taliban government and put al Qaeda on the run. A force of only 7,000 U.S. Army and Marine troops went in to chase the bad guys.
So far, so good, or so it seemed. But the administration declared victory prematurely - a bad habit it would repeat elsewhere - and turned many of its resources and most of its attention to invading Iraq while Osama bin Laden and the Taliban leadership escaped into Pakistan.
Benign neglect is a dangerous policy in the badlands along the Afghan-Pakistani border, where the bleached bones of invading armies litter the mountain passes and the inhospitable deserts. Rudyard Kipling, the poet laureate of the British Indian Army, had this to say on the subject:
"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up your remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier."
Job One was Afghanistan, but it was left undone, too unimportant a backwater for the foreign policy amateurs, neo-conservative ideologues and military dilettantes advising the president. A preemptive invasion of Iraq and the toppling of a hated dictator in the heart of the Middle East - a cheap, easy and quick cakewalk - was what we needed.
Never mind that we'd chased a bunch of fanatical terrorists into a part of Pakistan that no central government has ever conquered or controlled. We'd just throw $10 billion to Pakistan's military dictator and get him to take care of our problem, as if he didn't have enough problems of his own dealing with Islamist fanatics.
Now both Afghanistan and Pakistan are coming unraveled, and are likely to become two more disasters added to the growing list of "things to do" in the disaster department that President George W. Bush will hand to his unlucky successor in the White House a year from now.
Afghanistan is a mess. We installed a weak central government whose writ doesn't run much beyond the city limits of Kabul and starved it of the aid needed to repair a nation ravaged by three decades of war and civil war. The Soviet Union sent 100,000 troops to wage unlimited and barbaric war and was defeated. By contrast, we have 20,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan and we've browbeaten our reluctant NATO allies into sending another 50,000, many of whom are under orders from home not to take risks or get anyone killed.
The Taliban guerrillas, operating from safe havens in Pakistan's rugged frontier province, are on the march. They've learned from the war in Iraq, and their IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and suicide bombers are taking a deadly toll. More American troops were killed in Afghanistan in 2007 than in any year since 2002.
In Pakistan, the radical madrassas are churning out recruits for the Taliban and al Qaeda faster than the allies and the Afghan army can kill them, and every time we've pushed Gen. Musharraf to send his soldiers in to clean out the sanctuaries, most of them have been killed or captured.
The administration's solution: Force Musharraf to take off his uniform and enter into an unholy alliance of sorts with the long-exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose time in power was marked mainly by an explosion of corruption remarkable even in a country where corruption is endemic.
It's no surprise that she was killed. She was buried next to her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, another smooth talking, Western-educated darling of the foreigners, who was hanged by a previous military dictator.
All this might be of little interest if only Pakistan didn't have a cellar full of nuclear warheads. Real nuclear weapons, unlike the imaginary nuclear weapons program our leaders brandished as a reason to invade Iraq or the one they trotted out to turn up the heat on Iran - until the intelligence community pulled the rug out from under that crusade.
All of it is so complicated it must make George W. Bush's head hurt.
Joseph L. Galloway, a military columnist for McClatchy Newspapers, is the co-author, with Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, of "We Were Soldiers Once … and Young," a story of the first large-scale ground battle of the Vietnam War.
© 2007 McClatchy Newspapers
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Show AllWhite Rose: Was it you who put out the website about the Rothschilds? From your comment about the bank in Iran, it makes me think so.
http://iamthewitness.com/doc/RothschildsTimeline-filer/frame.htm
For those of you who haven't looked, it's an interesting read, though it's in 400 PowerPoint slide format, which means it takes a long time to get through. I've no idea of the author or her/his credentials. I also didn't have time to check any of the facts - and some of the leaps of faith that are required are gigantic!
However, it's interesting. Basically, his claim is that the Rothschild family and their friends from the Illuminati control the entire world's money supply. Over the generations, they have used their money to start and end depressions and recessions, and to instigate and pay for both sides of conflicts / war - both of which simply generates more money for them. This should not surprise anyone who posts on this site - we all know the US gov't funds one side overtly while using the CIA covert activities to fund the other side. Maintaining perpetual war only benefits the world elite. So what else is new?
On one of the last slides, the author asserts that the Rothschilds control all of the private or semi-private central banks in nearly every nation (ours is called the Federal Reserve). Now that Iraq and Afghanistan have both opened 'central banks' the only countries that do not have a Rothschild controlled central bank are Iran; North Korea; Sudan; Cuba; and Libya. I haven't checked this fact, but if it's true it certainly is interesting.
For those of you interested, take a look. And for those of you who are looking for a connection to Israel, this site provides plenty of that, too.
JLD_OVERSEAS -- The underlying reason for possible invasion of IRAN is not just their lack of a "properly linked" central bank, but that they will beat the pants off all of the other banks with their Muslim inspired no usury charges.
See http://www.webofdebt.com/
ex-c.i.a. director,richard helm's niece,laila helms,is one of the leaders of the taliban(afghanistan)the relationship between helms,bushsr.,osama binladen(carlyle group),is and has been established.i think the biggest story of this past year is benazir bhutto letting the cat out of the bag and saying sheik omar murdered osama bin laden.as most of us here at cd are aware,this huge story did not even garner a mention from the media.the slaughter earlier this year of the monks of burma,was another huge story,not covered by the media.that happened in october(last year).the dahlai lama recieved his congressional medal of honor from bush and pelosi,in november.his royalness,the dahlai lama,made no mention of the slaughtered buddist monks and it was not covered in major news.our media is beyond being gagged,it is convulsing in death rattles.
gyptian that's George Galloway not Joseph Galloway the author of this article.
Have to agree with you about Kipling as he was a terrible racist. Little has changed since the days of colonialism in how Afghan males are viewed. Its outrageous.
dc thanks for pointing that out ... i feel sufficiently sheepish !! Sorry Joe ...
The reason the Bush junta couldn't supply proof of OBL's guilt to the Taliban is because the real terrorists were not being sheltered by the Taliban government. They were being sheltered by the full power of the US government.
Within hours of the explosions in New York and Wash,DC, the government and the corporate media announced that OBL was responsible. No proof was ever given-to us or anyone else.
Kipling was a racist prick who barely concealed his condescending attitude to Indians in his books. he was probably better than some of his compatriots but thats like saying Bush is more liberal than Cheney !!
"We'd just throw $10 billion to Pakistan's military dictator and get him to take care of our problem, as if he didn't have enough problems of his own dealing with Islamist fanatics."
Does Galloway seriously believe Musharraf had any interest in fighting the extremists ?! How deluded is this guy really ? Does Galloway need to be reminded about Musharrafs support for the Taliban and JeM, LET, LEJ ... has he forgotten about Musharrafs active support for these terrorist groups that tried/trying to destabilize India and Afghanistan ? Ofcourse he knows this ... but he has to satisfy his Pakistani constituency in London !! Politicians all over the world have that unique element of sleaze running through their veins !!
Unfortunately if China reaches our level of consumption, we're all screwed, here and there. See Jared Diamonds article on CD yesterday.
It took fifty years of conservative rule for some of us to see that conservatives can't govern:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Society/Conservatives_Deconstruct.html
"... every time we've pushed Gen. Musharraf to send his soldiers in to clean out the sanctuaries, most of them have been killed or captured."
That sounds like a fairly exaggerated assertion. More than half? Can that be true?
Sending our own soldiers in there to round up the Taliban always seemed to me a little like sending my dog to the beach to round up seagulls.
The so called "WEST" and of course that description is synonimous with the USA, all of the nations of the white race belong to the "West", as if they belong to an exclusive club of white people. Let that be as it is, and the "west" have for over 300 years invaded, destroyed and enslaved the peoples of the so called 3rd world (a term coined by our great Mao Tze Tung). The west went on to rape, brutalise and stole from the 3rd world, a striking example was the destruction of the "Summer Palace" of the Chinese Imperial Palace, a totally unique architectural master piece. THE WEST HAS AND HAD ONLY KNOWN DESTRUCTION, MILITARY ADVENTURES AND THEY HAD ONLY THOUGHT OF CONQUEST AS A MEANS OF ENRIGHING THEMSELVES. Their ill gotten plunder made the west rich, and they are not ashamed to flaunt their riches in out 3rd world faces. This is what the west is all about and they just cannot get their mind set out of this rut. THIS IS NOT THE SOLUTION IN THE 21ST CENTURY.
On the other hand, we have the Chinese civilization, one that is 10,000 years old and for the successive reign of our great Emperors, China has always reached out their hand in friendship and humantarian assistance to those who need support. Today China has again reached out to help African nations to find their footing. This is the new century and China has set out to demonstrate that humanity & humanitarian help to our african brothers advances our own positive values as caring fellow human beings.
