Richard WarnickDid We Just Invade Pakistan?
The New York Times reports that helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked al-Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan, close to the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday.
“What you’re seeing is perhaps a stepping up of activity against militants in sanctuaries in the tribal areas that pose a direct threat to United States forces and Afghan forces in Afghanistan,” said one senior American official, who had been briefed on the attack and spoke on condition of anonymity because of the mission’s political sensitivity. “There’s potential to see more.”
…The Angoor Adda area is on the border with Afghanistan, and its mud-walled compounds are known as a center of Taliban and Qaeda strength.
Sher Khan, a phone company employee in Angoor Adda, said in a telephone interview that 19 people were killed in the raid. He said most of the dead were women and children.
It wasn’t really an invasion of Pakistan. It was the kind of operation that Senator Barack Obama said we should do more, with the tacit approval of the Pakistanis. Early this year, Senator John McCain said Obama was “naive” to suggest going after al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
In July, McCain seemed to get confused in an interview with Diane Sawyer and expressed concern about the “situation on the Iraq/Pakistan border.”
Not one speaker at the Republican National Convention has bothered to mention the critical and increasingly bloody war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
UPDATE: Pakistan filed a formal protest with the U.S. government. Pakistani sources cast doubt on the efficacy of the American assault:
The raid was apparently in response to a rocket that fighters fired at a convoy inside Afghanistan, according to one senior Pakistani official. “By the time they got there,” the official said, “the guy with the rocket had moved.”
According to another Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to give out information, several of the troops left the helicopters and launched an assault on three houses.
One of the homes belonged to local tribesman Pao Jan Ahmedzai Wazir, according to Anwar Shah, a resident of a neighboring village. Several women and children who were inside Wazir’s house and two other homes nearby were killed when U.S. and Afghan troops fired on the buildings, he said. “The situation there is very terrible. People are trying to take out the dead bodies.”
September 4th, 2008 at 10:36 am
Is this bad?
I thought Obama wanted to invade Pakistan.
And I thought that the Democrats were complaining that we weren’t doing anything about al Qaeda in the mountains of Pakistan. No?
So, now that something is being done (or at least folks like RIchard are acknowledging it) - why the complaining?
George Bush is just doing what you want.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:38 am
It’s like we have a nation of whiners.
So, Richard? Should the army go after terrorists on the Paki border like Obama suggested?
And is a small strike REALLY an invasion, Richard?
September 4th, 2008 at 11:21 am
jdberger, did you read the post before commenting? Richard states clearly that this was not an invasion, but goes further to point out that this very action is something Obama said we should do more of to more effectively combat terrorists, and John McCain called it “naive.”
Man, some people work at being obtuse!
September 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
Sorry I confused jd with the title of the post, I wanted it to be attention-getting. But yeah, we are now doing what SecDef Gates, Senator Obama, and lots of other knowledgeable people have been advocating for years.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
So 0 Jasonthe?
Is it you opinion that the US Army should just jump into autonomous countries to “combat terrorism” whenever they feel like it?
Richard? Do you agree with that?
Is that the New Democrat Foriegn Policy?
How do these “preemptive attacks” square with the “arrest them when they commit crimes” rhetoric coming from the Demos?
After all, when you helicopter into their village and punch .30 caliber holes in them, you can’t claim that they were properly Mirandized, can you?
I guess that with the incessant shifting of positions on the Dem’s side, it’s easy to get confused.
So which is it?
Preemptive attacks on soveriegn nations or treat terrorism like a crime with all the attendant civil rights?
September 4th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
jd, you need to freshen up your right-wing talking points.
If you check out the post, you’ll see that these operations are being carried out with the tacit OK of the Pakistani government (link to Danger Room). In public, they of course condemn a violation of their sovereignty.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
This is Brezezinski foreign policy, and it is the way to get the big dog staring at us through the fence.
If this is what passes for knowledgeable policy then its adherents are totally in the weeds.
We just had Mushareff resign. Our tacit link of someone to talk to is now gone. Now we are violating national sovereignty, and killing non combatants in the process. Who Richard is saying that these attacks are tacitly Ok? What stooges are you refering to there? What Pakistani government? The ones that are afraid to leave their offices?
We are handing extremists the reasons they need to open up more warfare, while offering the spectacle to those who may be inclined to help them. Doesn’t make much sense. The partisan posturing in this bad policy is about as Twister as people get. Spin again if we can.
September 4th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Therein lies the danger. The tacit approval might not sit well with the Pakistani public. Not that we shouldn’t be doing this, but we need to recognize how dangerous it is, not only to our soldiers, but to the desired outcome. I think both parties are on board with these operations.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
If we’re going to do this kind of thing, it has to be with the very best local knowledge. I don’t know how credible the Pakistani account is, but if you believe it then this was a botched operation that did more harm than good. The village attacked had a Pakistan Frontier Corps post. Under ideal circumstances, they could have been a source of information.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Is is more than dangerous, it is directly stupid. That both parties are on board explains all anyone needs to know of why we are currently in Iraq, and why we will stay, irrespective of who becomes president.
Should Pakistan in a fit of nationalism elevate the extremists to power as the only elements willing to spit in our eye, we will have then enabled them to take control of a country with nuclear weapons, and effective delivery systems.
Isn’t all the hullaballoo right now about not letting extremists have nuclear capability? I refer to Iran of course. Pakistan is way past the planning stage of attempting to get nuclear weapons. They are full players in the game.
What are we going to do when Russia decides to “help” the elements within Pakistan retain their sovereignty? We are digging a mighty big hole over there, and it seems like the quit digging advice isn’t being heeded.
Mushareff was the thin tether to our interests in the country, unless you are so foolish as to think the Bhutto puppet regime has any chance of surviving in the Pakistani crucible. We no longer have any say, just troops on the ground, and air support with bombs. Only one thing will happen in that kind of scenario. Use your imagination.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I never believed Musharraf was a true ally, he just wanted the money the Bush administration paid him, and the chance to buy more weapons to fight India. Musharraf was never committed to the “war on terror,” it was contrary to his own priorities. We have a chance to start anew with the current government, based on common interests vis a vis Islamic extremists.
Maybe the Bush people were actually smart enough to secretly arrange with Musharraf for Pakistan’s nuclear weapons to be kept under American control, as some of the “spook” websites have suggested. We can’t count on that, unfortunately.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:36 pm
Richard, paid “friends” is about as good as it going to get for the US in that part of the world.
Nice spin though. Keeping in mind of course that our “friend” Mushareff is gone, and we are now on our own. We are always on our own in the lands of Kipling.
The current government as I mentioned is afraid to leave its offices. They won’t be much help, if you know what I mean.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
They won’t be much help, but OTOH not much of a hindrance either. I hope we can avoid further undermining their legitimacy by irresponsible actions on our part.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
How is the current regime any more legitimate than Mushareff was?
I would argue Mushareff was far more legitimate. He at least controlled a goodly portion of heat in his time.
September 4th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
That’s a nice quote, Richard. Pretty much sums up the position of the Left in this country.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
jd– Yes, you’re right. Irresponsible, and even illegal, actions are a Republican specialty with Bush in charge.
September 4th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Richard’s quote seems more pragmatic than leftist. Fighting al-Qaeda in that part of the world seems to me like cancer surgery. You want to kill the cancer, but you don’t want to kill the patient, and you don’t want to spread the cancer. Very difficult assignment. Not impossible, but very difficult. It is easy to turn to populace against us with collateral damage, particularly from the air. I’ve been at a couple wedding parties lately, and I was thinking how really mad I would be if someone bombed our wedding party from the air by mistake.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Full article here.
September 13th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Perhaps the tacit permission is now gone. See this link.
September 13th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Leo - it’s the presupposition that our (US) actions are always irresponsible which is so typical of the left.
Here’s a little list of all the horrible horrible things the US has done (according to those nice folks at International ANSWER).
September 13th, 2008 at 1:59 pm
I didn’t say our actions were irresponsible. If we had tacit permission, it could be argued that they were very responsible, given the larger context. If we don’t have that permission, then responsibility is still an open question, again based on larger issues. But it is manifestly more dangerous. Given that I don’t know what the Pakistani government is really thinking, my stance is primarily pragmatic, not ideological. I don’t think you want to create, for example, an alliance between Pakistan and Sunni Islamic radicals, and I don’t think you want to create a Pakistan-Iran alliance.
I find the left on this site discredits the right by pointing out the views of right-wing extremists. I find the left on this site discredits the left by pointing out the view of left-wing extremists. That only gets us so far.
As for the specific accusations by ANSWER, I would have to look at them one by one and judge each case on its merits. They may be all right. They may be all wrong. It may be a mix. Let the truth fall where it may.
September 13th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Leo - I didn’t mean to suggest that you said anything of the sort.
I was responding to Richard’s boilerplate trope about irresponsible US actions.
Items like this are treated as dogma on the left.
