Petreaus Advisor: (Nuclear State) Pakistan Could Collapse Within Six Months

[FourScore]

Petreaus Advisor: Pakistan an Epic Fail in 6 Months
by Steven D
Tue Apr 07, 2009 at 07:04:10 AM PDT

I know that many bloggers on the left have been ringing our alarm bells about Pakistan for awhile now.

Yet for years our government under President Bush assured us that Pakistan was one of our strongest allies in the "War on Terror." Well, now David Kilcullen, a former top counter-terrorism adviser to General Petraeus (Bush's hand picked general to lead US forces in Iraq, and now head of CENTCOM) has joined those of us on the left who disbelieved the lies and deceptions of the Bush administration about the stability of Pakistan. Indeed, in a recent interview Kilcullen said he believes Pakistan could collapse within six months.

Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state. We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today. ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/19/AR2009031903038.html )

Chilling. Pakistan is a country with nuclear weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems. Many in its its military and Intelligence Service (the infamous ISI) have deep and enduring ties to the Taliban, Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic terrorist organizations that have launched terrorist attacks against targets in India and Afghanistan (and, let us not forget, the US of A), too. ( http://www.afsa.org/fsj/Dec01/schiff.cfm ) Northwest Pakistan (a/k/a Waziristan) is completely dominated by such groups including the Taliban, and is the reputed hiding place of Osama Bin Ladin and his chief aides. Before President Musharraf was deposed and a democratically elected government restored to power, numerous assassination attempts against Musharraf were made by radical Islamist elements in the country, some of them members of the Pakistani military. Yet for eight years Bush and the Republicans (and a few Democrats still in Congress) ignored this obvious danger.

Just one more sign of how Bush has screwed up the world, not just America, by his insane/inane focus on Iraq and Iran after 9/11, when it was Pakistan all along which should have have been the clear point of emphasis of our foreign policy. Pakistan had the nukes, Pakistan had the terrorists and extremists. Iraq and Iran had nothing that posed an imminent threat to US interests or the security of our people. But then again, what would one expect from a man who invented the word "strategery" and who let himself be led around by the nose by Cheney and Rumsfeld?

Can this be fixed by Obama in 6 months? I highly doubt it. Pakistan's military is obsessed with India, not with the insurgents, many of them groups which it developed and supported over the last 50 years. The Taliban after all, were essentially a creation of the INI. And the Taliban groups in Afghanistan and Pakistan are moving toward a unified front in opposition to the US.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After agreeing to bury their differences and unite forces, Taliban leaders based in Pakistan have closed ranks with their Afghan comrades to ready a new offensive in Afghanistan as the United States prepares to send 17,000 more troops there this year. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/world/asia/27taliban.html?_r=2&hp )

To be blunt, we are running out of time. Time to prevent what may very well be the most serious geopolitical crisis we have faced since the Cold War. Obama has announced his own "new" approach to Pakistan, but I'm not sure anyone in Pakistan who counts has bought onto what he's selling. There are grave doubts that what has been proposed by his administration so far will prevent the worst case: a rogue state possessing nuclear weapons, led by radical ideological religious extremists with ties to terrorists...

MORE AT:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/7/717402/-Petreaus-Advisor:-Pakistan-an-Epic-Fail-in-6-Months

[Soylent Brice]

1. ruh roh...

[jwirr]

2. Couldn't a collapsed state with nukes be more dangerous than

when it was still in some kind of control? This is probably very true but I do not think Patreaus is telling us that we are victorious - instead he may be warning us that we have more trouble ahead.

[FourScore]

3. That's the point. n/t

[FourScore]

4. kick