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| India-Pakistan |
| The Best-Laid Five-Minute Plans of Bill Richardson. |
| 2007-12-31 |
| By Mark Steyn It’s tempting to rerun my column on Pakistan from a month ago. Not because I predicted the assassination of Benazir Bhutto or offered any other great insight, but rather for the opposite reason: “Everyone’s an expert on Pakistan, a faraway country of which we know everything: General Musharraf should do this, he shouldn’t have done that, the State Department should lean on him to do the other… Well, I dunno. It seems to me a certain humility is appropriate when offering advice to Islamabad.” Oh, well. In the stampede of instant experts unveiling their Pakistani solutions-in-a-box, some contributions are worthy of special attention. Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who is apparently running for the Democratic presidential nomination, was in no doubt about what needs to happen in the next, oh, 48 hours: “President Bush should press Musharraf to step aside, and a broad-based coalition government, consisting of all the democratic parties, should be formed immediately... It is in the interests of the U.S. that there be a democratic Pakistan that relentlessly hunts down terrorists.” Wow. Who knew it was that easy? |
| Posted by:john frum |
| #6 Procopius, when you referred to John Kerry as an "effective Senatr," I think you forgot the HTML irony tags. |
| Posted by: Mike 2007-12-31 14:14 |
| #5 No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes…are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military steam-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine. - Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, 1900 |
| Posted by: john frum 2007-12-31 14:11 |
| #4 The hell with the Waziris. Seal them off and let them rot in the 7th century if they can't act civilized. We'll try again in a couple of generations. |
| Posted by: mojo 2007-12-31 12:58 |
| #3 Bill's at his Peter Principle position, as the good governor of a state rated 47th in per capita income and home to NIMBY projects unloved elsewhere. Outside of being an effective Senator like John 'Genghis Khan' Kerry or VP like Dan Quayle, any other higher office would be beyond his capacity. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2007-12-31 09:03 |
| #2 Given that Richardson is opposed to a broad-based coalition of democratic parties in the United States united to oppose terrorism in, for example, Iraq and Iran, it is hilarious he should imagine Pakistan could pull it off in 48 hours. Though given the obstructionism and stupidity of the Democratic party I have more hope Pakistan will unite against terrorism before blue state Americans do. |
| Posted by: Excalibur 2007-12-31 08:41 |
| #1 The big problem is, the unified view on the left is that Pak is just a bigger, dirtier version of New Jersey... |
| Posted by: M. Murcek 2007-12-31 07:28 |