September 13th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
jd– Innocent civilians are not being killed by leftist boilerplate trope, as you call it. They are being killed in our name by U.S. bullets, rockets and bombs.
Then, when American civilians are attacked and killed (for example, 7 years ago) we fail to make the connection. Instead, right-wing boiler plate trope comes into play and we are told “they hate us for our freedoms.”
Is the term “blowback” familiar?
September 13th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
Right, Richard.
Jd, isn’t ‘boilerplate trope’ a phrase generated by the Palin baby naming software? Too cool.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Ah, yes…Richard. Thank you for unmasking the second act of the lefty boilerplate trope…
“If we’d just leave them alone, then they wouldn’t hate us so much….”
Well, sorry Bucko. It’s a global society and they’re gonna get exposed to the West no matter what. Retreat to the 7th Century isn’t an option.
That said, I’m biased. I’m much more Bernard Lewis than Edward Said - and I think that Post Colonialist thought is an excuse for a failed society and “academic works” like “Orientalism” are simply simplistic answers to complex problems and an attempt by the author to convey his “attitude” and feelings as academic study to underpin his personal beliefs and causes.
Cav - It’s my theory that the Palin children are named by Gillette. (Track, Bristol, Trig) I’f Bristol’s kid is named Mach we’ll know for sure.
September 15th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
jd– You don’t think that being bombed by the USA just might cause a little resentment? Have you ever seen an aerial bombardment?
September 15th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Richard,
Let’s go back in history…is this the first time that Muslims have attacked the US? Nope
So, our bombing them created the resentment in back then? Time machine or did they blame us for the Crusades and other ills suffered prior to America becoming a nation?
What did Robert Kennedy do to deserve his assassination.
So what did we do as far back as 68 to cause resentment?
September 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Bob– Hey, this is fun. “Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead!” Of course, I can’t think of Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli without remembering Sean Connery’s star turn in “The Wind and the Lion” (1975).
What happened “as far back as ‘68″? Hmm, let me think…
September 15th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
1904, Richard? Are you kidding?
And the Sirhan thing?
Ah yes, that poor peaceful Nasser, picked on by the wily Jews and their American lackeys….
Yeah - those were our fault. You betcha.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Hey, Bob took us back to the Shores of Tripoli in 1805. I was a hundred years more current in my history. The point is, the U.S. has been messing with the Arab world a long time, and so have the Europeans. You can’t ignore that, especially because the neocons are proposing Middle East neo-colonialism despite the lessons of history.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Richard,
I’m not ignoring it. I’m pointing out the the trope of blame America for the problem is more complex and has a longer history then what is normally shown. I actually took us back to the Crusades…..long before the official start of any North America colonies.
Is either party completely blameless for the situation? The Arabs have been messing with the Western World as long as the Western World has been messing with the Arabs.
As corny as it sounds, I hope that 9/11 did change the world or at least our perspective of the world. We have to realize that regardless of our blame or lack of it, there are people out in the world that want to remove us from the planet.
No matter who started it, that is the reality of the current situation. Wishing it away won’t work, saying “that in my world people don’t kill people” wont work.
We need to take this threat seriously. I would enjoy having America respected through out the world, but I’ll settle for being feared if that is what it takes to stop the attacks.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Bob– I’ve opined on the 9/11 attacks before, but you may have missed it so I will repeat. Al-Qaeda is not an existential threat to the United States. That’s absurd. Here’s what the 9/11 attacks were about– they wanted us to send an army to Afghanistan (Iraq was an unexpected bonus). They wanted to pick a fight, and humiliate America the way they did the Soviet Union.
The Clinton administration didn’t react to the embassy attacks except with a barrage of cruise missiles. The Bush administration did not retaliate at all following the attack on the USS Cole, doing nothing and ignoring the intelligence reports about al-Qaeda’s intentions to attack the USA directly. That’s what led up to 9/11.
Here it is in a nutshell, the strategy of al-Qaeda:
This is from a very interesting interview with Dr. Saad al-Faqih, and the whole thing is worth reading.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
What a great discussion.
I would criticize as simplistic a coupla of statements above.
Jd: …they’re gonna get exposed to the west…
So? everyday, civil exposure will not trigger the Arab Blood-thirst Gene activity.
Since Edward Said was “One of Them”, it is suggested that there’s at least a latent streak of humanity running through the Arab populace at the same time there is anger. How different they are from us!
There is no denial.
Bob, your history of the Barbary Coast pirates is welcome and helpful, as far as it goes - it needs to be remembered that while true, the arab pirates and humen trafficers were not alone! Similar activities were characteristic of some of our forefathers and occured and occur all round the world.
