The author has a terrible, as in non-existent means of linking her posts, so I must post the whole noxious thing. I actually sent her an email challenging her assumptions Oh, that'll end well...
This is speculation, so take it as such. It is impossible to know for certain what another person or people are going to do until they do it, but when Vanna turns enough letters around on the board, you don't need to buy any more vowels.
I think the Obama regime is intentionally trying to get the Los Zetas drug cartel to overthrow the Mexican government, and do it fairly soon. This thesis is nothing new. If you want citations, do a google search of the terms "los zetas overthrow" and read up. What I want to address is the question of WHY. This has come up in the last ten days by former DEA and CIA agents. The CIA guy is a former bush pilot. The DEA guy lost a brother in a shooting. As far as I know Proceso is the only Mexican news outlet to take this speculation seriously, and they, being leftists, take everything seriously It's part of the pain of their existence to take everything seriously... This is how we know they are deep thinkers. Philosophers, really, like those French and German guys whose names I can't remember.
The Obama regime wants to effectively dissolve the U.S.-Mexican border. A Los Zetas overthrow would accomplish this. It's along way from there to here.
Mexican refugees would flood into the United States. Another far fetched assumption
The U.S. would refuse to acknowledge the Los Zetas regime as a legitimate government. First thing she has gotten right so far.
The U.N. and other illegitimate criminal syndicates operating as diplomatic fronts would immediately call for the U.S. to accept all Mexican refugees. Because the Mexican government would no longer be legitimate -- and essentially would not exist -- there would be no way to deport ANY Mexican nationals inside the U.S., because there would be no government in Mexico to hand them back to lawfully. Watch us.
So, we would have:
1. Completely open borders
2. MILLIONS of refugees streaming into the U.S.
3. Global insistence that the U.S. accept these refugees
4. Instant de facto amnesty for both pre-Zeta and post-Zeta Mexicans in the U.S.
5. Obama cast as savior of these Mexican refugees
6. Millions of new welfare-dependent Obama voters
7. A lawless Mexico, wide-open to unlimited muslim and Chinese staging As I have said before:
Hezbollah trying to set up a network in Mexico would be like me trying to train 15 cats using ten opened cans of wet cat food.
In the end the food will be gone, the cats won't be trained and all I will have to show for my efforts will be a lot of scratches and pissed off cats.
But then I s'pect Hezbollah already realizes that by now.
And the Chinese can'y stand their military getting a trimming courtesy of the US Navy because of some dumbass adventure in Mexico.
Now a word about drugs. Just say no?
I know that there are many libertarians reading this website who think that legalizing drugs is the solution to everything. It sure is, if you're George Soros. If you will indulge me for a moment, I'm going to leave the current chess board and try to think five or six moves ahead. Los Zetas overthrow Mexico. A huge assumption.
The border dissolves Another huge assumption.
and Obama gets his millions of welfare-recipient voters. The Obama regime, which we know is just a front for Soros, legalizes drugs. Soros is pretty much the money behind the entire drug legalization movement. Legalizing drugs in the U.S. would instantly undercut and defund Los Zetas, thus allowing Soros to install a handpicked puppet in Mexico City. Legalization would more likely help Mexican drug cartels than to hurt them.
And we're now are well on our way to piecing together the Soros global empire. Central and South America could be rolled easily. A lot of socialist governments in South America already, Brazil, Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela.
Soros funds a lot of stuff here and in Mexico. Soros helped Javier Sicilia and his group of peace groups in Mexico fund a series of peace marches since last March. This is what rich Socialists do. But if Soros wanted to overthrow the Mexican government, the place to start, the only place to start would be the Mexican military. And as soon as he is finished laughing his ass off I am certain Admiral Mendoza would have a thing or two to say about it.
Soros, and all Marxist-Communist tyrants, are big fans of drugs because drugs keep the rabble (that's us) dumb, compliant, desperate and dependant on the state. Soros, Jarrett, Obama, Ayers, Sunstein, Piven and all the rest would love nothing more than for the entire American populace to come home every night from a long day at the welfare office, bread line, and drug dispensary, smoke a joint or a blunt, plop down on the sofa and sit transfixed by pornography, circuses and/or state propaganda. And naps. Can't forget those naps.
This is how the Soviet Union operated except with alcohol. There may not have been food or toilet paper at times in the Soviet Union, but MIRACULOUSLY the vodka would always manage to appear. Russia does have its charms.
