In Pakistan's Failing War on Terror, Foreign Policy's Af-Pak Channel gives the reader an alternative reality from that seen via pro-government unverified reports of one success after another in the fight against militants in Pakistan, via www.dawn.com.
Reading this downbeat article is reminiscent of reading about something from other foreign wars. The truth is that neither you nor I will ever really understand this part of the world. There is so much of local politics in all this stuff that even if we were to believe what we were told, we lack the full context to understand what it means.
What appears to be true is that neither the Afghans nor the Pakistanis like Americans.
Have we not enough problems at home?
We bought Osama bin Laden once. Can we really not buy off al-Qaeda to enough of an extent that it will play nice enough that we can throttle back our offensive war machine that former General Eisenhower warned against?
Reading the Af-Pak Channel piece, I just wonder if all this military activity is worth it, no matter that there are truly "bad guys" out there. Remember that the USSR collapsed due to over-reach and a failing economy. Let's make sure that doesn't happen to us next.
Caveat warrior.
Copyright (C) Long Lake LLC 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment