The latest remarks by Adm. Mullen have gotten me scared-there was also an item that 90% of the IEDs found in Afghansitan came from Pakistan.
It seems like the US is in the same position that it was in 1969 (in Vietnam)-we had the Viet Cong using Cambodia as a base, and so Nixon decided to extend the war-with results that were not optimal.
Personally, I think that extending the war to Pakistan would be a disaster-we would lose our supply routes, and there would be a very good chance of Pakistan falling to a home grown radical mslim regime.
Would Obama be so foolish as to do this?
I wish we wold declare victory and leave=-the Afghan War is simply not worth the cost.
No. The whole point of drone strikes and raids like the one that killed Bin Laden is that Obama doesn’t want to launch an all-out war with Pakistan, which last I read has around 100 nuclear warheads that could easily find their way to terrorists if elements within the country’s military and intelligence service felt threatened. The U.S. wants to see a lot less instability in Pakistan, not a lot more, which is what you would see in a war. There is zero chance of that happening.
Good grief, no. We should narrow it so as not to include Afghanistan.
This is nothing new…we’ve known for years that the Taliban and AQ in Afghanistan are getting substantial aid and support from across the border. That’s one of the reason why both presidents authorized limited missions into Pakistan with things like drones.
Not a chance.
We have been drawing down on our troops in Afghanistan after the surge, so that seems to be the way we (and the rest of our allies) are already going. No way is this going to be expanded into Pakistan, short of the Pakistani’s doing something really foolish like being caught trying to plant a bomb in the White House.
-XT
It would be a logistical nightmare, which we would surely be forced to retreat from in short order. Pakistan can do literally whatever it wants, because we need them much more than they need us. I think Obama is using the right strategy by striking targets in Pakistan that are worth the effort, but with precision operations that aren’t meant to challenge the Pakistani government.
Well, in a sense we have widened the war into Pakistan for a number of years now by bombing suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban cites. But no one is talking about boots on the ground in Pakistan. The OP is conjuring a scenario up out of nothing. Looks like just another gratuitous swipe at Obama.
You can’t do anything to Pakistan because it has nukes. This is the reason countries like Iran want them. Remember when Gaddafi wanted a nuke?
Does anyone think if Libya was nuclear armed that we would’ve bombed Gaddafi… No way would that have ever happened, especially with Europe so close.
Nukes are the safety net each smaller country wants, after all nothing else much is going to stop a big nation except that.
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You can’t do anything to Pakistan because it has nukes.
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:dubious: Iran doesn’t have nukes (yet), so what’s keeping us from bombing the crap out of them? I don’t think that the fact that Pakistan does or doesn’t have nukes factors in heavily to whether or not the US would widen the war into putting boots on the ground there…we are already using air strikes and drone attacks and don’t seem to phear the nukah.
You mean under Reagan? Yeah, I think we would have. What do you suppose Libya would have done if they had a nuke and we bombed them? Put it on a boat and sailed it into New York? And if they did…what do you suppose would have been the US’s response??
That’s the thing about nuclear weapons…they aren’t magical shields that make a country invulnerable. Most outlaw countries that have them don’t really have any way to deliver them except within their own countries or maybe to a neighbor…and if they DO set them off they will essentially cease to exist as a nation, as all the other nuclear armed powers will wipe them out. Most likely with conventional munitions.
What’s stopping the US from wiping out Iran? They don’t have nuclear weapons after all. What’s stopping the US from wiping out, say, Somalia? They don’t have nuclear weapons either. What kept the US from wiping out Iraq for so long…they never had nuclear weapons. The only thing preventing big nations from wiping out everyone who annoys them is their own restraint as well as the counter balance of other powers and basically the opinion of other countries and the censure they would get if they just attacked at random, not the massive threat from a single or a couple nuclear weapons. A country like the US can do a hell of a lot more destruction just using it’s conventional military force than just about any but another nuclear super power can do with all the nukes in it’s bag of tricks.
The supposed safety net of nukes is an illusion. North Korea is safe not because they have nukes, but because they have 10’s of thousands of artillery tubes pointed at the heart of South Korea’s capital…and, basically, they aren’t worth the trouble.
-XT
We are motivated by a desire for conquest and control of the region, especially control of the oil; bombing without an invasion won’t do that. And even if it would, we like to have some kind of excuse for our brutality, and Iran hasn’t done anything we could use to handwave mass bombing as justified.
That’s not nearly as serious as an invasion, and doesn’t give them much to target. We send in an army, not only is that a much larger provocation, but it gives them a target.
Even if they are using them in self defense against an invading army? I really doubt that. Especially because of the precedent it would set; do you really think that any nuclear armed country wouldn’t use them in self defense?
We crippled ourselves with the Iraq stupidity and Republican economic & foreign policy. And we don’t want to just “wipe them out”, we want conquest. And if they had nukes we wouldn’t dare try to do to them what we did to Iraq; that’s what they fear, not us “wiping them out”.
Brr?? What about all that oil stuff? As for ‘handwaving mass bombing’ excuse-age, why would we need to bother? We are evil, after all…and who is going to stop us? Plus, there is the whole ‘repressing protest’ excuse, or the ‘trying to develop nuclear weapons’ gambit we could use, if we needed a fig leaf (again though, why do we need one since we are both evil and powerful?).