This basically eliminated the threat of the male populace to the state. Sober at least
It also acted as a silent genocide by causing dramatic increases in early death AND dramatically decreased fertility rates when coupled with state-provided abortion-on-demand. In case you weren't aware, Russia's population today is imploding.
This is what the Marxist-Soros cabal wants the U.S. to look like, and in order to achieve that goal, they need to be the drug cartel. So, back to our original thesis. They would, or already have facilitated the Zetas' overthrow of Mexico by running guns and other high-powered weapons to them via Fast & Furious, which would give the Marxist-Soros machine permanent power by destabilizing the U.S. and stacking the American electorate, and would also position them to then eventually undercut the Zetas, seize and "nationalize" the American drug trade for themselves and then drug the populace into numbness, compliance, early death and mechanical infertility. Don't forget the pony. The problem with that thesis is that the weapons transported across the border went to many other drug cartels, not just the Zetas.
And no, I do not think that alcohol should be illegal. I can drink a given quantity of alcohol and not get drunk. Sure honey, you're one in a million...
And I do, and I appreciate the flavor of the alcohol as I do other foodstuffs. A person can not smoke a joint and not get stoned. A person can not snort cocaine and not get high. A person can not inject heroin and not get stoned. The only purpose drugs have is the dramatic alteration of a human's psychological state, and that alteration reduces the ability to think critically and rationally, numbs the person to their surroundings, induces extreme selfishness and inhibits the ability to love. This is the Marxist definition of "the perfect man". No, check that. In Marxism, the perfect man is the dead man -- but the stoned man is the next best thing. And the third: Believing that a collective for washed out Mexican Fuerzas Especiales and gangbangers are capable of overthrowing the Mexican government
If you're on that whole libertarian legalize drugs bandwagon, I would seriously advise you to think that position over very carefully -- and not while you're high on weed. Or conspiracy theories
Start by looking at who is "on your side". That alone should be enough to convince you that you're being played. So are you, dearie.
And look for the Zetas to move on Mexico City well before the 2012 elections. If we even make it that far. This is what I wrote the author:
I write Mexican drug war news for rantburg.com. Your analysis is interesting but it is all wrong. Some of the weapons from the ATF program went to the Sinaloa drug cartel, one of which was used to murder the brother of Chihuahua ex attorney general Patricia Gonzalez, Mario Gonzalez last fall. The Sinaloa drug cartel is mortal enemies to Los Zetas. As things stand now Los Zetas have suffered terrible reverses in northern Mexico since the spring from attrition and from alliances between the Sinaloa cartel, the Gulf cartel, as well as others.
If they gave Olympic gold medals for conspiracy theories, this poor woman would win a lifetime award.
Too bad there may be some grain of truth buried in all of this. Any sort of reality to a conspiracy theory violates the entire conspiracy theorist code of conduct.
Let me go pass out some water to my boys in the black helicopter that just landed in my back yard.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
08/01/2011 11:10 Comments ||
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#6
Obama doesn't know enough American history to aspire to replicate Woodrow Wilson's mistakes.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
08/01/2011 13:20 Comments ||
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#1
"For the first time in decades, the leaders of the nations armed forces are standing up and standing together to warn that massive cuts in defense spending will break the force"
Silly leaders. 'Breakage' is by design.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
08/01/2011 21:04 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Not unlike the welfarist Govts-States of the Cold War NATO, now NATO-EU, the post-WOT, will OWG America = Amerika [POST-2050 HISPANIC? AMERICA] similarly depend on Rising China's PLA, + now IRAN!???
To wit,
* DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS > IRANB TO SEND SUBMARINES TO INTERNATIONAL WATERS. Russian ex-Kilo-class = Iran "Younes"-class subs on 90-day missions in the Atlantic.
* SAME, WND > [Reza]KAHLILI: IRAN'S MISSLES COULD SOON REACH US SHORES | MULLAHS' NAVY EQUIPS SHIPS FOR ATTACK FROM ATLANTIC.
[HEZBOLLAH, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD,, IRGC in Mexico + Central-South Americas here].
* SAME > US REVIEW FINDS IRAQ IS DEADLIER THAN YEAR BEFORE. US Special Inspector-General
for Iraq Reconstruction STUART BOWEN, JR.
* CHINA DAILY FORUMS > RUSSIA DOWNS US ICBM [Minuteman III test] WID EMP AFTER NORWAY, OBAMA SECRETS RELEASED IN RETALIATION FOR US TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS IMPOSED AGZ 60 RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS FOR ALLEGED INVOLMENT OR LINKS TO 2009 KILLING.
