From Dawn.com:
The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for a brazen weekend attack on the army's headquarters compound in the city of Rawalpindi.
Taliban spokesman Azam Tariq called The Associated Press on Monday and said the attack that killed 20 people was only the first in a planned series of strikes intended to avenge the killing of their leader Baitullah Mehsud in a CIA drone attack in August.
He said the raid on army headquarters was carried out by a Punjabi faction of the militant group and it had given orders to other militant branches across the country to launch similar operations.
He also warned the army that if it launched a planned offensive into Waziristan it would be its undoing.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama authorized, directly or indirectly, that CIA drone attack.
If he wants to be a war president, then in good conscience he should refuse the Peace Prize. He can say that he will be pleased to accept it if it is reoffered after he has fought and won the good fight and helped bring peace to a tortured region. If he wants to be a "peace now" president, then it is hard to see how he believes that an America of questionable financial solvency should be so involved in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. Please recall that the Mehsud tribal leader that our country killed (in cold blood) has not been asserted to have been involved in fighting in Afghanistan. What did that killing have to do with the Afghan insurgency?
The game of tit for tat amongst tribes and factions in Pakistan is a difficult one for America to play now.
Here is what Pakistan is really concerned about, also from today's Dawn.com: Massive war games showcase deepening India-US ties:
NEW DELHI: India and the United States began a massive joint military exercise on Monday, underscoring their deepening security ties they view as crucial in a troubled South Asia region.
Pakistan created the Taliban, very likely with U. S. assistance and encouragement, during the Soviet Union's occupation of Afghanistan. Months of reading Dawn.com tell me that Pakistan regards its Taliban as country bumpkins. Meanwhile, Pakistan has fought three wars with India and developed nukes because India had them.
Think of Pakistan as Cambodia, Afghanistan as Viet Nam, and Obama as Nixon. Nixon's expansion of the Viet Nam War to Cambodia was useless to our Viet Nam effort and may have led to the murderous Pol Pot regime coming to power in Cambodia. It would be quite an irony, and a sad one, if Mr. Obama followed the Nixon example with similar results.
The greater the U. S. military involvement in the internal affairs of faraway people, the greater the chance that via one route or another, we will get more rather than less involved. Such is the nature of positive feedback loops. Given our economic and financial problems, is President Obama willing to demand the domestic stringencies necessary to fight an expanded war in Asia if he deems it necessary without resorting to out-and-out money printing to finance it?
The above represents another argument for gold ownership as a hedge if our role in the Afghan war or the Pakistan civil conflict expands and the answer to the above question is the answer Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Bush II gave.
Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2009
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