I'd like to discuss this theory rationally

POSTED BY: AnthonyT
UPDATED: Wednesday, May 11, 2011 17:48
VIEWED: 17233
PAGE 3 of 9

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/asia/04pakistan.html

I don't think this is just razzle-dazzle on either side. America is accusing and making threats, Pakistan is clearly feeling threatened, they're not doing anything for their case, and of course our mainstream media is doing it's best to blow the situation up.

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"Toughening its stand, the Pakistani government lashed out at the United States on Tuesday for the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, saying that the United States had made “an unauthorized unilateral action” that would be not be tolerated in the future."


"The statement was clearly an attempt by the Pakistani leadership to recover from a day of confusion and paralysis over how to respond to the embarrassment and humiliation that Bin Laden had been discovered in Pakistan and killed in an operation early Monday in which they had no part."

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Hello,

Is this story an editorial? I hope so, otherwise this sort of opinionating in the article is out of place. Though it will risk the dismay of my fellow Heinlein fans, I freely offer the hyperbolic statement that I see this as evidence of continuing deterioration of news professionalism.

In any event, this is exactly the sort of response I'd expect Pakistan to give. I honestly don't see an escalation of tension, but rather the playing out of a script and necessary exclamation of bravado. "We are aghast at this invasion of our sovereign territory. Nobody else better do this. Did you get my good side?"

Honestly, if we make war with Pakistan, I'll be very surprised.

That may not be saying much. I've been surprised before. I certainly have no evidence or proof to support my opinion.

-Anthony


_______________________________________________

“If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all”

Jacob Hornberger

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

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Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I do not think we're about to expand our war operations.

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I like to look at the general pattern of rhetoric. There is a period of priming the population with propaganda before taking action.

I see the propaganda. I see the priming. What kind of action they are priming for, I'm not sure. Americans are getting stirred up to support aggression against Iran and Pakistan and Libya. Americans are getting used to dehumanizing Muslim governments and peoples. Maybe this is just to erect some common enemy for political purposes, such as the propaganda against communism for 3 decades. Maybe this is a prelude an escalating military involvement in Middle Eastern countries. We would be blind not to consider the latter possibility seriously.

They are like dark clouds on the horizon. No, I can't say with 100% that it will rain here tomorrow. But I could say with relative confidence there is a high chance of precipitation somewhere nearby in the near future. Maybe it won't be a war with Pakistan this next year. But something militarily aggressive is going to be escalated in the middle east in the next few years.

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Originally posted by BYTEMITE:
HKCav: 1) People are already gearing up for a war with Pakistan, it seems accusations that Pakistan wasn't helping us and comments along the lines of they're next are rampant.

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From where I sit that is not gearing up for war at all. It's just posturing.

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2) Just because we aren't at war with Iran doesn't mean we won't be in the future. Considering the state of relations between our countries, pressure from Israel because of the nuclear issue, the fact that Obama said that he wouldn't take a military option off the table, AND that it's a constant undercurrent in global politics, this wasn't an unreasonable thing to call at all.

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I was arguing with DT. He makes these claims as if they are indisputable fait accompli. I'm just tired of the alarmism. I do think it is unreasonable *to call* such a thing without serious proof. Otherwise we're no better than Chicken Little here.

And fer cryin' outloud, Obama saying he wouldn't "take a military option off the table" was forced upon him by the Clintons and the GOP 'cause anything short of a blunt statement of "maybe" would have been seen as weakness. He was backpeddling from his more honest statement that he would sit down and talk to our enemies without preconditions. He's always said he would pursue this thing with OBL. He's never said he'd go to war with Iran.

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3) Are you saying OBL wasn't an Emmanuel Goldstein?

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I'm saying that if Big Brother is running the show, as the conspiracy implies, then OBL would still be "alive" "somewhere" "out there." Big Brother would not kill off such a useful character. Was he used as an Emmanuel Goldstein by the previous administration? You betcha. That OBL is now officially dead puts us somewhere other than the de facto Oceania implied by the conspiracy du jour.

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.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/04/world/asia/04pakistan.html

I don't think this is just razzle-dazzle on either side. America is accusing and making threats, Pakistan is clearly feeling threatened, they're not doing anything for their case, and of course our mainstream media is doing it's best to blow the situation up.

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Yes. I disagree with DT on a lot of things, but can't help but notice the dehumanizing rhetoric being thrown around seemingly everywhere right now. I had to turn off Maddow last night because of it. Does Pakistan have problems? Yup.

I'm not convinced we're going to invade Pakistan, but there's a disturbing amount of Pakistan-bashing going on, on both the right and the left, and I haven't seen anything like it since... well, since Libya. And before that, Iraq.