* BHARAT RAKSHAK > DON'T GET IT TWISTED: WE ALREADY AT [Active]WAR AGZ IRAN.
ARTIC > US already ina state of "Active War" aka LOW-INTENSITY, MOSTLY INDIRECT OR PROXY "SIEGE WARFARE/CAMPAIGN" [Wikipedia definition] AGZTHE SOVEREIGN ISLAMIST GOVT-STATE OF IRAN, where the US hopes that Iran will self-implode or otherwise be reduced via US-led steady, covert = creeping forms of Attrition + Obstruction, etc. WIDOUT ANY NEED FOR THE US TO MILITARILY ATTACK OR INVADE, OCCUPY IRAN.
* SAME > VITENAM, INDIA TO BOOST NAVAL TIES TO COUNTER CHINA, in South China Seas via procession of bilateral Indo-Viet venture to base Indian Navy warships at NHA THRANG PORT in Vietnam.
* PEOPLE'S DAILY FORUM > PHILIPPINE NAVY CONTRUCTS [2nd] "STARSHELL" COMPLEX ON NANSHA ISLAND [Phil "PATAG" = Chinese "FEIXIN" Island].
The PHIL will also repair + modernize AFP PAF Airfield on PHIL "PAG-AGSA" = CHIN "ZHONGYE" ISLAND for utility by C130's + other LARGE CIVILIAN AIRCRAFT.
Its 74 pages. Weve heard various explanations of the deal. I have some views on the deal as explained, but Id be interested in what readers find that may be at odds with what theyre hearing or at odds with the Boehner PowerPoint.
I plan on weighing in on the deal this morning, so your comments are appreciated.
Its 74 pages. Weve heard various explanations of the deal. I have some views on the deal as explained, but Id be interested in what readers find that may be at odds with what theyre hearing or at odds with the Boehner PowerPoint.
I plan on weighing in on the deal this morning, so your comments are appreciated.
Its 74 pages. Weve heard various explanations of the deal. I have some views on the deal as explained, but Id be interested in what readers find that may be at odds with what theyre hearing or at odds with the Boehner PowerPoint.
I plan on weighing in on the deal this morning, so your comments are appreciated.
Its 74 pages. Weve heard various explanations of the deal. I have some views on the deal as explained, but Id be interested in what readers find that may be at odds with what theyre hearing or at odds with the Boehner PowerPoint.
I plan on weighing in on the deal this morning, so your comments are appreciated.
Its 74 pages. Weve heard various explanations of the deal. I have some views on the deal as explained, but Id be interested in what readers find that may be at odds with what theyre hearing or at odds with the Boehner PowerPoint.
I plan on weighing in on the deal this morning, so your comments are appreciated.
#1
The White House Fact Sheet on the bill is here.
My favorite bullet was this:
-includes Funding to Protect the Presidents Historic Investment in Pell Grants: Since taking office, the President has increased the maximum Pell award by $819 to a maximum award $5,550, helping over 9 million students pay for college tuition bills. The deal provides specific protection in the discretionary budget to ensure that the there will be sufficient funding for the Presidents historic investment in Pell Grants without undermining other critical investments.
Looks like Obama wants that historic investment in Pell Grants to be on his wikipedia page in 30 years (along with the failed stimulus, the War Powers violation, etc.)
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/01/2011 10:02 Comments ||
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#2
Just finished a first scan.
One surprise is that the bill is mostly an amendment of a Reagan Era bill (Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985) and to an earlier Ford Era 1974 bill regarding impoundments.
Another surprise is that Republicans successfully prevented one of the biggest 'gaming the system' options by requiring a different baseline than the CBO had been using. The wording is "ASSUMPTIONS AND GUIDELINES.
OMB estimates under this paragraph shall be
made using current economic and technical assumptions."
This is a big deal because without it, the assumptions used are "current law" rather than "current assumptions". In the former situation, the assumption is that the tax cuts enacted in the 107th Congress (the Donks refer to these as the Bush Tax Cuts even though Obama has signed the 2010 Tax Act that extended the sunset by 2 years).
Probably the most interesting part is about the process for what happens later this year regarding new spending cuts, tax reforms, entitlement reform or tax increases. The statute doesn't seem to prejudice the outcome of this. However, it sets up a possible stalemate as the Commission to develop the proposal will be half Dem and half Rep (and half House and half Senate). If no deal is struck, Defense would get cut (and TSA) but not more percentage wise than domestic discretionary.
