VDH has an alternative to propping up Pakistan:
(We) pay Pakistan billions for (a) locking up their nukes, (b) the privilege of hunting terrorists, largely, but not always, through drone missile attacks—and Pakistan has plausible deniability. (c) It deplores U.S. intrusions when we screw up and either kill someone too prominent or get caught on tape; and (d) we loudly deplore Pakistani terrorism when its terrorists go beyond killing a few Christians or diplomats and do something like Mumbai.
I suppose all this is sustainable, but a large number of Americans (who wonder why seven years after 9/11 the killers are still traversing Pakistani provinces) are getting tired of the same old, same old, and might wish to wash their hands of Pakistan—and out-source the problem to India.
Nice idea, if India wanted the work. And if we could somehow still get supplies to ISAF.
Details, etc.
“On one of these trucks travels a nuke, overhead is a Predator with a trigger. If the convoy stops for any reason related to actions by your so called terrorists… Boom”.
Of course the first time you’ll have to detonate the nuke and a few times after that as well because “Allah demands that we steal this nuke”.
But think of the beautiful pictures, the long term improvements of the local genepool and sheer terror of any leader thinking of using terrs as a tool of diplomacy.
I have found the people of Afghanistan, for the most part, wanting peace and to be left alone. But they have no money, no enterprise, no industry. A failing agriculture-based society in a desolate region. Poppies. Fueling the war on the infidels is the poppy fields of East and South East Afghanistan. The Pakistan militants control the fields either directly or by paying for the fields they don’t control by buying the raw opium. Destroying the drugs only brings poverty to the villages caught in the middle.
You want to “prop up” something then find a way for the peaceful population (most of them) in Afghanistan to scratch out a living. Oh how their children suffer! Their fault, really. But the hard lesson of allowing the Taliban into their country as rulers has already been learned and they are trying to make better their remaining lot in life. The Afghan warlords are the ones, not the US and it’s coalition allies, who truly and robustly blasted that nation into the stone-age. WAY into the stone age!
Don’t get me wrong: I am all in favor of nuking the BA%$#rds and letting God sift the wheat from the chaff but in this case, and with decades of war already behind them with no massive change or development, nukes have lost any tactical advantage in the region and will only bring more global grief. Never thought *I* would say this but : Nukes are not the answer…. this time. Neither is charity. Someone needs to teach them how to fish! Without some selfsustaining internal growth the region will collapse the minute the international coalition finds and utalizes the exit. And we are already tired of the millstone and there are decades of rebuilding ahead of us.