But any AfPak strategy does require that our political leaders at least name, declare Pakistan to be a state sponsor of terrorism.
To my knowledge, no NATO leader has yet done that. It's treating Pakistan with kid gloves and paying them billions of dollars which is making the war in Afghanistan so difficult to bring to a successful conclusion and simply withdrawing and allowing the Taliban to re-take Afghanistan would be a serious defeat for us all, Americans, British, the West, Afghans - even Pakistanis have more to gain in the long run by having their own military brought into proper democratic control by a regime change war.
Declaring Pakistan to be a state sponsor of terrorism is not going to happen as long as we are giving them $3Billion dollar in aid a year. Makes you wonder why? It should be more than enough proof that we should as they say cut our losses and run. No sense in throwing good money after bad.
U.S. Aid to Pakistan Cost: $2,965,029,000*
Pakistan is one of the largest recipients of U.S. assistance. Nearly $3 billion in U.S. aid to Pakistan is planned for fiscal 2012. About $1.6 billion of the FY2012 funds are security-related and most of the remaining $1.4 billion is for economic development. Pakistan has received over $20 billion in military and non-military aid since 2001. About $9 billion of that total went to reimburse Pakistan for its expenses incurred in supporting U.S. military operations.
U.S. Aid to Pakistan (FY2012 Request)
It's like I explained in post #13.
Any co-operation we've ever got from Pakistan has cost us billions of dollars and so we've given Pakistan every financial incentive to keep supporting terrorism because it pays big rewards when they help us shoot at terrorists they've trained up. It's like a billion-dollar quail or pheasant shooting business for Pakistan but with the Taliban as the game birds.
So quit paying Pakistan billions of dollars in aid and IMF bailouts then think about the acts of war we can take, against the Taliban and their backers in Pakistan, to pressure the Pakistani military to act to crush the Taliban from the ground while we crush them from the air, in Pakistan. Stop paying up, time for pay-back!
It looks like the Pakistani military got Bin Laden to do 9/11 and to leave evidence pointing back to Afghanistan as hosting Al Qaeda bases as a red rag to our military bull to draw us into Afghanistan, I think, because they thought they could make billions of dollars out of the West, the US in particular, who would pay Pakistani for assistance to fight their terrorists in Afghanistan, like the US paid them to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.
If that's what they planned the Pakistanis have been proved right in the short term, if you can call 12 years "short term".
There's no greater encouragement we could have given Pakistan, to encourage them to sponsor terrorism, than to tell them that if they get their proxy terrorists to attack the US then we'll give them billions of dollars for their "help" in fighting those self-same terrorists.
It's like we went to Pakistan before 9/11 with suitcases full of billions of dollars saying
"all this money can be yours Pakistan - all you have to do is attack the US using terrorists but claim you didn't. How about it, do you want the money, will you get terrorists to attack us? Oh, go on - after all you need the money. Just one attack, knock down a few skyscrapers - the money is all yours if you do"
Paying Pakistan is the dumbest of dumb policies.
Of course we need to stop paying them aid and IMF bailouts.
The US especially needs to stop paying Pakistan any money for "security-related" funding and "expenses incurred in supporting US military operations". That money especially is the money Pakistan has tricked out of the US by sponsoring terrorism against the US.
Of course we need to name them as a state sponsor of terrorism.
We need to do both. Both actions are required. Both actions are part of a sound anti-terror strategy. We name them state sponsors of terrorism, because that's what they are, and because we really need to stop paying them money because they are sponsoring terrorism against us so as to get our money.
Further, since the US has been tricked out of that
"$9 billion of that total went to reimburse Pakistan for its expenses incurred in supporting U.S. military operations" then the US ought to demand that $9 billion back from Pakistan, and if Pakistan can't pay - which I know they can't - then the US needs to do $9 billion worth of damage on the Pakistani military. Bomb Pakistan air defences, military aircraft, tanks, missiles, navy vessels, etc - bomb their military and do about $9 billion worth of damage - so they don't make a profit out of tricking the US. Maybe if they hand over their nuclear weapons we could give them a discount on the money owed?