Hilariously, the bill (the debt ceiling bill that is) does have a separate part (Title V) dealing with Pell Grants. In effect, Pell Grants are increased dramatically (by $10B) in the short run. However, this might be only good for one semester since the Commission that will look for a second stage of saving later this year will undoubtedly look at these Pell Grants as low hanging fruit (as compared to say, Social Security or Medicare).
That's enough. My typing hands are tired.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/01/2011 10:51 Comments ||
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#3
That's enough. My typing hands are tired.
You have a set of hands you don't type with? How many hands do you have?
#5
Good points by Sleagar and Eohippus (yes I like Yvonne Craig but I have other favs).
I think one of the things that isn't in the bill is any specificity on how to distribute the cuts (all the 1st round cuts are to the non defense discretionary side). It would have been nice to specify the Consumer Protection Agency's $122M for a 50% cut or the National Endowment for the Arts $146M for elimination or the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's $420M for an 80% cut, etc.
Posted by: Lord Garth ||
08/01/2011 16:30 Comments ||
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God it's wonderful--really diverting in a macabre sort of way, at least if you have a diseased sense of humor and enough Padre Kino red. Which I do. As I write the world's only delusional superflower, perennially in love with itself, navel-gazing as narcissistically as ever, ignorant, self-indulgent, gurbling like an insane relative in the attic and fondling electro-trinkets from Japan, is broke. Yes, we see a beautiful dive from the high board, two somersaults and a half-twist, into the Third World. And so richly deserved. Much more at the link. Pretty good assesment.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/01/2011 07:55 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[1 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Ouch.
Geez, this guy is brutal...but honest.
Wow, I think we have Cassandra on the internet. I hope the electorate is more willing to listen than Priam...
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
08/01/2011 11:05 Comments ||
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#2
But actually the Dems have the best of the argument of national security. Entitlements are our friend. Welfare is the price we pay for not having the cities burn.
No. The cities burned after the Great Society(tm) as initiated. Before then most of the burning cities gig was done by General Sherman.
#3
Entitlements are our friend. Welfare is the price we pay for not having the cities burn.
A similar argument was made a few months ago by a public health mental-health provider for why he wrote prescriptions for narcotics and antidepressants.
#4
I think Fred Reed was being a bit sarcastic about entitlements. They aren't really our friend, but they do jeep the cities from burning.
For the time being.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
08/01/2011 12:07 Comments ||
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#5
Lots of similar comments all over the media & the internet, not on the front pages however.
#6
No one mentions how much of our 'defense' expenditures are there to support our supply of cheap imported oil. Maybe Fred has, once in the last 10 years. If the US didn't need to buy its energy from people who want to destroy it, how different would the WOT have turned out over the last 10 years?
#8
Interesting anecdote, having nothing to do with the subject - I got one of Fred's random-generated 'names', and it said I'd commented 21 times on Rantburg...
I don't think we're slouching toward Guatemala. We do not have a military that believes it's the keeper of 'government'. We are not "diving into the third world". We are still one of the most prosperous nations in the world, and will get out from under the Obamanations we're currently saddled with, whether it takes an election or two, or if it takes using the cartridge box. We are a nation of free people, and we will find a way to remain free.
Our cities are a problem. They're dying. They're dying because they're run by Democrats. Until that changes, the only changes to cities will be their further decline. Welfare and drugs only work for a while. When one group has better, and CONSISTENTLY has better, there will be resentment, anger, frustration, and eventually, enlightenment. "Why do they have more, better, than I do? It can't be all class warfare." It will finally percolate through a few heads, and those will leave. They find out why the people OUTSIDE the cities have it better. They'll be followed in a few years by their relatives, and then more and more. Eventually, the cities will lose so much population they collapse, much as Detroit has collapsed. A few cities will reorganize and adapt, most will not. In the end, the ones that won't will die.
Posted by: Old Patriot ||
08/01/2011 14:05 Comments ||
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#9
You touch on it but the real basis for spending on national defense is the Threat(tm), not what you'd like it to be or ignored. Some of that can be modified by displacing, discarding, or refusing to perform alinements that incur other people's threats and thus the implied defense burden. Yes, if we pumped our own oil, the need to keep sea lanes open for international trade would be greatly reduced. Piracy will fill the vacuum eating into international trade. However, if the imports are not critical or strategic, then you do without or pay a premium for the luxuries. Of course, the flip side of that is that you're not going to do a lot of exporting either, meaning capital and growth would have to be largely internally driven.
