Dec 08 2008
Hundreds Need Not Die To Force Pakistan Into Action
The Mumbai, India attacks represent a serious failure of Pakistan to deal with the terrorist thugs who operate within their borders and export death and destruction to its neighbors. The excuses being laid out by Pakistan that the terrorists acts are not a reflection on Pakistan are becoming laughable. Pakistan needs to understand it either cleanses it sovereign lands of these murderers or others will do it for them.
Bill Roggio & Thomas Jocelyn have a good assessment of the tired excuses coming out of Pakistan:
Zardari was partly right. In all likelihood, neither he nor his supporters had anything to do with the attacks. So, if you define the “state of Pakistan” as the president and his immediate cohorts, his words ring true. Of course, there is more to Pakistan’s government, including its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), the powerful military intelligence organization over which Zardari exerts little control. And there are good reasons to suspect that the ISI had a hand in the Mumbai attacks, which killed more than 180 people and wounded nearly 300.
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Contrary to President Zardari’s claims, the LET is no “stateless actor.” In fact, the LET is and always was a creature of the ISI.
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As the war in Afghanistan came to an end, the ISI began to reallocate its resources. The jihadists had proven their merit as guerrilla fighters, and the ISI found it convenient to use them elsewhere. Veterans of the Afghan conflict formed the LET’s first cadres, and, using Saudi cash, the ISI quickly expanded the LET’s operations. By the early 1990s, the LET emerged as one of the ISI’s primary instruments for waging its proxy war against Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir.
It is well beyond the time for Pakistan to dispose of this dangerous weapon they created. It is no different from having a nuclear weapon and being responsible for it. Weapons of mass destruction are not limited to devices of chemistry, biology and physics – as Mumbai clearly shows.
The threats of retaliation from the Pak enclaves that house and protect this modern weapon of destruction (a.k.a. terrorism) are a sure sign they are not going to give up their weapon without pressure and/or force:
A senior member of the LET confirmed to Asia Times Online that there had been a raid on one of the Jamaatut Dawa’s offices, and warned that if Zakiur Rahman was grilled, it would be tantamount to civil war in Pakistan.Â
“So far the province of Punjab [the largest Pakistani province] has been spared from all sorts of violence, but if such action is carried out, Punjab will also burn in violence,” he said.Â
I guess I am of the opinion of letting it burn. Better there than in the West or in regional democracies. Better Punjab than Mumbai, Bali, Madrid, London or New York. If we had to choose where to unleash the violence required to cauterize this cancer of terrorism it is better to go to the source instead of pretending the cancer is not there and benign.
There needs to be immediate and overpowering action to destroy the camps and enclaves of these butchers before they have a chance to kill again. Preemptive actions against threats to innocent people is a recognized response in the world security apparatus. Terrorists better understand this if there is ever to be any serious deterrent to large scale acts of mindless violence. The efforts have begun again, but they cannot be half-hearted measures. The current administration is following its standing policy of not relying on excuses or false promises. It is pressuring Pakistan to stop fiddling while elements inside its borders wreak havoc on its neighbors and the rest of the world.
This is a huge test for Team Obama. Will they take forceful action, or will the find excuses to rely on the false promises of proven killers. If Obama hesitates, even in the slightest, like Clinton did in Somalia and with the first WTC bombings, the green light will be on for terrorists to see how far they can push the Great Satan.
To people willing to die for their cause, the only question is how much can they gain in the carnage. If they see the chance for progress they will take it. If they see utter and complete annihilation they MAY hold back. I would take the latter over the former any day of the week.
Time to drain the swamp…as I believe you have already said, AJ.
It is oft said that a defining attribute of a government is that it has a monopoly on the use of force.
It seems that in Pakistan, by this definition, there is no government.
AJ,
Bill Roggio was wrong when he wrote this:
>The United States is now faced with an awful
>truth. Pakistan is both an ally and an enemy.
>The attacks in Mumbai are only the latest
>demonstration of the tactics the ISI is willing
>to sponsor in its quest for power in the
>subcontinent and beyond. We should be mindful
>that ISI-sponsored terrorism is a central
>component of our enemies’ worldwide designs. It
>should not come as a surprise if someday we
>find ISI-backed terrorists laying siege to New
>York or Washington, just as they lately brought
>carnage to Mumbai.
The key issue at hand is that Pakistan, as it exists today, is what we fear Iran will become — a nuclear armed, terrorist supporting, rogue, failed state.
We have allies inside that failed state dealing with the Islamist factions, but often times we cannot tell the Islamists from the non-Islamist because both our allies and the Islamists factions inside the Pakistani state are Pakistani nationalists one and all.
