Pakistan’s ruling elite has heard what the Pakistani Taliban think of US plans to hound them down in their tribal havens:
A massive bomb blast has hit the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad, killing at least 40 people.
The hotel’s owner said the explosion occurred when a lorry, which was being checked by security staff and sniffer dogs blew up at the hotel’s entrance.
The blast created a 20ft (6m) deep crater, and destroyed the entire front section of the hotel.
President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the attack and vowed to “continue to fight terrorism and extremism”.
In a statement, he said: “Such dastardly acts cannot dent the government’s commitment to fight this menace.”
It seems that a policy of appeasing the terrorists openly while remaining strategically ambivalent to Reaper strikes and SOF boot prints has played itself out – the Marriott was hard by the headquarters of many federal office buildings and the choice of target was driven as much by the desire to send a message as it was to maximize the human cost.
The problem of Islamist extremism has not been put to bed with the retirement of Pervez Musharraf from the scene, and the new government is being tested. This is one of those “with us or against us” deals.
Rock, meet hard place. I wonder which way they’ll bounce?
Won’t they just blame us? Their borders, their business and all that?
Pakistan is a fascinating place and the Taliban are idiots. It’s taken them ages to realize that our center of gravity resides in Pakistan’s tacit and overt support for our efforts in Afghanistan. Now that Pakistan has adopted the other traditional government party; warlord followed by fickle contrarian thieves, followed by warlord, followed by fickle idiotic thieves, the game is going to get very interesting.
With the ISI still supporting the Taliban, conclusive evidence that the mullahs support the taliban and no real army to speak of, it is the iron spine of the Pakistani government to hold the line and not deny us the use of their ports and roads. I very much believed Bush when he delivered his speech following 9/11 that if you were not with us you were against us. He was credible. One could believe he was sincere. With Obama, not so sure.
I wonder if the people in Pakistan are looking at that explosion and thinking to themselves, “well, Spain got bombed one time by the taliban and pulled out of the war instantly and the Americans still do business with them, why don’t we drop our support and see what happens next?”
I can’t believe that your spellchecker has the word taliban in it. Sure it’s a proper noun describing proper bast@rds but honestly, it can spelled any ole phonetic way that you like.
Oh, and that iron spine I was speaking of is only ever in evidence when the Pakistani government has decided on some irrevocable and irredeemably stupid course of action.