#10
Our cities are a problem. They're dying. They're dying because they're run by Democrats.
Cities are the natural place for manufacture of diverse goods since they have a large enough population to staff the plants and the supporting ecosystem. Since America has decided to outsource most manufacturing, cities have no function but to warehouse the unemployed and entertain them with ever diminishing bread and circuses.
#12
South Korea and Finland among others are far more advanced in their internets. Health care in America is first-priced and second-rate. The country is thirty-third in infant mortality. Schooling would be pathetic if we could raise it to that level, the universities largely farces. The Russians and Chinese have manned space programs; we don't. Industry.
So much misleading info in that paragraph. Finland and South Korea have advanced internet because of smaller homogeneous markets, its not a huge advantage and harly a perminant thing. US medical is hardly second rate despite what the media bleats. Infant mortality rates are higher in the USA because we try to save preterm births instead of aborting them. This is a sign of strength often misused. Schooling is another misuse of statistics The US keeps kids in school until 18 rather than shifting them off to trade schools you might disagree with the politics of that choice but it creates apple and orange comparisons when they compare high school seniors internationally. Saying the Chinese and Russians have manned space programs also takes advantage of a small window between launch vehicles and ignoring the private sector launches that are improving daily while giving the Chinese a lot of credit for their one (or is it two now?) manned launch.
The writer is trying to be a Victor Davis Hanson lite with his listing of facts only he comes up short by picking misleading facts.
#14
South Korea and Finland among others are far more advanced in their internets.
I've heard this rant before. South Korea is about the size of Kansas. A quarter of it's entire population is resident around Seoul. Makes implementation rather easy compared to linking up 50 separate state public utility commissions and sets of regulations over a continent and ocean. But hey, if all you need is a king/dictator to make it happen, just a small price to pay for efficiency, right? /rhet question
Washington's plans for Afghanistan must not exclude Mullah Umar and the Haqqani network just as Islamabad's plans must not be exclusively based on them," Friday Times editor in chief Najam Sethi had said in his July 15 editorial.
Indeed, the Haqqanis are the most operationally far-reaching and potent actors in the insurgent melange of the borderlands, but their lineage and structure remain ill understood in both Pakistan and the West.
The Haqqani Nexus, a new report from the Combating Terrorism Centre at West Point, therefore arrives at the right moment to inform ongoing debates over the nature of Pakistani militancy, its relationship to the future of Afghanistan, and its sustenance over the years by the Pakistani military.
An institute based at the US Military Academy is hardly a disinterested party in these questions. Don Rassler and Vahid Brown have, however, meticulously sourced their report - much of it from Urdu and Pashto, rather than just Arabic, documents. They incorporate the first known review of thousands of pages of jihadist magazines and letters between Haqqani commanders. Their conclusions are thus grounded on this scholarship, not American animosities towards Rawalpindi.
Three primary strands run through The Haqqani Nexus: the foundational role of the Haqqanis in the global jihadist movement; the marriage of convenience between the Haqqanis and the Afghan Taliban; and the enduring utility of the group to the ISI in its pursuit of that decades-old chimera, "strategic depth".
Haqqanis and Al Qaeda
The first contention is that the Haqqanis have been "more important to the development and sustainment of Al Qaeda and the global jihad than any other single actor or group".
Rassler and Brown show that the routing of supplies to the mujahidin through Haqqani-dominated turf greatly empowered the group, turning its camps into the "single most common destination for the Arabs who went beyond Peshawar in the 1980s".
Indeed, "to join the nascent Al Qaeda ... meant first training with the Haqqani network". Through the 1990s, the Haqqanis stressed the need to expand jihad globally even as bin Laden remained focused on the Arabian Peninsula. The Haqqanis hosted bin Laden on his return to Afghanistan in 1996, and helped the latter to circumvent the various restrictions imposed on him by the Taliban.
After 9/11, US counterterrorism efforts forced Al Qaeda and the Haqqanis closer together. Ayman al Zawahiri's wife, for instance, took refuge in a Haqqani-owned building when she was killed in a US airstrike in 2001. The cumulative effect has been "a sense of shared suffering and ideological affinity", which explains why the US considers the Haqqanis to be fundamentally irreconcilable actors whose exclusion from the Afghan stage is the sine qua non of any settlement.
