A whole new war, a dazzling hate I never knew

POSTED BY: dreamtrove
UPDATED: Friday, January 30, 2009 20:59
VIEWED: 6353
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DREAMTROVE

Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:46 PM

Chris, The Rahm is for Rahm, and the BO is for Barack Obama. Rahmbo :)

PIZMO

[open season]

Quote:
OB said he would do this kind of thing back in Aug of 2007

BO, or BHO, he's not Korean. He said last resort, that first we would assist the govt. by giving them aid in dealing with, and then, I think there was a time period (longer than SIX DAYS) mentioned.

There's only two options now

1. Someone under his command took too much perogative, or
2. Obama is just more of the same.

BTW, the fact that he said it at all made it impossible for me to vote for him. I had similar problems with McCain and Obama supporting the Afghan surge. I thought of writing in Sarah Palin :)

Quote:
if Pakistan failed to act on credible evidence of Taliban or Al Qaeda activity inside Pakistan's own border.

He actually said "If we have a credible intelligence consensus" He hasn't even has time for people to do one intelligence report. These things take months. What is he doing? Relying on Bush's intelligence reports? I thought this guy was supposed to be some sort of genius.

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He also said:

Citation please. There were quotes here, and Pakistan was in them. Actually I'm tempted to believe you, but

Quote:
http://www.barackobama.com/2007/08/01/the_war_we_need_to_win.php

Oh.

And someone voted for this guy? This sounds like a recipe for WWIII. I mean we already know that Russia is backing the opposition in Afganistan and that China will back the opposition in Pakistan, do we want to be in a two front war against Russia and China?

Quote:
He sent Petraeus to Pakistan the first moment he could. If you think they didn't know and ok this I think you're mistakened.

I must be mistakened.

Any Pakistani govt. that supports or allows the slaughter of its own people will fall, and more importantly, deserves to fall.

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Pakistan is a mess right now

Ah yes, pick up the white man's burden.
The US is so good at fixing ALL the worlds problems... with bombs. Yes, that works SO well, all of the time.

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You can't talk to the Taliban.

Not unless you speak their language.

PIZMO, you seemed so reasonable, never pegged you for a closet neocon.

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Without more forceful and concerted action by the government, some warn, the Taliban threat in Pakistan is bound to spread.

Ah, bombs. And, also f^&k the NYT. It's hardly neutral on the subject of Islam.

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So the public face of the new leadership of Pakistan is, "how could they?" and the private one is probably more like, "help us!"

Then the govt. will fall. As Musharraf said, these may be an anti-govt. faction, but they're also a sizeable % of my population. Going to war with them, shooting and bombing them would unite all of the Pashtun, that would create a civil war. And they would win, because the other people would sympathize with them, and you'd end up with a radical islamic govt.

Quote:
So the Pakistanis that were quoted said that the US strike killed all civilians? Really? Wonder if they'd wake up with their own heads on their bodies if they said otherwise...

No, they said 14 were civilians. conflicting reports of 4, 6, and 8 militants, but all reports said 14 civilians. Surprised at this accuracy? This is because the villagers knew the civilians. They didn't know the militants. They can easily say: These 14 people, we knew them, some were women and children, and these were good family men; about the others they said: I don't know these guys, they come from somewhere else, maybe they're al qaeda, mujahideen, taliban, but I don't know them.

for the record, I'm shocked at the attitude. I'll reserve the epithets for later :)

The specifics of the incident are not as important as that the Obama administration is upscaling a war only six days in. This is bad. Apocalyptically bad.

CHRISISALL

Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
the Obama administration is upscaling a war only six days in. This is bad. Apocalyptically bad.

At least the hawks of this country will be happy.

The sad Chrisisall

DREAMTROVE

Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:58 PM

Quote:
I'm not too keen on this

No kidding ;)

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I keep HOPING that it's going to be different

Ah, the audacity ran over the hope.

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Maybe that was the hope we were voting for: the hope that it won't be just more of the same.

Yeah, that's what Quiggley is all about: Become your own opposition and run against your own unpopularity. "every eight years they can throw the bastards out with no real effect on policy."

Quote:
WHERE in Pakistan these folk were

One village in N. Waziristan, one in S. Waziristan. Definitely "within Pakistan" was the target. They were predator drone attacks to specific targets. One was probably a militant group, or some vagrant group, two were civilian residences.

So, is this collateral damage? This is not what Obama said when he said "No more war on terror" and when he said "we're not going to do this with bombs" If you want to only fight the terrorists, you have to go after them, not just start bombing rural houses.

Quote:
In other words, if you're sitting on the Texas side of the Rio Grande and someone starts taking potshots at you from the Mexican side, how pissed are you going to be if a Predator drone goes ahead and takes them out while they're standing there shooting at you? (And that may sound crazy, but I actually know a guy in real life who was shot from across the Rio Grande while he was rafting the river, and very nearly died from his wounds. Some of his friends DID die from theirs. And our government did squat about it. )

The targets were houses in remote regions, programmed in, but it hardly matters, it's against all kinds of international law. It also fucks the US internationally.

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I'm reserving judgment for the moment, hoping to get more facts.

Me too, but only for the apology of Barack Obama and the resignation of someone. Whoever ordered the attacks. Because I know damn well that there wasn't time to get adequate intelligence estimates, correlated them, get an okay from Pakistan, (should the UN come in here somewhere?) and then use all other possible means before using force to take out the individual targets, (airlift in, get the guys, don't just bomb random houses). If this is Obama's "last resort" method, than it's as bad as Bush's. At least.

