Yeah, the cease-fire he struck with the warlords in the NWFP and Waziristan which gave the Taliban a nice safe base of operations right across the Afghan border was a big win for our side.  By all means, let's keep propping up this universally loathed bonehead.

Timing of this news is no accident.  Super Tuesday will provide a screen, and just to make sure, the CIA are also telling us that AQI is moving to export terror to other countries (that doesn't seem like news, but it succeeded in burying the waterboarding disclosure in the AP report).

Fortunately, nobody really knows whether waterboarding is torture - at least legally speaking (if the Attorney General doesn't know, who does?)

As for Pakistan, their internal troubles with terrorists have at least as much to do with our failures in Afghanistan and Iraq as they do with Musharraf's policies.  Do you think we will be better off when he is gone?

Neil

Neil-  Repectfully, your "their internal troubles with terrorists have at least as much to do with our failures in Afghanistan and Iraq as they do with Musharraf's policies." is just not true, unless you mean Afghanistan in the largest sense (starting in the 80s).  The big problem is that Zia al-Huq realaized that he could prop his distrusted regime by nakedly appealing to Islamic/Islamist flashpoints, and then Benazir used the post-Soviet muj as a bulwark in Kashimir.  What we have done in Afghanistan since hasn't helped (nor did it help that, far from creating the Taliban, we let the ISI basically run our South Asian policy in the 1990s), but we did not create this monster.

What a horrid, horrid failure of American moral integrity.

bone, I can't tell you how shaken my worldview is, having to face that I have to *ulp* take you seriously on subjects like this.

This in no way indicates that I have any respect for you, however.

DrDan- when my big article on the second generation of Al-Qaeda in Yemen comes out in the Terrorism Response journal it'll really bake your noodle.

THat said, arguing about Pakistan does take away from what DrDan pointed out is just a disgusting failure of America.   Benazir only looked good as compared to that two-faced troll Musharraf.   We ignored who he was locking up during the crack-down last year.  Not Islamists.  Jurists.  Imran fucking Khan.  

boneill

I'll clarify my position and see if you still think I am mistaken.

My point about Afghanistan is that we let Osama and company pick up shop and cross into Pakistan practically unmolested, and then allowed Afghanistan to drift into warlordism and made the way ready for a return of the Taliban.  This display of weakness hasn't helped our interests in the region.  Our dismal performance in Iraq has not helped.  Had we resisted the temptation to invade Iraq, and focused on crushing Al Qaeda, we might not be looking at the same situation in Pakistan today.

In saying that our contribution to the problem is as great as Musharraf's own, I mean only to suggest that Josh is overlooking two things: our huge impact on the region, and the likelihood that removing Musharraf would only make things worse for us.

Do you disagree?  

Neil

Neil-

You are dead-right about not finishing the job in Afghanistan, allowing Osama bin Laden to go unmolested into Pakistan, and allowing chaos to re-ferment on the other side of the Hindu Kush (though our NATO allies have dropped the ball as much as anyone, even those that didn't send anyone into Iraq).  I would argue, though, that the NWFP did allow bin Laden to find haven, but he has limited impact and influence there.  He is welcomed like he was initially into the Taliban- as a guest and a sympathetic Muslim.  THe Taliban initially thought he was there to kind of retire after his flight out of Sudan.   I think Islamists in Pakistan, though there are some with global aspirations, are far more interested in Kashmir, and, as such, would be acting this way whether or not there were Arabs and Indonesians and Chechens alongside them.  

Even if we stabalized Afghanistan to begin with, you would still have the problems in Kashmir and Waziristan.  Jihad might not seem as palatable to everyone in Pakistan, but there would still be a large contigent willing to fight.  

But you are very right, and I was wrong, to look at it in a vacum.  If we had done the job well in Afghanistan our options wouldn't be so limited, our hands not as tied regarding the Pakistan problem.  

boneill

Thanks for your comments - I am very pessimistic about the situation, and I wished I felt like there was a clear path to peace and good government in the region.

Pakistan is potentially a worse problem for us than Iran - and reminds me of Iran in the last days of the Shah.  Add in the nukes, Taliban/Afghan unrest, Al Qaeda, Kashmir, an unstable Iraq, the Kurdish experiment, the troublesome Iranians, the failed state in Iraq... I sure hope someone has some answers.  Maybe Musharraf has to go, but I suspect that would only increase the dangers of this situation.  

Neil