Yeah, it’s not as if any Americans were tossing around the desirability of nuking Afghanistan in late 2001. Why in the world would Pakistan ever think that Armitage wasn’t joking? This was just normal banter between countries who love each other despite some inconvenient sanctions and nuclear black marketing scandals, right?
I see no particular advantage that Musharraf gains by lying at this late date. Do you suppose he sees some great local gain in pissing off the Americans just now? Or perhaps he’s willing to take a hit in order to further the chances of India’s nuclear deal in congress?
I didn’t say “joking”. If it was said (and I don’t know that it was), it’s more than likely an exageration rather than a joke.
I didn’t say he was lying. But he certainly gains favor from his populace by distancing himself from Bush as much as possible. If his main concern is not pissing us off, then it would be easier just to keep silent on the matter.
Alternatively, he may have decided that he no longer has to care whether or not he pisses us off. Our options are somewhat more limited, to say the least. The political cost of publicly supporting the US has undoubtedly increased, keeping in mind that Gen Musharaffs job description includes retirement by firing squad.
Whatever, John, let’s see even a smidgen of speck backing up your ‘exaggeration’ hypothesis.
However, I do like your bit about gaining favor at home by claiming he caved to us under threat of overwhelming force. Such an admission of weakness could play well in the tribal areas where he’s ceded control, or even give him the moral authority to safely crack down on the Islamofascists which infest his cities..
I think it more likely that Musharraf brought this up now in order to rattle Washington before his meeting with Bush. A lie, immediately followed by talks with a pissed off president doesn’t make much tactical sense. A declaration of hardship, followed by those talks, gives him an opening he wouldn’t have otherwise had.
Well, **I ** remember different. In fact, I remember nothing of the sort.
This is the kind of bullshit that makes people roll their eyes every time you join a debate.
You’ve pulled this kind of crap over and over again…“I remember some guy? And he said something really bad? And I don’t remember who he was or exactly what he said? But it was really bad, m’kay?”
< shrugs > It’s not like I haven’t tried for a cite; there are an awful lot of results for words like “American”, “kidnap”, “terrorist” these days, you know. Besides, you talk like it would be unusual behavior for us to kidnap and torture people, instead of policy.
I wouldn’t want to be the person in charge of determining what our policy towards Pakistan should be. That’s one helluva puzzle. That country scares me more than any of the other Islamic countries does.
That’s a weasel. Please describe your definition of ‘impossible’. Has the world’s sole superpower fallen so low in your eyes that it lacks the power to credibly threaten a nation with a return to the stone age?
It settles it just as well as your original statment “settled it” the other way. That was my point. You made an assertion with nothing to back it up. I made a counter assertion.
Well… literal stone age, yes… exagerration. We could have conventionally bombed every bridge, every power plant, every water treatment plant, every airport, every harbor, every radio and television station of any consequence, every dam, most of their nuclear capability and the vast majority of their airforce assets. Stealth bombers are good like that. They couldn’t do a thing about it if we limited it to conventional air attacks. Now, that wouldn’t have been ‘stone age’ but I don’t think it would be an exageration to state that it would have set Pakistan back economically 20-30 years at minimum with massive loss of life. We’d have done them first with the same force we had on hand for Afghanistan, heck… the airforce was itching for valuable targets to hit because there weren’t many to speak of in Afghanistan. Musharraf made a wise choice to play along.
Dropping a few thousand nukes distributed among every population center, industrial facility and military base, followed with conventional bombings on anything left would come pretty close. Not that even Bush would bother going to that level of overkill, but we certainly have the power.
You somehow think that the voting public of Britain feels some vague responsibility for the current Middle East situation due to imperial policies from how many years ago?
Or that the current situation is the result of policies from back then, as compared to more recent US involvement such as their backing for Reza Pahlavi, Saddam Hussein, Israel, the Mujahideen, or possible price of oil related policies of the last few years?
No, the only reason we’re in a coalition is because our current Prime Minister is an imbecile who lacks the courage to turn around to the US President and point out he’s being an idiot. It’s hardly the case that we “have no choice but to join the coalition”, and hopefully that should be rectified in a couple of years.
What’s surprising is that even today, this very morning, Pakistan was yet again described as “a key ally in the war on terror”. This boilerplate description has been in place since 9/12/01. I fail to see how Pakistan has done anything at all to cooperate in the war on terror.
The do seem to be playing both sides of the game, but they are cooperating some. They were the ones who caught Kalid Sheik Mohammed, and they cooperated with the Brits to help break up that terrorism plot revently, to name just two instances. KSM was probably more responsible for 9/11 than ObL was, btw (the 9/11 commission calls him the principle architect of that incident).
Well, what exactly do you expect the administration to do? Call them “A firm ally in the war against terrorism that we trust just as long as we’ve got a gun pointed at their forehead and who would betray us in five seconds if they thought they could get away with it”? That’s a bit long-winded.
Which is why we’re making friends with India nowadays. Back when India was “non-aligned” we cozied up to Pakistan. Now that the cold war is over we find we have a lot more strategic interests in common with democratic economically liberalizing India than we do with authoritarian backwater Pakistan. The only reason we care about Pakistan nowadays is that they’ve got a few nukes that may or may not work, and Al Qaida and the Taliban operate freely in their tribal areas.