{"id":3338,"date":"2010-02-15T04:15:28","date_gmt":"2010-02-15T04:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3338"},"modified":"2010-02-15T04:37:21","modified_gmt":"2010-02-15T04:37:21","slug":"petting-the-cobra-when-we-should-be-looking-for-a-big-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=3338","title":{"rendered":"Petting the Cobra When We should be Looking for a Big Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

On SECDEF Robert Gates<\/strong> doing Q&A in Pakistan<\/strong>: Attackerman<\/strong> and Duck of Minerva (Vikash Yadav)<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Depth Of Official<\/em> Pakistani Anger At Us<\/a><\/p>\n

Simple and plain: the Obama administration has to do something <\/em>about\u00a0Pakistan’s legitimate security fears emanating from India. As Gates points out, it’s completely absurd to argue that the U.S. has had a policy of “propping up” formerly-Soviet-allied India, but it doesn’t matter at this point (yes, yes, you guys who are big on “narrative”; score one for you). The Pakistanis believe that the lack of U.S. hectoring directed at India is part of a concerted policy of supporting India at Pakistan’s expense. Consequently, pushing the Pakistani military into Waziristan, to fight fellow Pakistanis, is easily misconstrued as weakening Pakistan for India’s sake.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There were good arguments for not stuffing the India relationship into Richard Holbrooke’s pillbox of headaches. India is too big a relationship to reduce to just a security issue. And for much of last year, the U.S. was waiting for India to elect a new government. But if we mean what we say about security, diplomacy, politics and development being interrelated and mutually supportive\/corrosive, then it’s time to broker a real India-Pakistan peace process. Unless we want Gates’ next appearance at the Islamabad NDU to go even worse.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gates Grilled at Pakistan’s National Defense University<\/a><\/p>\n

The Defense Department has pulled from its website the transcript of the Q and A session last month between Secretary of Defense Gates and Pakistani military officers. \u00a0The frank talk was apparently a bit heated. At one point, one of the Pakistani military officers asked Secretary Gates point blank: “Are you with us or against us?”<\/strong>The transcript reveals a deep level of distrust between the US and the Pakistani military. \u00a0It also shows that some junior officers of the Pakistani military do not take ownership of their government’s current offensives against militants in the North West Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yadav has posted the entire transcript.<\/p>\n

Count me as someone who thinks the single most effective move the US could do in the War on Terror is to bomb ISI <\/strong>headquarters with a few 30,000 lb superbombs\u00a0 shortly after everyone arrived at work.\u00a0Yes, I know that’s completely non-serious – I’m venting my irritation.<\/p>\n

The second best moved be reducing our footprint in Afghanistan<\/strong> to what can be sustained via air from the ‘Stans and cutting off all aid to Pakistan. Every last dime. Our dollars are paying for the IEDs and bullets that kill our soldiers but shhhhhhhhhh….we’re not supposed to talk about that in polite company. That part is serious. We can live without Islamabad. Really, we can. We’ll do just fine. And they’re the bad actors who make a lousy neighborhood a whole lot worse. That Pakistan has legitimate security concerns is true – let’s tighten the screws on those and see if that helps induce a more cooperative attitude as eight and a half years of bribery has been counterproductive.<\/p>\n

SECDEF Gates has an unenviable task.\u00a0Pakistan, or at least an autonomous part of its military, is our enemy in Afghanistan and have been since 2001. Let’s accept that reality and revise our policies accordingly. Being an enemy of the United States ought to come with some costs rather than aid packages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On SECDEF Robert Gates doing Q&A in Pakistan: Attackerman and Duck of Minerva (Vikash Yadav) The Depth Of Official Pakistani Anger At Us Simple and plain: the Obama administration has to do something about\u00a0Pakistan’s legitimate security fears emanating from India. As Gates points out, it’s completely absurd to argue that the U.S. has had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[597,360,262,461,527,361,20,126,483,574,87,199,499,210,418,39,270,502,131,10,486,127,530,211,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-597","category-21st-century","category-4gw","category-461","category-afghanistan","category-america","category-coin","category-counterinsurgency","category-extremists","category-failed-state","category-foreign-policy","category-insurgency","category-islamic-world","category-islamist","category-logic","category-military","category-national-security","category-pakistan","category-security","category-state-failure","category-state-terrorism","category-strategy","category-strategy-and-war","category-terrorism","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}