Today I heard from CCTV9 (China TV)that India has made public their intention to jettison THE WESTERN MODEL FOR INDUSTRIALISATION. India ought to emulate the development of China's "SOCIALISM WITH INDIAN CHARACTERISTICS. India has a long way to go yet because India has the CASTE system that is impossible of solution. Let India do what India do best.
I say these things because THE WEST is still in denial that they and their archaic model has increasingly become IRRELEVANT. The concept of PERPETUAL WARS as an engine of growth has been superceeded by the humantarian and caring conept that the PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA believe is the correct path to a better world of today and tomorrow. It has been always about the greed of the west that they propelled their nations into a standard of living that was for ever unsustainable; they created a lifestyle that belong to coo coo land. Today the 3rd world will progress to a new kind of future world, a world to finds its own level in spreading equality for all; and it is China that will show the way, NOT THE WEST.
Nice article. It would be facinating to know the conversations that took place between the US, Musharaf and Bhutto that resulted in her return. I can only imagine that it was her ego that pulled her back overriding common sense.
Much like the Afghani war lords that used our air force to settle old scores with enemies by outting them as Taliban, it appears Musharaf has used the Bush administration's naivete to consolidate power.
Mr. Galloway seems to base his world view on the assumption that the U.S. has the right to manage or dictate policy anywhere on the planet it chooses. Of course, that is false under international law, and we had no right to interfere with internal Pakistani or Afghan afairs.
The fact is the Cheney cabal organized the events of 9/11/2001 so they could mobilize the U.S. military to assist them in their goal of capturing the oil reserves of Iraq and the Caspian basin.
They are fools. And they are evil. Idiots. No amount of military force is ever going to be able to force through and maintain a pipeline from the Caspian to the Indian Ocean, and that is mostly what the misadventures and mass murder in the Middle East and South Asia have been about.
Of course, there is also the lucrative opium and heroin trade the Cheney and C.I.A. cabals have been able to dominate thanks to our army in Afghanistan. Robert Fisk, Tariq Ali and others have repeatedly reported that the head of the Afghan heroin mafia is President Karzai's brother.
TESTIFY BROTHER GALLOWAY!
Your remarks on the diversion of and resources attention by the neocons that should have been focused on the Taliban is right on target.
Kipling later said after his son was killed for British Empire, "When they ask why we died, tell them that our fathers lied."
(Kipling's real world comment on empire as opposed to jingoism)
"After the attacks on America on 9/11, President Bush quite rightly took aim at al Qaeda and the Taliban government in Afghanistan that was sheltering the terrorist group responsible for those attacks."
This is a good example of pseudo journalism. There was zero "quite rightly' about the presumptions displayed by the Bush cabal. The Taliban asked for proof that OBL was responsible for the attack. Remember, OBL initially said he did not do it, the tapes of him later claiming responsibility are all suspect.
Remember the carpet of gold or carpet of bombs threat was made before 9/11.
Before Bhutto was murdered, in an interview she said OBL was dead, she did not retract the statement and the interviewer did not question further. Vas gipts?
So what is the story about Iran and it's new banking system? The one that forbids compounding interest(usury), is it the real reason for the malevolence displayed towards that country?
ezeflyer, have you ever asked yourself why you Americans have more right to be better fed than us Chinese; not that you are ever in the position to decide our fate these days.
The issue is very simple, if the Chinese are in the position to have the cake and today's China certainly have the ability to have the cake, then if China having the cake will sink everybody else, then will you think to yourself, WHAT THE CHINESE MUST DO OR MORE CORRECTLY BOTH THE USA AND CHINA MUST COME TOGETHER AND FIND THE EXACT HALF WAY, so both can live.
"Unfortunately if China reaches our level of consumption, we're all screwed, here and there. "
Maybe its about time we reduced our own consumption rather than fretting about China and India. We still consume 10 times more than China or India on a per capita basis and our carbon footprint is disproportionately high. But ofcourse since we are white and privileged we have a right to do so.
"All of it is so complicated it must make George W. Bush's head hurt.."
I do not think so. I believe that Bush does not give any of this a second thought. He might not even give it a first thought, but rather delegate it to others.
Yap and gyptian, I agree.