Whoever ordered these attacks did not follow the process that Obama laid out, and let the axe fall on the head that did it, regardless of whether that was some schmuck on the field, Robert Gates, or Barack Obama. I'm sorry. No mercy on this. We didn't buy in for WWIII thank you very much. Or even just "four more years" of the same.

CHRISISALL

Sunday, January 25, 2009 11:02 PM

{Average uneducated reactionary}
Why don't we just nuke the Taliban?
{/Average uneducated reactionary}

The Chrisisall

OUT2THEBLACK

Sunday, January 25, 2009 11:03 PM

Dedicated to the B.O. administration :

They're all still on their honeymoon
Just read the dialogue balloon
Everyone loves you--
Why should they not?
And I'm the only one who knows
That disneyland's about to close
I don't suppose youd give it a shot
Knowing all that youve got

Are cigarettes and red vines
Just close your eyes, cause, baby--
You never do know
And I'll be on the sidelines,
With my hands tied,
Watching the show

Well, it's always fun and games until
It's clear you havent got the skill
In keeping the gag from going too far
So you're running round the parking lot
'til every lightning bug is caught
Punching some pinholes
In the lid of a jar
While we wait in the car

With cigarettes and red vines
Just close your eyes, cause, baby--
You never do know
And I'll be on the sidelines,
With my hands tied,
Watching the show...

DREAMTROVE

Sunday, January 25, 2009 11:54 PM

Quote:
red vines

"Man, I hate playing vampire towns"

PIZMOBEACH

Monday, January 26, 2009 12:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
PIZMO, you seemed so reasonable, never pegged you for a closet neocon.

DT - I appreciate the candor, let 'er rip always.
I wish talking was used first too, even with a group as bloody and violent as the Taliban (everyone has a weakness, a way into their heads).
But... how do you know it wasn't?

DREAMTROVE

Monday, January 26, 2009 12:37 AM

PIZMO

I don't believe in evil. The Taliban have been talked to many times. Sometimes things go well, sometimes not. At the moment, the Russians are offering them a better deal: They are offering them a share of power in Central Asia, along with the Shiia, of course, who no one can beat.

The victims here, militant and not, were Pashtun, not Taliban, that we know of. If they were, we would talk to the Taliban, as we usually do. But these attacks do nothing but encourage the Pastun to ally themselves with the Taliban. In time, they'll overthrow Pakistan, with the support of the subcontinental ethnic groups, but only through an alliance with China and Iran.

It's a complicated situation. Dropping bombs in the middle of it 4 days into a term, as it seems to be, then that would surely blow any chance at peace.

I don't pretend to know everything, but I know the situation fairly well. I'm quite fond of Waziristan, and it's a pretty inoffensive place, with inoffensive natives. It also makes a great hiding place for enemies of authority, like the US, or Pakistan. But any govt. of Pakistan has to know that to be Pakistan, they must have the Pashtun on their side, or fail.

My guess? Someone is stirring up trouble to destabilize Pakistan. That's pretty much been Bush's policy in Afghanistan, and Iraq, with thoughts that this will destabilize the region. This will never happen. Sadistic dreamers, who kill a lot of people in the process, these neocon meddlers.

The question really become "Who?" The best defense is that it might not be Obama. He called a national security meeting directly after the attacks. It's possible Gates ordered the attacks, or some Clintonista. The best thing for Obama to do in that case is to choose a head and make it roll.

The final question that remains is does Obama intend to continue the Bush Policy, to destabilize the region in hopes that chaos spreads to Iran, and damn the civilian casualties? Or does he hope to stabilize it. If it's the former, we're all screwed. If it's the latter, then he's just gotten a major setback, and I would not put it passed the Clintonistas to deal that blow to him. Friendly fire, as it were.

It's a tricky tricky world.

HKCAVALIER

Monday, January 26, 2009 1:16 AM

But what if Pakistan is in on it as is extremely likely? And if Pakistan is in on it, could it be connected at all with Mumbai? Just thinking outloud here.

There are way too many unknowns right now. 2 rockets and we have a new GWOT? How anyone can compare these attacks on two dwellings with...100's of thousands of needless dead and maimed over 7 years on false pretences, I'm not sure. Why, oh why, jump to conclusions? I'm not happy to hear this, but dayum, ain't we jumpin' the gun here just a little? And to what purpose?

First y'all were trashing Obama before he was even elected and now you're making out like this shows we just elected Jeb. Save some of this for when (and IF) he REALLY sells us out, okay? Leave some room for your rhetoric to escalate, hm?

I'm getting more and more the sense that a lot of folks on this board, regardless of shifting circumstances, proceed from the premise: We're screwed. That doesn't give us a lot of room for nuanced analysis, methinks.

And DT, correct me if I'm wrong but the Pashtun are Sunni, yes? Never on the best terms with the Shiite Talibs, right?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

CHRISISALL

Monday, January 26, 2009 1:52 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:

I'm getting more and more the sense that a lot of folks on this board, regardless of shifting circumstances, proceed from the premise: We're screwed. That doesn't give us a lot of room for nuanced analysis, methinks.

As always, the voice of reason.

The HKfan Chrisisall

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