We pay Pakistan for access to Afg.
I need to post new links for that video. It really is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand the enemy we face in Afghanistan.
The insurgency in Afghanistan is being sponsored by Pakistan. So when we get peace from Pakistan, we get peace in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has made sure that Afghanistan would be unsuccessful.
It's not about making friends with those enemy regimes. It is about regime change. Removing our enemies from running Pakistan and leaving our friends running it. Plenty of people in Pakistan hate the Taliban and when we seize control over Pakistani satellite TV broadcasting and tell them the truth about the state sponsoring of the Taliban, they'll want their treacherous countrymen slaughtered and will help us do it.
Ask Germany, Italy and Japan who were all regime-changed at the end of world war 2 and are all now good friends of ours.
That's like paying for access to dig up someone's back yard and accepting that he will take pot shots at you with his rifle while you do so, using the money you gave him to buy ammunition and a new rifle and then to hire someone to take the pot shots.
"Not everybody in Pakistan"? It's the Pakistani state, the military, the generals and former generals who are not "thrilled with us" and are sponsoring the Taliban's war against us. It's precisely the Pakistani state we pay who are paying the Taliban to kill us.
Conquering Pakistan isn't going to change that. You are assuming the people of that nation are not being represented. But, it's closer to the truth to say that Pakistani leadership is trying to toady to us without so upsetting the population that they are tossed out of government.
I wouldn't use the words "conquering Paksitan" without qualification. It's the state sponsors of terrorism we'd be conquering. The Pakistani nation per se, we'd be liberating. We'd be making Pakistan a free country.
That's a fact when elected representatives of the Pakistani people and other prominent figures in Pakistani public life are being assassinated by the terrorists controlled by the imperialist military to enforce the wishes of a military dictatorship in elected government's clothing.
In what way can one call someone "a toady" who sponsors terrorists to kill you? That's not the act of a toad but of a backstabber.
We'd be proving that we are the friends of the Pakistani people by removing their enemy Taliban and the generals who sponsor them.
Like I said, it's not about "conquering" the nation it is about liberating the nation.
I've already explained that the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan were due to neighbouring countries sponsoring terrorism within the country to destablise it. We always had to confront the neighbouring countries too, perhaps regime change them too, to make sure they helped and didn't hinder our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's hard to tell even where to start with this nonsense.
The beginning?
Neither am I. I'm suggesting we liberate the Pakistani people by conquering their oppressors and the sponsors of our Taliban and Al Qaeda enemies, the generals and former generals who dictate military policy behind the scenes.
Neighbours are good but a neighbouring state destabilising a neighbour by sponsoring terrorism is bad.
Well speak for yourself. You may not be able to but others could certainly play an important positive role in sorting them out.
Slightly before my time. I'm only 53. I know America tried hard but maybe went about it in the wrong way?
Well the fact is that I've been giving excellent advice for years on stabilising those countries but it's not really been heeded and taken. My suggestions have been ignored by the authorities.
Not I'm not. There are differences. I wouldn't have invited Queen Elizabeth to the White House as President Bush did, for example.
Not "imperialism" no. Peace by defeating enemies who are waging war on us and we need the military for that.
Both required struggles with a military dimension to force the other side to the table.
A strong women's police force is a better counter to the Taliban for Afghan women than an liberal arts degree.
Yes, it is.
OK but sarcasm has limited utility in war.
Defeating the enemy in battles is much more helpful than getting defeated by the enemy but if you are pointing to the need for a winning overall strategy in this war then not only do I agree but I have already suggested such a winning overall strategy in this thread.
That's historically just not so. Consider the generation of Germans, Italian and Japanese who don't hate us after our forces won many an individual battle in world war 2. The overall strategy was right and time has proven that to be true.
No actually, the Allies finished off the Nazis in world war 2 when the Soviets killed a lot of the Hitler youth, just boys, who were sent by the Nazis to defend Berlin against the Soviets when they'd run out of men to do their fighting.
No, the war started when the Saudi - Pakistani - Jihadi axis terrorists attacked the USA, and did so making a show of Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, precisely to lure our ground forces there and away from their valuable oil fields in Saudi Arabia.
and keeping real estate in Asia is quite hard to do by brute force means when the enemy has a very large population to recruit from.
This sounds like US partisan point scoring and I'm a working-across-the-aisle kind of Scot. Not my business to go there. Condi speaks for me on domestic US matters.
A 105 howitzer is a company level weapon which is of use in time critical engagements. Time enough to get the company commander's permission to use the 105 howitzer but of no use whatsoever if you are under orders to get Pentagon permission to use it every time because the target will be long gone before the Pentagon has had time to consider the matter. It makes no military sense.
Well there's the tricky business of appointing the smartest, most able generals who can win the war. That's often not an easy issue for a commander in chief.
Live Mint: There are no good Taliban and bad Taliban: Condoleezza Rice
by Elizabeth Roche
There are no good Taliban and bad Taliban: Condoleezza Rice
Pakistan is complicated, Iran is still a problem internationally, opines former US secretary of state
Former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has voiced doubts about the readiness of Taliban to join a reconciliation process.
Photo: Ramesh Pathania/Mint
As the US and the international community prepare to scale down their military involvement in Afghanistan in 2014 and the Obama administration seeks talks with the Taliban to stabilize the war-torn country, former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice has voiced doubts about the readiness of the group to join a reconciliation process. In an interview, Rice said she was "sceptical whether the Taliban can be brought into a peace process". Rice, currently a professor of political science at Stanford University, was in New Delhi last week for the 11th Hindustan Times Leadership Summit. Edited excerpts:
This is a critical time for the US in Afghanistan in the context of the transition in 2014. How do you see US-Afghanistan and US-Pakistan relations against the backdrop of this?
The US-Afghan relations is difficult because it is a difficult set of circumstances. It's a relationship of partnership first of all. We have had to do a whole lot of hard things in Afghanistan. We had an apology from our military for innocent civilian deaths in Afghanistan. It's not like the American military would have it that way, but unfortunately it happens. We have pressed the Afghans on the drug trade, we have pressed them on corruption, sometimes the relationship can be difficult, but I think it's a long-term relationship and we will remain engaged there. I hope we will keep a military presence there. I think that would help. But we are in this relationship for the long term. We are not going to leave like we did after the Soviet Union was defeated there (in 1989), leaving then the kind of chaos that led to the Taliban and ultimately the Al Qaeda setting up home base there. With Pakistan again, it's not easy. It takes patience on our part just as it takes patience on the part of India.
If you were secretary of state, would you have thought of opening a line of communication with the Taliban given what happened on 9/11?
I guess you have to think about it and I am not on the inside, and I am always careful because I know that you don't always know all of the factors (involved). I think you have to be extremely careful. I don't think there are good Taliban and bad Taliban. I don't think there are Taliban who are in favour of the stability of Afghanistan. And so I am sceptical whether the Taliban can be brought into a peace process. Eventually there will have to be reconciliation of the Afghan people and I don't doubt there are some who were Afghan people who fought on the wrong side. Everybody has to have reconciliation at some point. But people have to be ready for reconciliation and I don't know the degree to which the Taliban is ready for reconciliation.
There was this recent agreement between the international community and Iran on its controversial nuclear programme. What are the opportunities that this deal throws up for the US in Afghanistan for example?
Well I don't know if it would open up opportunities in the geo-strategic issues. It seems sometimes to me that the Iranian government is in two minds - it wants to have a nuclear deal and it wants to have better relations with the United States, and it wants to reshape the Middle East in ways that are antithetical to our interests and I don't see that changing, frankly, in the short term. Now it may be on Afghanistan because to a certain extent terrorism in Afghanistan is a problem for the Iranians; there would be some small opening there. But I would not generalize from what happens in the nuclear deal to a stronger, better relationship with the Iranians. I think that takes work on other kinds of issues like Iran's interference in the Persian Gulf.
So Pakistan will still have primacy in any Afghan calculations?
Pakistan has to be part of the calculations. Instability in Pakistan is a problem for Afghanistan and instability in Afghanistan is a problem for Pakistan. So those two are forever linked in that way. And I do hope that the Pakistanis will recognize that the Taliban in Pakistan is a real problem for Pakistan, not just for Afghanistan. As long as you have extremism in Pakistan, Pakistan will be a large part of the equation. You will have to pay a lot of attention to it.
Read more in Rice for President Yahoo Group, message 2278
The White House said:
