Petraeus’ next war: Pakistan

[Stargate]

We all know why the US military is Pakistan and Afghanistan, it's all part of the containment strategy, BTW, Afghanistan is now a carrier itself.

 

[VCheng]

And thats exactly the line of action USA is engaging in. The logic is that if you can send a suicide bomber into our homes to kill our civilians, we can send a drone into yours to kill you and your family..and thats the fear that has played a large role in deterring any major attacks in USA after 9/11. I dont think there is anything wrong in becoming a terrorist when dealing with a terrorist

Very wrong. That is the worst moral trap one could fall into.

 

[Oldman1]

This is'nt going to be Iraq mate. Wake up. You people will cry if you go on a war with us like you did with Vietnam. . But thanks for informing. .

Never said it was Iraq. This is Pakistan unless you don't know your own name of your country. And trust me that people who goes to war with the U.S. tends to suffer the worse than you think. But hey we can be good allies afterwards, after all we have good relations with Vietnam even though it millions were killed. It could lead to better relations don't you think? Just like Iraq. Oops sorry I mentioned that.

 

[bobthebuilder]

If US goes to war with pak ,will china help

 

[AmberDutt]

If US goes to war with pak ,will china help

No (US wont go to war with Pak) and No (if it does CHina wont intervene)

 

[Hulk]

Now try looking from a Pakistani perspective or a completely neutral one.
But i'm afraid you can't.
The fact of the matter is that they simply went in and did the Bin Laden operation completely on their own, without consulting and informing with their Pakistani counterparts.

And if they can do that with the same attitude, together with the drone strikes and with knowing Americas unpredictability when it comes to these kinds of situation, we have to be on our guard.
You call the Pakistani government a wannabe innocent virgin.

Well they're indeed no virgin anymore, because the U.S. f- ed them over and over again and will continue to do so if no solid stance is taken by the GoP.

You talk as if the U.S. has all the rights to be conducting operations inside Pakistan.

How would you feel if they were swarming across India?
Nobody likes uninvited guests.

Very different, in case he was in India and US got to know his location. All they have to do is tell IA and he was guaranteed to be taken care off without a risk. The whole reason US did this because they were not sure if he would be tipped, considering you had relationship is past.

 

[PlanetWarrior]

To all american f***** idiots these terrorist are ur product. Its ur money who made these terrorist aslo when admiting covered CIA opertain in Pakistan is noting new we have known all time ur involment in our internal matters have fucked up alot for our counrty since what USA/CIA does isnt for Pakistanies but in intersset of USA which is rob take what every u can from other countries. And CIA is big time involve in TTP traning etc. One proof is enough which is if TTP does not like Pakistan to help USA why they dont go and fight against USA and NATO in Afghanistan ? Most over NATO transport go trough TTP area where not even Pakistan have full controll how come can NATO trucks pass trough ?

Afghanistan is just start Pakistan will be grave yard for u and Indians who are jumping humping dont think u will be safe if war starts..... m**** ch****

Calm down chum. Most Indians are just as horrified about the drone attacks as I am. Offcourse you would get the minority who would cheer on the slaughter as you get the minority in Pakistan who throw a party after a few militants from your home country run rampage in one of our cities. Back to the topic. I believe that whether the kids being slaughtered are children of a Pakistani farmer or some Taliban militant, there can be no justification for murdering them. These drone attacks are going to create more anger and hatred and will make the affected areas a fertile hotbed for terrorist support. Really, if I was living in the affected areas and my kid was killed by a drone attack, I will enlist with the Taliban and vow to hit back at the USA. And me being an Indian Hindu would show you how despicable I think that those drone attacks are. I showed the pic to a few of my buddies and they were equally outraged. I sincerely hope that the USA reconsiders its strategy. It is about time that the American civilians and the rest of the world's attention is brought to pictures of the sort displayed in this thread. There must be a different way to engage with and destroy the terrorists.

 

[PlanetWarrior]

If US goes to war with pak ,will china help

Offcourse China will help by selling weapons to Pakistan

 

[Abingdonboy]

I see there is collateral damage in these drone strikes- which utterly sickens me to my core, but surely it is for a greater good. The inteded targets of these strikes are not innocents but brutal and evil men who plot to kill as many innocents as they can. So their deaths save many, many more potential victims from a similar fate. And contrary to popular belief- these strikes have been mostly sussesful as it has wiled out most of the AQ leadership in Pakistan, surely this is a gift to the Pakistani people as these people plot against Pakistan just as much as US/India/West etc? As many are so eager to point out- more Pakistanis (>30,000) have died in the WOT than anyone else and that is because of these men who are now being sent to hell one by one.

 

[fatman17]

Defeat of the drones

Rafia Zakaria

Today‘GAMING in Waziristan’ is an art exhibition taking place in London’s Beaconsfield Gallery from July 19 to Aug 5.


Using the archives of the UK-based charity Reprieve, documents from 2007-2011 and the work of three artists, the exhibition is an attempt to give visual reality to a war that is largely invisible.

Photographs from North Waziristan, often taken in the moments after a drone strike, are a pictorial attempt at dislodging the reputation of the drone as a tool of sterile, precise and perfect extermination.

The attempt is commendable, particularly in a world where the unseen is summarily relegated to the unreal and consequently goes un-mourned.

Particularly apt is the western venue, a milieu where many have settled on drone warfare as the solution to the rising cost of producing a human soldier, the terrorist jargon and target-sterilising the messy business of killing.

But the defeat of drones as the antidote to fears of a terror-filled world is not being effected by art alone (although such a route would indeed be ideal). The recipe for taking out militants in Pakistan has been quite simple: drones — marvellous inventions that can kill but not be killed, that can fly for hours, whose anonymous operators can strike from the silent comfort of an anonymous control room.

The landscape they mapped was stark, the mobility of a single human visible against the relative immovability of mud-coloured infinity. Men and militants could be tracked and hunted, and a single moment of foolhardy repose could mean the elimination of an important leader like Baitullah Mehsud.

But warfare, even this new robotic version of it, is always messy and some others, nameless and faceless from their lack of lethality, were killed — their mourners limited by the sealed-off terrain to those unfortunate enough to be left behind. These supposed militant leaders or those mistaken for them, or living near them, soon numbered hundreds of thousands, forming caravans of hopelessness on the move.

While US officials touted the wonders of drones, those who knew them best turned south to cities away from the constant deathly buzz — away from the prospect of appearing lethal to some distant, unknown persecutor, away from the only landscape they knew how to survive in. The defeat of the drone, an instrument of warfare that played on dated definitions of borders and perpetrators, has resulted from the demographic changes spawned by its own famed efficiency. What the drowned-out wails of powerless victims could not accomplish, the shifts in population have done instead.

As droves of refugees empty out of the drone-ravaged tribal areas, and filter into crowded urban areas, the calculations of the best place to set up your militant shop or jihadi outlet also change. As any mischievous five-year-old will inform you, the worst place to hide is the most obvious one, where everyone looks first.

The limits of the drone then have been spelt out by a change in strategy, a move to new hiding places where teeming millions provide the camouflage that terrain and tribal intrigue once did.

Newly minted AfPak strategists, long-time lovers of drones, are trained to sniff out the singular sin of global jihad in the mutations of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. When ‘ethnic’ warfare appears in the think-tank teacup, eyes begin to glaze over, and attention flags. Those were the old wars, petty post-colonial squabbles over slums and survival, or the right to live in a little less squalor — all missing the neat labelling crying out ‘Islamist global jihad lies here’.

But in war calculations that do persevere, the boredom of one side is always an opportunity for the other. As the violence in Karachi, whose many million fragile egos are also armed and unforgiving, amply testifies, a little local knowledge can go a long way, ignite long-festering faultlines and destabilise not a remote tribal area but a city.

