Us here? Sure this isn’t news to us. Do your friends know? Do you have any friends with family in the military? Do they know? Do you know anyone in a tea party? Do they know? Do you know anyone in congress? Do they know?
I flagged this breaking news because now instead of the conversation being derailed with “Oh EyesUnclouded you crazy news junkie conspiracy theorist quit spoiling our BBQ!” you can point to the fact that the Pentagon has officially said this. How can we as a country make the same, literally the same, mistakes that doomed our efforts in SE Asia only a few decades ago?
The Taliban predicted in 2001 we would pull out and they would just come back into power. Are we going to let that happen? It seems like it. Karzai (who is only in power because we put him there) is making moves to integrate them back into the government! We have announced pullout dates starting next year! We haven’t slapped any kind of sanction on Pakistan!
It isn’t just the Islamists either. China is growing in power and is using its influence on the world stage in increasingly worrying ways. They would love to expand their, already worrying, influence in Pakistan after we leave. After 9/11 happened we said we would do what it takes and all put flags on our cars. I’ve looked around. 90% of those flags are gone and now we are just going to walk away and put the Taliban in charge again? What about people who lost limbs and/or life over there? Sorry? Better luck next time?
This should be as big, if not bigger, an issue than spending or tax cuts.
The surprise would be if the Pentagon is really just figuring this out.
Because we have bad leadership, even worse than Vietnam. If Fist was King for a day, we would bring our heros home, and if any of these 7th century barbarians dare hit us again, a neutron bomb would be the answer, after the second one they would take care of the taliban problem themselves....
Easy man. I was making light of the fact that it was finally officially acknowledged. I didn’t mean it as an attack. I do think only us news junkies will know what it means. The sheep want to know who is on American Idol. I think it’s probably not a good move to do the work that needs to be done against the ISI in such a public fashion. We just radicalized a few more of them.
Other than incorporating Pakistan into its territory, China needs to do little to expand its influence in Islamabad. The generals there trust Beijing more than Washington and have done so for half a century.
i.e., surly convenience store clerks. With a snap of their nicotine-stained fingers, Palkistan's leaders could cut off late-night milk supplies amd last-minute lottery tickets, throwing the US into total chaos.