Haqqanis and the Taliban
In contrast, The Haqqani Nexus portrays the Taliban-Haqqani link as far looser. Why, then, do the Haqqanis remain "a central partner for the [Balochistan-based] Quetta Shura Taliban", even enjoying representation on the Taliban's central coordinating body, the Rahbari Shura?
The answer is simply that the Haqqanis bridge the cultural gulf between the lowland tribes of Loya Kandahar (home to most of the Taliban's leadership) and the mountain tribes of Loya Paktia, allowing the Taliban to extend their brand and coercive power well beyond Kandahar, and "project itself as a cohesive national ... movement". Major attacks on Kabul are usually of Haqqani provenance, highlighting the group's "uniquely valuable asset: a geographically central platform for the delivery of violence".
Haqqanis and Pakistan
And so we reach the core issue in the blighted US-Pakistan relationship. Over the past decade, US policymakers have reassessed "the myth of Talqaeda", to use Alex Strick van Linschoten's wonderful phrase. In Washington, reconciliation is now respectable. But the Haqqanis, from their inception wedded to global jihad, are deemed beyond the pale.
The first contention is that the Haqqanis have been "more important to the development and sustainment of Al Qaeda and the global jihad than any other single actor or group".
Rassler and Brown show that the routing of supplies to the mujahidin through Haqqani-dominated turf greatly empowered the group, turning its camps into the "single most common destination for the Arabs who went beyond Peshawar in the 1980s".
Indeed, "to join the nascent Al Qaeda ... meant first training with the Haqqani network". Through the 1990s, the Haqqanis stressed the need to expand jihad globally even as bin Laden remained focused on the Arabian Peninsula. The Haqqanis hosted bin Laden on his return to Afghanistan in 1996, and helped the latter to circumvent the various restrictions imposed on him by the Taliban.
After 9/11, US counterterrorism efforts forced Al Qaeda and the Haqqanis closer together. Ayman al Zawahiri's wife, for instance, took refuge in a Haqqani-owned building when she was killed in a US airstrike in 2001. The cumulative effect has been "a sense of shared suffering and ideological affinity", which explains why the US considers the Haqqanis to be fundamentally irreconcilable actors whose exclusion from the Afghan stage is the sine qua non of any settlement.
Haqqanis and the Taliban
In contrast, The Haqqani Nexus portrays the Taliban-Haqqani link as far looser. Why, then, do the Haqqanis remain "a central partner for the [Balochistan-based] Quetta Shura Taliban", even enjoying representation on the Taliban's central coordinating body, the Rahbari Shura?
The answer is simply that the Haqqanis bridge the cultural gulf between the lowland tribes of Loya Kandahar (home to most of the Taliban's leadership) and the mountain tribes of Loya Paktia, allowing the Taliban to extend their brand and coercive power well beyond Kandahar, and "project itself as a cohesive national ... movement". Major attacks on Kabul are usually of Haqqani provenance, highlighting the group's "uniquely valuable asset: a geographically central platform for the delivery of violence".
Haqqanis and Pakistan
And so we reach the core issue in the blighted US-Pakistan relationship. Over the past decade, US policymakers have reassessed "the myth of Talqaeda", to use Alex Strick van Linschoten's wonderful phrase. In Washington, reconciliation is now respectable. But the Haqqanis, from their inception wedded to global jihad, are deemed beyond the pale.
Pakistan, conversely, "has long been a core sponsor and beneficiary" of the group. It functions as "a kinetic strike force through which Pakistan can achieve important signalling effects vis-a-vis India and its regional posture". This was more than evident from the prominent attacks by the Haqqanis on the Indian embassy in Kabul. As Rassler and Brown note, another troubling implication of this relationship is that "Pakistan could have played a more influential role in the development of Al Qaeda than has thus far been recognised".
The Haqqanis do serve as interlocutors between Pakistani state and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP). But this itself is a reflection of the fact that the TTP and its flourishing insurgency are "outgrowths", as the authors put it, of a self-destructive - and ongoing - process facilitated by the ISI over three decades.
Nearly 2,500 Pakistani soldiers were killed in the Tribal Areas between 2004 and May 2010. A push into North Waziristan would lead to the deaths of thousands more - but not nearly as many as will perish in the years ahead if Waziristan remains a petri dish of jihadis. Regrettably, it is that course - the percolation of militancy in the strategic depths of the ISI's sandbox - on which Pakistan seems set.
Shashank Joshi is a doctoral student at Harvard University; and also works as an Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