Lastly, Bob, your hope that 9-11 could condition us to deal more harshly yet, perhaps even preemptively, with the people out there who would like to remove us from the face of the planet. I want only to say that I have the suspicion that those people are few in number, that they would only rub out those hawkish types who prove to be incorrigeably invasive, imperialistic and or racist.
I say this even in the face of the attack of 2001. None of that needed to happen - if only the command structure had had more on the ball. The republican command structure.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
What a great discussion.
I would criticize as simplistic a coupla of statements above.
Jd: …they’re gonna get exposed to the west…
So? everyday, civil exposure will not trigger the Arab Blood-thirst Gene activity.
Since Edward Said was “One of Them”, it is suggested that there’s at least a latent streak of honorable, upright humanity running through the Arab populace at the same time there is anger. How different they are from us!
There is no denial.
Bob, your history of the Barbary Coast pirates is welcome and helpful, as far as it goes - it needs to be remembered that while true, the arab pirates and humen trafficers were not alone! Similar activities were characteristic of some of our forefathers and occured and occur all round the world.
Lastly, Bob, your hope that 9-11 could condition us to deal more harshly yet, perhaps even preemptively, with the people out there who would like to remove us from the face of the planet. I want only to say that I have the suspicion that those people are few in number, that they would only rub out those hawkish types who prove to be incorrigibly invasive, imperialistic and or racist.
I say this even in the face of the attack of 2001. None of that need to happen if only the command structure had had more on the ball. The republican command structure.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I wish to go with the second of the two reads. I saved the modifications at the 18 second mark, but there was too little time for them to ‘take’. I’m gonna have to get used to this new process.
September 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
Cav,
Recognizing there is a threat that we can’t talk away isn’t dealing with them harshly. I think that there are many moderate Muslims that don’t support the actions of the “few”.
Of course, the fact that there are 1.5 Billion Muslims means even if the extremists are few that could be a considerable number.
Consider this survey from Germany
Those extremists won’t settle for taking out those
Read the Koran, read their publications; its a culture war, with some people bent on not letting anyone get in their way. Their way may be subtle, like the progress they are making in England regarding Sharia Law. Or it can be direct and violent like 9/11 or the hundreds of other murders and bombings that have happened in the past year.
I don’t think any government can totally prevent terrorist attacks, that goes for Democrat or Republican. Could things have been done better, absolutely. Would they have necessarily prevented it. I not sure. Might have stopped one, but not the next or the next.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Bob S.– I submit that right-wing people in America are so invested in their own culture war against the rest of us that they attribute the same goals to Muslims.
I spent most of two years living in Sanaa, Yemen. I attended an Arabic class, made friends, dealt with people of all walks of life. I’m here to tell you that no one I met had any grievances against Western culture. Our culture does not threaten theirs, not in Yemen anyway.
They absolutely HATE American foreign policy and the killing of fellow Muslims. The name “Israel” is never used, it’s called “The Zionist Entity.”
Your fears of militant Islam are based on the radical Salafist ideology, and lots of Muslims fear the Salafists too. Al-Qaeda is hoping to exploit the hatred and resentment of America’s boneheaded foreign policy to rally support for Salafism. So far it’s not working, despite President Bush’s energetic efforts on this front.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Bov S. Thanks for the response. So as to alleviate some of your fear, or at least put it into a somewhat less radical perspective, I question the two German statistics. That kind of change in one year says to me “Sketchy”. In any event, once again I find it helpful to see how the other half lives. I dare say that some goodly percentage of our country’s umpteen million religiously persuaded, are themselves ready to commit violence in that groups name.
In my younger years, as a psychologist, we used to say, “Fears are wishes”. I’ve said before we might find it helpful to ratchet down the fear and divisiveness. Alan Watts wrote a book entitled The Wisdom of Insecurity. I read it in my Viet Nam years. It has a lot of helpful tools. I recommend it to anyone. Later.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
Cav,
If a goodly percentage of our country’s umpteen millions of religiously persuaded are ready to commit violence, Where is the violence?
It’s pretty easy to spot the terrorist attacks by the Muslim extremists, but I’m not seeing daily/weekly/reports of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans, Moonies blowing themselves and others up?
I’m not seeing daily/weekly/monthly reports of Other then Muslims Extremists assassinating governmental officials? The rare occasions, OKC City Murrow Building etc, are very rare.
Thanks for the recommendation on the book. Hopefully my local library will have it so I can add it to my reading list.
September 15th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Bob. Where IS the violence? Hmmm..now let me think.