Basically, we bombed a Pakistani village on the ‘bad intel’ that it was full of Al Quida baddies. We left a lot of corpses. Many were women and children. No Al Quida.
Where I come from, bombing a country is an act of war. I think Pakistan is going to overlook it this time, but it was still a monumentally dumb thing to do. There will come a point where we will wear out our already strained goodwill by killing off their kids. Pakistan really only likes us because we keep giving them jetfighters. Does any of this sound familier?
And if we keep this up, all hell could break loose. Military disruption in that area could bring nukes from Pakistan, India and China (and hell, why not throw in some former Soviet states as well…) in to play. This isn’t an little error in a banana republic. This is some serious stuff. And I don’t think we have the troops to fight the Pakistani army, much less the entangled masses that will be brought in with it.
So, Mr. Bush, can we agree to never, ever, pull shit like this again?
Reading the article, it appears we were going after one specific man, a top Al-Qaeda leader. The Pakistanis say there were civilian deaths. There’s no indication whether any casualties came from the “foreign intruders” the Pakistanis say were in the area.
No, but it sounds incredibly simplistic. It does not appear that Pakistani leaders are much happier about terrorists taking refuge in their country or working to undermine the governments of neighboring countries than we are.
And aliens from other galaxies might focus death rays on us. Where do you get this stuff?
Pakistan, warts and all, is an ally of the U.S. in a critical region. There are benefits to both sides. The likelihood of this incident ending the relationship and starting World War Three seems low.
This shit is majorly fucked up. How can people have so much faith in the US government when it kills eighteen completely random people for what basically turns out to be no reason? It’s easy to say it’s for the greater good, but I bet many tunes would be changing if Americans were the ones whose children and siblings were dying for oopses.
Is anybody really taking a look at why our military intelligence has been so wrong so frequently over the past few years? Is anyone accountable for the failures?
I think that this was monumentally stupid given that Pakistan is a soveirgn nation. If we were so sure that it was Al Zaquari, we should have tipped off Pakistan and had them conduct a raid, but at the same time we don’t know exactly who this was yet. Pakistan is saying that it wansn’t Al Quaeda, but how does Pakistan know yet?
Let’s give at least a few hours to sort this out and figure out who it actually was.
It’s actually a brilliant strategy when you think about it. Bush creates more terrorists through American carelessness, arrogance, and indifference to human life. Terrorists attack us to avenge their house and family being blown up to little bits. More people vote Republican to “protect us from terrorists”. And the cycle goes on.
Reminds me of that old Twilight Zone episode where the alien ship attacks that one woman, remember? And she can’t speak and she just screams and screams while the aliens try to get into her house. The aliens are really tiny, so they’re hard to kill…
Well finally she kills them, and the camera slowly pans over the wreckage of the crashed ship… and on the wing are the words “U.S. Air Force”. Turns out they were on a planet full of giant creatures that looked like humans.
My point is that Bush et. al needs to look at this situation from outside the box, and imagine what non-American history books are going to say.
By the sound of the article, the village may have way up in the North-West Frontier area. Pakistan’s government has very little control up there, and probably don’t have a police station or army barracks near the village in question.
Problem with that, is that there’s been members of the Pakistani intelligence forces who’ve helped AQ members in the recent past. That’s one of the reasons why the US has done operations in Pakistan without notifying the locals, since we couldn’t be sure if they’d tip off the bad guys or not. (That’s also why the Pakistan government doesn’t get too bent out of shape about these things, since they know what the problems are.)
All that being said, if the attack had killed Osama, along with the same number of civilians, how many people would be pissed off about it? (Not saying that the US was right to do this, Og knows our intelligence services need a major fixing, which the current administration seems totally unwilling to do, just asking.)
I don’t understand this. It’s such a tragedy, and it seems like it could have been prevented. Like I said in the GD thread, why not send in some special ops guys and nab Al Zawahiri? This is just really, really sad… I rarely say this sort of thing, but I’m ashamed of my country for doing this kind of stuff. Do we have to bomb the fucking shit out of everything???
I bet the people who’s loved ones were the civilian casualites wouldn’t be much less pissed if Osama was killed in the attack. “Sure, Mom is ground beef now, but bin Laden is dead! Woohoo!”
As much as I’d like Osama taken out for what he did, I’m not willing to accept the death of one of my family to accomplish that, and I feel it would be hypocritical of me to be OK with the death of other’s loved ones to accomplish it as well.
I don’t buy that argument. And even if they are, Iraq ain’t that far from Pakistan. Fly 'em in. We’re obviously not concerned with Pakistani sovereinty if we’re willing to drop bombs inside their border.
Now, it might be that a Special Ops strike isn’t feasible. I don’t know-- I’m not a military expert by any means. Maybe there would’ve been a shoot-out that ended up killling more people than the bomb did. But this kind of shit makes us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, not less.
Yes, of course, Bush, Cheney, Wolfiwitz and all the other Admin. figure in charge of the “War on Terror” aka “Oceana.” But the conservative Americans who support them will never let them be held to account, because that would entail admitting they were stupid, and better millions killed, than a conservative be forced to admit he was stupid.
But I don’t see how we could be certain of that unless we had guys on the ground colletcting intel. And if we had guys on the ground collecting intel, we should be able to have a make a more “surgical” strike.
If we’re not willing to risk the lives of our combat troops, we shouldn’t be willing to risk the lives of innocent children.