More Thoughts About Bin Laden

[chris_gerrib]

A few additional thoughts:

1) In a perfect world, Bin Laden would have been captured alive. Since we don't live anywhere near perfect, as the commercial goes, Bin Laden dead and buried in the ocean is more than adequate for me.

Two thoughts from Top Ten Myths About Bin Laden's Death:

2) Bush 43 did not spend his time hunting Bin Laden. In fact, in 2006 he closed down the CIA department charged with finding him.

3) Don Rumbsfeld says we did not get the courier's name via waterboarding. Now, I don't recall saying that torture was never effective at getting information, but I do recall saying that torture was bad for America. Here is evidence that it was unneeded.

On Pakistan's involvement in hiding Bin Laden:

4) Pakistan suffers from the same type of problem as Colombia: the central government is weak and the bad guys are strong. This power imbalance makes Pakistan inherently unreliable. That and the fact that the type of compound Bin Laden was living in was not terribly unusual for the area means that it's possible for him to have been hiding there without government help.

5) On the other hand, Pakistan has interests that differ from America's. The biggest difference is that Pakistan wants a weak Afghanistan, and the Taliban are a tool to get that. The other difference is that the people in northern Pakistan are of the same ethnicity as southern Afghanistan, and these people share common goals and interests. In short, sometimes and for some people, helping America is not in their interests.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

5) On the other hand, Pakistan has interests that differ from America's. The biggest difference is that Pakistan wants a weak Afghanistan, and the Taliban are a tool to get that. The other difference is that the people in northern Pakistan are of the same ethnicity as southern Afghanistan, and these people share common goals and interests. In short, sometimes and for some people, helping America is not in their interests.

So we need to make it in Pakistan's interests, by letting them know that the price of continuing to shelter Al Qaeda and the Taliban will be that we will give India full military support in the event of the next Indo-Pakistani War. That will either drive Pakistan into the hands of the jihadists, in which case we can administer Pakistan the beating she so richly deserves for such treachery to Civilization, or slap them back into sanity, in which case Pakistan will drive out Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

What we are doing now, though, by pretending Pakistan is our ally when she isn't, is totally counterproductive.

[jetfx.livejournal.com]

It is doubtful the US could deliver the "beating Pakistan so richly deserves", considering the all the trouble the US is having in the much smaller Afghanistan just because Pakistan more or less is doing nothing to deal with Al Qaeda. Considering the example of Iraq, invading Pakistan would be a great way to create a greater terrorist threat there than is actually existing.

Plus India could squash Pakistan without US help, and has done so every time they went to war since 1947 and increasing tensions in the subcontinent runs absolutely counter to US interests there, particularly if the point of arming India is to decrease the tensions there that spawn the terrorism in the first place.

Threats of violence are not the same thing as common interest, and are the best way to destroy said common interest. More so, it is just weakening the US by mucking about in what is soon to be China's backyard. They won't appreciate the mess.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Or we could work with them when we can and bypass them when we can't. Much less money spent and a lot fewer people get killed that way.