Doesn't mean we're going to war with them, but we certainly seem to be covering our bases. If we want an ally in Pakistan, we'd do well to grudgingly admit they "helped" us, at least a little bit, even if they really didn't.

Another thing that disturbs me is how much is being made of the idea that Bin Laden could hide out for a decade in Pakistan, and nobody ever seemed to notice, and so *OF COURSE* that means they were in on it.

So I have to ask: Was the U.S. government "in on" the Unabomber? Were we all "in on" D.B. Cooper? After all, they got away with it for years, right here in our own country, right? How could that happen?

Something else that bothers me is how much blame is being put on Pakistan because OBL hid out there. If we're blaming place for where he hid and where he came from, why haven't we invaded Saudi Arabia already? Most of the 9/11 hijackers (if you believe they existed at all) came from there, as did Bin Laden and his family's money.

"Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservatives." - John Stuart Mill

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All right, I concede its not guaranteed. But I'm going to continue being nervous, it's not really something I can help. I point out that if the Clintons pushed him into saying it, the Clintons are now a big part of his foreign policy.

Maybe having a war against an idea has eliminated the need for Emannuel Goldstein characters, except for periods when focus is needed.

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Hmm.

I feel like I'm coming in for a lot of abuse here. I'm tempted to bow out altogether. First I think there are a couple of things I have to make clear.

It's possible that Bin laden was just killed, but more likely that Osama Bin Laden Jr was just killed (which of us would know?) It was explained to be Bin Laden's son's house, and it seems odd that Osama would suddenly have started dying his hair (the death photo hair is dark, not grey.)

1. Anthony, When people have looked into something a great deal, they tend to speak with more certainty. That does not mean that they are certain, or value their own intelligence more than others, it simply means they are working from a large base of information, and so they have more connecting dots, and feel more grounded. Again, it means their datapoints they would consider to be more solid, it doesn't make them right, especially in their conclusions, which are the least certain things of all. I agree that we should always doubt, but I tend to favor the data of those who spend time with it, over those who are spoon feeding or were spoon fed it. (For example, I disagree with PN's conclusions much more than his data, but I disagree with his data more than I do with Frem's data, etc.)

2. Niki, there's an obvious reason to keep Bin Laden's death "secret" not that it was secret, it was widely published, but to "not admit it" which is that the "hunt for bin laden" was "why we were there" in afgh, and without it, there would be less support for us being there. It's possible that this is Obama's current motive. I doubt it, but I'm adopting a wait and see on that point.

3. Mike, you have a point again about the "idea of bin laden" being killed.

4. HK, War crimes doesn't beging to cover it. I would go with "genocide" or even "holocaust" and have already in this thread. Our war, IMHO, now ranks as one of the ten worst in human history, and I think it's nowhere near completion. I think this is world war three.

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We will not go to war with Pakistan. Not too long ago you were convinced that we were going to war with Iran and you pointed at all manner of "proof" and we are not going to war with Iran.

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This is just blatantly not so. I mean, this seems to be intentionally twisting my words to mischaracterize my position or what I have said. I'm very familiar with the situation and I have not changed re: our status in Iran.

We are, and have been, on the brink of war with Iran, a war which is now being fought elsewhere, because while we try to capture territory to surround Iran, we are having trouble doing it, and we must compromise with a Russian-controlled Caspian Sea. We're not going to invade and send our 140,000 guys against their 14 million. We're dumb, but no one is that dumb.

Occasionally we attack Iran, like last year, when we sacrificed three predator drones to try to take out the reactor. That test proved what we already suspected: Anything that crosses into Iranian airspace gets shot down.

That's what you might call a stalemate.

But I'm not sure you're grasping the situation at all. We ARE at war in Pakistan and have been since 2009. US officers command Pakistani troops. That's what Obama's "Fusion" force *IS*.

Another thing that NO ONE seems to be getting is that Obama, like Clinton, is much more averse to American boots on the ground than he is to war in general. I'm sure he doesn't like the US troop levels in Afgh, but he has no trouble bombing Libya.

The reasoning here is simple: Republicans are more likely to think of GI Joe as a Hero, and democrats are more likely to think of him as the Ugly American. It doesn't play well to the democratic liberal base to have a lot of American troops involved in ground combat.

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Big Brother simply doesn't captures Emmanuel Goldstein.

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Too big to lie is like too big to fail. Compared to the lies of the 20th c., this one is a footnote, and I expect it to go down historically as such.

Perhaps a century from now people will debate when Bin Laden actually died,

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