In its calculations, the architects and the executors may never be known and are largely irrelevant; the end result is lawlessness, chaos, a terrified population and the ability to do whatever, wherever and whenever. Through this trajectory, the mutation of the ‘war on terror’, its urbanisation, causes foes to proliferate, making recognition nearly impossible and life for those seeking secrecy near perfect.

As is the case with other abandoned instruments of mass killing, the decreasing strategic value of drones is unlikely to be accompanied with notes of apology or admissions of inertia. In the afterglow of their imagined perfection, drones are likely to continue to ply the skies over abandoned hideouts and once-familiar hangouts yielding ever fewer heads to stake on the posts of victory.

As the US wraps up its operations in Afghanistan, and constructs a victory over terror on Osama bin Laden’s ‘missing’ corpse, it withdraws into the amnesic reclusion that lies between episodes of imperial expansion.

Perhaps in the soul-searching born of sombre parting moments, American lawmakers orchestrating the final exit will pause at the idea that drones do not defeat terror and possibly only displace it, enabling a murky metamorphosis that will continue to terrify.

Drones, even if they disappeared tomorrow, have left Pakistan forever changed, demographically altered, its nascent democratic institutions flailing. It is these urban, dread-darkened streets that those left behind must continue to ply, after the drones, defeated or merely redundant, are finally gone.

The writer is an attorney teaching political philosophy and constitutional law.

rafia.zakaria@gmail.com

 

[muse]

Photographs from North Waziristan, often taken in the moments after a drone strike, are a pictorial attempt at dislodging the reputation of the drone as a tool of sterile, precise and perfect extermination.

The attempt is commendable, particularly in a world where the unseen is summarily relegated to the unreal and consequently goes un-mourned.

With your permission, allow me ask Pakistani respondents, whether they would approve the use of drone strikes if the drones were operated by the Pakistan armed forces??

I think it's important to think about this issue in a serious manner - it should be recognized, regardless of photos or whatever, that the drones do allow for armed forces to incur less costs to achieve an objective - consider, how may Pakistani soldiers and their families would suffer if drones were not used.

We must keep in mind that bombs and missiles do not do surgery, it not clean, war is not clean - when the Islamist enemy chooses to use the population as a shield or a deterrent, it seems to me that we are put in a curious position - if we do not act, the enemy wins, our inaction puts the lives of Pakistani soldiers and civilians in harms way --- and when we do act, the risk of non-combatant casualty is ever present - it's damned if we do and damned if we don't -- but with every day that the enemy is safe to plan and act, not just Pakistani soldiers but all of Pakistan is endangered.

 

[Dragon Emperor]

If US goes to war with Pak, it would be considered an attack on Muslims and US would be finished if all Muslim countries declared war on US it would be like Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations or the Battle of Armegeddon.

 

[cyphercide]

So, you're saying he would be a better general fighting on home turf? Wierd....

Cute manipulation of semantics.But I'll take the bait,yes he would be considered a better General if he would concentrate on keeping terrorism at bay on his homeland rather than picking up fights we know he is going to lose.Even the mighty Americans can't afford a new war or invade every nation as they please.

 

[TaimiKhan]

And thats exactly the line of action USA is engaging in. The logic is that if you can send a suicide bomber into our homes to kill our civilians, we can send a drone into yours to kill you and your family..and thats the fear that has played a large role in deterring any major attacks in USA after 9/11. I dont think there is anything wrong in becoming a terrorist when dealing with a terrorist

If US wants, another 9/11 can happen in no time just like the previous one which they let happen, but since they don't want another 9/11 to happen as the first 9/11 has already obtained its objectives and some are in progress, no need for another 9/11.

Well as someone else said, no difference left between you and them, both of you would be of the same class of human beings. Then why not let them reign when both of you are gonna be of same nature with different kinds of barbarity being shown.

 

[AZADPAKISTAN2009]

We don't give a damn about US feelings while drones are active killing people