So…we are afraid that the Pakistani’s would nuke their own country if it happened to have some American invaders in it? And that’s the primary reason we haven’t sent in boots on the ground and have limited ourselves to just blasting a few supposed terrorist types? :dubious:
Yeah…I think that most nuclear armed countries aren’t going to go nuclear even in the face of invasion. I don’t see anyone (with the possible exception of North Korea) being crazy enough to nuke themselves…especially since nuclear weapons aren’t some sort of magical be all and end all, they are just really bit booms with some nasty after effects. Assuming the US invaded, say, Pakistan (which we wouldn’t, but not out of fear of their vast nuclear arsenal), the most the Pakistani’s could hope to get out of using a nuke is maybe catching a few divisions or logistic & C&C bases in a blast…at the cost not only of killing gods know how many of their own people and destroying gods know how much of their country, but at the cost of being an international pariah AND probably war crimes for every official captured after they lose anyway. With the exception of Mad Kimmy and his merry band I don’t see anyone else who would be willing to do something that useless. And in Mad Kimmy’s case, it would be the 10’s of thousands of artillery tubes pointed at Seoul, and the vast loss of life just from the conventional aspects of such a conflict that would be the real detriment.
You didn’t answer the question, just babbled some of your usual rhetoric. What’s stopping us NOW from conquering them and taking their oil, or crushing them and hearing the lamentation of their women? They don’t have nukes, and there isn’t anyone who COULD stop us if we really wanted to go in there…so what’s stopping us? What stopped us from fulfilling your own prediction that we were poised to invade them all throughout the Bush administration, assuming you think that now that Obama is in office they are safe?
-XT
We are evil. That is a given.
If we don’t seem to be acting evil, it’s only because we are trying to convince others that we aren’t really evil. So, that’s even more proof that we are evil.
Isn’t it obvious?
Simple answer: Yes, or we should get out.
Because we are egotistical and we like to think of ourselves as the “good guy”, so even in obvious wars of conquest like Iraq we wriggle about trying to find a way to spin it as a benevolent act.
No; the primary reason is that we don’t care that much and are still crippled from the Bush era anyway. And of course they’d nuke their own territory in a war to the last; so would we, so would everyone else with nukes. Do you expect them to just lie down and die?
As if they’d get good treatment if they didn’t use nukes; ask Saddam how well he fared. And the possibility of catching a few divisions is more than enough to deter America; we are a nation of bullies and cowards. We won’t attack unless we expect the fight to be grossly one sided with minimal casualties on our side. And as for their own people and land; well, we are going to be slaughtering and destroying them anyway. Just look at the damage we did Iraq; a nuke or two out in the countryside would have inflicted fewer casualties and done far less damage.
I already answered; we’re crippled. Militarily, economically, politically. And Iran would be a nastier proposition than Iraq, and we’ve just freshly been reminded that no, they aren’t going to roll over and wriggle on their backs like puppies when we conquer them.
We invaded Afghanistan for their oil? Why didn’t we just invade Venezuela? Or maybe Canada? They’re closer and they’ve got a lot more oil.
We should have invaded Belgium for their chocolate…
-XT
In Canada’s case, it’s actually cheaper to just buy the oil from us than to try to invade and take it. Seriously, open-ended invasions and occupations get pricey real fast, as I’m sure the Americans are learning but not all of them will admit.
Anyway, turning Pakistan into a puppet state where the local dictator has autonomy (if only on paper) is a better bet than trying to invade and overthrow.
Sure right, that’s why American force were completely withdrawn last summer (2010), and why Iraq isn’t the 51st state/ :rolleyes:
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Largely due to the antiwar activists.
Because it would be uninhabited/
The US has plenty of military force to project and we retain strong allies in most of the world-although Egypt is arguably turning Islamist and Turkey is abandoning its Kemalist heritage and trying to be part of a new Caliphate rather than a part of Europe.
And a puppet state is probably prefereable to a Talibanist regime quite frankly even for the people of Pakistan.
I find that the OP seems to oppose actions against Pakistan simply due to dislike of the President. I on the other hand while not supporting a land invasion of Pakistan do not mind at all commando operations and drone strikes to root out terrorists. The duplicity of the Pakistanis clearly show they are not to be trusted or listened to. I congratulate President Obama for standing up to Pakistan it may make up for his economic disasters.
We invaded Afghanistan because it was politically necessary for Bush to pretend he cared about Osama bin Laden and 9/11. So they did a half-assed job, got it out of the way as quickly as possible so they could get to their actual target of Iraq.
We still have 50,000 troops there. We never would have wanted it as a 51st state because it’s full of brown Muslims, and because as a state we’d have had to treat them like human beings instead of toys to be tortured and murdered. And it isn’t just a puppet state because we lost. We won the war, but the occupation was a disaster when it turned out that they aren’t the willing slaves we thought they would be. It turns out that conquering them and ruining their country and abusing its populace makes them very angry with us, instead of praising our name in gratitude for deigning to kill them.
:rolleyes: We don’t have “strong allies” much of anywhere; we’ve systemically treated allies like garbage; bullied them, exploited them and betrayed them.
Which is why there were troops in Afghanistan through all those years.
They do not utterly hate us-most of them the Shias and the Kurds in particular are certainly not unsatisfied with the overthrow of Hussein.
Any backup for such absurd assertions.
Well, if the Haqqani network is a veritable arm of the ISI, as Mullen said, with the attack on the US embassy, haven’t the Pakistanis already widened their proxy war to the US?
The problem with this statement is the “the Pakistanis” part because it assumes there’s one unified government. The civilian government of Pakistan and President Zardari are not at war with the U.S. by proxy or otherwise. The military and the ISI (who have more power) have been supporting fundamentalism and terrorists for ages- not because they want a proxy war with the U.S., but because they want to make trouble for India.