"The United States threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda, President Pervez Musharraf says.
General Musharraf said the warning was delivered by former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan’s intelligence director.
“I think it was a very rude remark,” Mr Musharraf told CBS television."
Maybe now we know why Tony Blair licks Bushes arse- how do we know that Bush didn’t threaten to bomb the UK as well!
How much faith can we put on this ‘coalition’ if one of the members was threatened with obliteration if it refused to join.
Well, this is the same warning we gave the Taliban, right? Either help hand over Osama and his buddies, or get whacked.
The difference is that we pretty much expected the Taliban to tell us to get stuffed, while we expected Pakistan to reluctantly cooperate. Surely you noticed that they weren’t exactly falling all over themselves to help us against the Taliban, which were their protoges after all.
Assuming Musharraf is actually presenting this accurately, I really don’t think you can extrapolate threatening to bomb Pakistan into threatening to bomb the UK. I imagine most Americans would find bombing Pakistan to be a very bad thing, but bombing the UK (as well as other members of the Coalition) would be certain impeachment.
Uhm, Pakistan is fighting with us in Iraq? Damn, you learn something new every day!
I think Bush was right on this one. The Taliban originated mainly in Pakistan, and Pakistan was/is a major harborer of terrorists. The real question is whether or not they’ve lived up to the deal Bush made with them. Realistically, though, the US isn’t going to attack Pakistan and try for regime change. It’s too big, and they have nukes.
I’ve always been under the impression that it was Britain’s own bad policies that painted them into the corner they’re in, where they have no choice but to join the coalition of the “willing.” After, isn’t the present day mess in the Middle East largely an inevitable result of shortsighted British Colonial policies?
Let me explain how the political mind works over here:
*I see from your “Location” tag that you yourself reside in London. You obviously have an overinflated sense of the importance of Airstrip One.
Obviously, the happy people of Oceania are loathe to destroy assets like Airstrip One (which I understand you call “Brittin” or something) & Airstrip Two (also known as “Yizriyell”). But if the “government” of Airstrip One were to openly defy us, the mission there would no longer be an asset. You would be dirty Commie Traitors ™. We built your country, & you owe your very existence to our goodwill. In the event that you turn against us (& you are either with us or against us), you will be destroyed, that the assets we built are not used by our enemies.
Punk.*
I know, I know, you will protest that the previous three paragraphs have no relation to reality. But it is an American proverb that “the winner writes history,” & also that “Americans always win.” There’s a reason we have been subtly undermining the educational system in this country for generations.
What is Pakistan’s game, anyway? I don’t think it too much of a stretch to say that they cooperated with the Afganistan war only with a gun to their head (literally) and have been extremely reluctant ever since – and that we might’ve caught bin Laden if they provided any help at all.
Who is Musharraf trying to please? The Pakistani people? Really? Picking bin Laden over the West?
Musharraf is like a guy riding a unicycle on a tightrope blindfolded in a heavy wind while juggling. He’s got to keep the religious fundamentalists in the Northwest Frontier happy, keep the pro-Taliban tribal areas from revolting, and at the same time keep the US satisfied, not to mention all the other problems Pakistan is facing.
Doesn’t the “Coalition of the Willing” refer to the Iraq war and not the fight against Al-Queda after 9-11? We shouldn’t conflate the two. It seems to me that we were trying to get to the folks who were responsible for 9-11. We told Afghanistan the same thing I assume.
You’re absolutely right. Pakistan has nothing to do with Iraq, and the CotW. Today’s news just tells us that Pakistan was given a with-us-or-against-us ultimatum after 9/11; which in my view was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
Who exactly does the OP think was the intended target of the “You’re with us or against us” rhetoric after 9/11? Sweden?
And Pjen, of course you don’t think the threat was literally a threat to commit genocide in Pakistan (“Kill millions” I believe you said). Did we kill millions in Afghanistan?
This was a blunt warning to Pakistan that if they tried to protect their allies in the Taliban that they’d be considered allies of the Taliban and share their fate. Or do you think Pakistan should have been allowed to aid the Taliban without suffering any consequences? And if Taliban fighters crossed the border into Pakistan they’d be home free, no backsies?
The reality is that the Taliban is not just an Afghan organization, it is a cross-border organization. And Pakistan did not have the option to stay neutral, or provide sanctuary for the Talibs.
Afghanistan doesn’t have nukes. If we sent an army to depose Musharraf, he’d have nothing to lose, and probably would nuke our troops. We would then retaliate with nukes, and kill millions.
So that’s why we bombed Sweden when they didn’t send troops to Afghanistan. Yeah, right. It wasn’t a warning to Sweden, it was a warning to governments in the Middle East, especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.
I don’t think so. What troop concentrations is Musharraf going to nuke? How can he maintain command and control of his nuclear bombs? Do his nuclear bombs even work? If he gave an order to set off a nuclear bomb inside Pakistan would that order be carried out?
A nuclear strike against a troop concentration is only helpful if you kill lots of enemy soldiers. It is highly unlikely that Pakistan could have found such a concentration, what with all the bombing we’d be doing. Especially the nuclear sites. And why claim that Musharraf would have “nothing to lose”? Of course he’s got plenty to lose…his life.
And of course, even if Musharraf dropped a nuke on Pakistan to try to kill a relatively small number of invading American soldiers, that doesn’t mean we’d then be obligated to kill millions of Pakistanis in return.
Hmm, maybe the Pakistan/Taliban treaty had a secret codicil involving our picking up bin Laden: US helicopter gunships violate Pak air space. Bush has been nattering about taking troops into Pakistan, and Rove’s been promoting an ‘October Surprise’.
That all could explain our ‘cautious’ acquiescence to the treaty.
Threatening to bomb a country “back to the stone age” has had a nuclear connotation for nearly 50 years now. Perhaps that’s not exactly what our negotiator meant to imply, but you can bet that the Pakistanis heard it anyway. Nukes, or destruction of population centers and infrastructure with a massive conventional campaign, the threat’s just as horrid, except with one you don’t have to worry about horrible mind-controlling mutants going on a cannibalistic rampage.
No, I wouldn’t bet that. I doubt that anyone would take such a threat literally or even close to literally. Plus, you have to remember that we don’t know exactly what was said. Why do you automatically assume that Mushariff’s recollection of the event is accurate?
No, but I recall an American offical commenting that they would go ahead and kidnap a Swedish grandmother if she unknowingly contributed to a charity they thought was a front for terrorism. We are threatening everyone.
:rolleyes: Saudi Arabia ? The country who watched us attack Iraq for something Saudi citizens did ? The Saudis are the one country that knows they can get away with anything as long as Bush is in power.
Against a foreign invasion by Christians ? With great enthusiasm.
If nothing else, just wait until we occupy a city and set it off then. We’d probably take the blame in the Muslim world, and I expect that Musharraf could justify it to himself ( and many others ) by considering that the citizens are martyrs, and judging by Iraq better off dead than in American hands anyway.
Like we won’t kill him or worse anyway.
It’s been standard doctrine for decades, and it’s not like we’d care.
Why ? I would, coming from Bush. I expect that he’s just itching for an excuse to nuke someone, anyone.
What nuclear card did we play?