Pakistan turns into Gordian Knot for US

[FarCenter]

US worst-case scenario of seeing Pakistan’s nuclear arms at hands of extremists risks turning the nation into the real target
for NATO’s missile system

Ten militants, including a local coordinator of the al-Qaeda-linked Haqqani group, were killed by U.S. drones yesterday in Pakistan as Marc Grossman, the U.S. special envoy for Pakistan-Afghanistan affairs, arrived in the country, agencies reported yesterday.

That was just one of the many U.S. military operations in Pakistan since the start of this year, the biggest of them being the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a farmhouse near the country’s capital, Islamabad.

The United States “is fighting a war” in Pakistan, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Oct. 11 in response to a question after a speech he delivered at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

“They have given us cooperation in operations in trying to confront al-Qaeda,” Panetta was saying. Then came the crucial part: “But at the same time, we have great differences, particularly with regards to the relations they maintain with some of the militant groups in the country.”

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=pakistan-turns-into-gordian-knot-for-us-2011-10-13

[Desertrose]

1. Ground all drones and get us (US) out of all the wars.

This is insanity.

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. +1,000,000

[ixion]

2. you know, at some point, we're going to invade one too many countries

and the world is going to realize that we're on the wrong end of the new World War.

[lunatica]

5. Ixion, I think the crossing of that Rubicon has already happened

It's one of the issues of the 99% and its time has come. It just need to grow and sift itself among all the other OWS issues. The situation is very fluid right now. Soon it will start to coalesce into specific issues under the larger umbrella of justice and peace, and the wars will be addressed more directly. Perhaps even from a focus on their illegality and fomentation of the Military Industrial complex corporate interests, rather than just on their morality.

This movement is different in that it's going global. I don't think that's ever happened before. Maybe we're becoming global citizens in our awareness.

[PATRICK]

3. I think some of our financial elites

/political complex wants nuclear complexity in rival regions always on the boundary of poverty and conflict. The great emerging markets are loaded with nukes and a history of conflict. China/Japan. Korea. Pakistan. India. Nuclear proliferation as a strangling peril there is a fait accompli which has been probably aided by American "interests". The holier than thou remote USA is an ocean away with subs close offshore to "control" useful fiascos. Balance of money/balance of terror. Too complex and too long term to control. Nuclear disarmamernt should be the highest priority for all of them. It is less a whimper than climate policies, the really inevitable calamity trembling under the mix.

But then I suppose their governments are as caring as ours when it comes to sane citizen interests and the real world.

[Warpy]

6. The only way to prevent this is to leave Afghanistan

and take those drones with us. Once the population is no longer afraid of this stuff, they'll be a lot less likely to rally around nutcases whose only appeal is that they're fighting the US by trying to slaughter working people randomly.

The whole Islamic world is a Gordian knot and one we'd do better to avoid when possible. It's also changing rapidly as populations wake up and rebel against the strongmen who kept the oil flowing and prevented large scale emigration.

[Desertrose]

7. Well said!

We need to get out for so many reasons....