When it comes to Indian terrorism, there are indistinguishable.
There is no one there who can enforce peace over all the Pakistani factions, and turn ISI’s Islamist terrorists off, because anti-Indian hate is the only thing that can rally popular support for the Pakistani State. As a result, the Islamist factions inside the Pakistani state have more deniability for terrorist operations than the Mullah’s of Iran.
To be blunt, the Pakistanis are playing a game of “Moderate Iranian Mullah†with us.
Whatever their colorings, the members of the Pakistani state — civilian or military — are Pakistani nationalists. The only thing that unites the Pakistani people behind the state in any meaningful way is war with India. Every faction of the Pakistani state will use that card to stay in power domestically, whatever they are saying to the West.
They will use our assistance from outside to count coup on other Pakistani state factions, but they all will lie to any and all outsiders about war and terrorism with India. They need it to much to maintain the Pakistani state in existence.
This takes us to another harsh geo-political reality. The best defense against nation-state sponsored terrorist attacks is preemption. Eliminate terrorist bases and state support by eliminating the supporting governments.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki happened because America had the economy and the political will to both forge nuclear weapons and to use them to eliminate the threat. All it took was a Pearl Harbor to fatally enraging the American people.
Our Islamic terrorist foes in Pakistan are seeking to provide the Indian people with that same motivation to eliminate the threat a’la “Pakistan Delenda Est.â€
And there is nothing we can do to stop this.
India’s immediate problems, and the WORLD’s, stem from Pakistan. It is the Disneyland of jihad and India is their neighbor. Outside Afghanistan, the rest of the world is escaping the mayhem because India is both next door and a soft target.
Pakistan does this because it can, and thanks to it’s nukes, the failed Pakistani state is safe to continue these policies.
India can do whatever it wants internally to stop its current terrorist problem, but Pakistan will continue to sponsor terror. There will always be some terrorist clique that one of the Pakistani state power factions will have been built up to start the terrorism cycle all over again.
India defeated the Punjab insurgency. Then Pakistan started Kashmir.
Then India, for all practical purposes defeated the Kashmir insurgency, and reduced it to a trickle, with Israeli technical assistance.
Now terrorist attacks on soft targets inside India by the Pakistani factions have started.
The question is what are the _Indian People_ going to do about it.
India does not have an effective government, due to internal corruption. At the Federal level, it is roughly what the US government was in 1860, but without the effective local and state governments that the USA had then to mobilize economic power into military capability.
However, as a Democracy, India has a far better chance than Pakistan to get people of talent through elections to clean up it’s internal messes. It requires that competent and economically powerful Indians decide to run for political office and deal with the national security threat India faces.
The only way India will be safe is to eliminate the Pakistani state.
The problem is that it will take time to get an effective Indian government (5-7 years); to acquire the national resources (another 5-7 years) by developing good government, good economic and tax policies; and then actually build the militarily effective national security establishment (add another 5-7 years) that can deal with a nuclear armed Pakistan.
In the mean time continued Pakistani terrorist attacks are going to empower Hindu nationalist extremists to be beastly to Indian Muslims until an effective Indian government can be built to deal with the Pakistani state.
IMO, this means India will see a new partition in the mid-term (7-to-12 years), driving out the majority of it’s (150 million strong) Muslim population in a new partition. You could easily see over 40-to-80 million Muslims added Pakistan’s current population number.
The Pakistanis will put those displaced Indian Muslims in Palestinian like refugee camps for the UN and EU to take care of and turn loose L-e-K and other jihadi groups to indoctrinate inhabitants of those camps into jihadi shock troops for further world wide terrorism.
Things are going to be ugly and getting worse on the Indian sub-continent for a long time.
The principal product, and principal export, of Pakistan is woe. This will be repaid many times over.
“Woe unto the world because of offenses: necessary it is that offenses come; but woe unto the man by whom the offense cometh” (Matthew 18)
AJ,
The Pakistani Army faction in charge of the Khyber Pass crossing is letting the Taliban savage NATO supplies while the USA is pressuring the Pakistani government over the L-e-T.
Pakistani security forces were not protecting the Bilal Terminal despite yesterday’s attacks. The Pakistani government said NATO convoys would be accompanied and protected by Pakistani military units.
and
The Pakistani government shut down the vital Khyber Pass crossing two other times this year. The first time, the government closed the crossing to protest US airstrikes against Taliban and al Qaeda operatives sheltering in the tribal areas. The second time was in response to the poor security situation.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2008/12/taliban_destroy_50_n.php