Stop keeping poisonous snakes in backyard: US

[Pukhtoon]

Released on - Friday,22 June , 2012 -09:44


WASHINGTON: In a blunt warning to Pakistan against supporting anti-India and anti-Afghanistan terror groups, secretary of state Hillary Clinton has asked Islamabad to do more about terrorist safe havens in its territory. 'What we ve said to the Pakistanis is look, if there were ever an argument in the past for your policy of hedging against Afghanistan by supporting the Haqqani Network or the Afghan Taliban or the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) against India, those days are over,' she said on a TV talk show. 'Because that s like the guy who keeps poisonous snakes in his backyard convinced they ll only attack his neighbours,' Clinton said appearing on the Charlie Rose show with former secretary of state James Baker for 'Conversations on Diplomacy'. Noting that US 'relationship with Pakistan has been challenging for a long time' she lamented that in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistanis 'had embraced a kind of jihadi mentality in part to stimulate fighters both from the outside and within Afghanistan.' 'So we are living with a country that has a lot of difficult issues both for themselves and then for us and others.' While it was not in US interests to cut off its relationship with Pakistan, Clinton said: 'It is in our interest to try to better direct and manage that relationship, and there are several things that we re asking the Pakistanis to do more of and better.' 'Number one, they ve got to do more about the safe havens inside their own country, she said. 'I mean, everybody knows that the Taliban s momentum has been reversed, territory has been taken back, the Afghan Security Forces are performing much better, but the extremists have an ace in the hole,' Clinton said. Pakistan 'has to be willing to recognize that as we withdraw from Afghanistan, it is in their interest to have a strong, stable Afghan Government,' she said.

Safe heavens in Pakistan ? What about those in Afghanistan ? Kunar and Nur e stan ?

She s looking for her own Interest and we for ours. So FCuk of ***** !

 

[Zarvan]

Released on - Friday,22 June , 2012 -09:44


WASHINGTON: In a blunt warning to Pakistan against supporting anti-India and anti-Afghanistan terror groups, secretary of state Hillary Clinton has asked Islamabad to do more about terrorist safe havens in its territory. 'What we ve said to the Pakistanis is look, if there were ever an argument in the past for your policy of hedging against Afghanistan by supporting the Haqqani Network or the Afghan Taliban or the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) against India, those days are over,' she said on a TV talk show. 'Because that s like the guy who keeps poisonous snakes in his backyard convinced they ll only attack his neighbours,' Clinton said appearing on the Charlie Rose show with former secretary of state James Baker for 'Conversations on Diplomacy'. Noting that US 'relationship with Pakistan has been challenging for a long time' she lamented that in the aftermath of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, Pakistanis 'had embraced a kind of jihadi mentality in part to stimulate fighters both from the outside and within Afghanistan.' 'So we are living with a country that has a lot of difficult issues both for themselves and then for us and others.' While it was not in US interests to cut off its relationship with Pakistan, Clinton said: 'It is in our interest to try to better direct and manage that relationship, and there are several things that we re asking the Pakistanis to do more of and better.' 'Number one, they ve got to do more about the safe havens inside their own country, she said. 'I mean, everybody knows that the Taliban s momentum has been reversed, territory has been taken back, the Afghan Security Forces are performing much better, but the extremists have an ace in the hole,' Clinton said. Pakistan 'has to be willing to recognize that as we withdraw from Afghanistan, it is in their interest to have a strong, stable Afghan Government,' she said.

Safe heavens in Pakistan ? What about those in Afghanistan ? Kunar and Nur e stan ?

She s looking for her own Interest and we for ours. So FCuk of ***** !

Yes we should not allow America to stay in our backyard we should make sure it runs out of Afghanistan as soon as possible because its stay will only harm Pakistan and will do nothing good for both Pakistan Afghanistan

 

[Thorn]

hope this govt is thrown out and imran khan comes to power n tells US to go to hell.

 

[third eye]

Safe heavens in Pakistan ? What about those in Afghanistan ? Kunar and Nur e stan ?

Just coz they exist in the places mentioned above does not mean they should remain in Pak ?

The moot issue raised is not addressed.

For the bad to thrive all that Good men need to do is nothing.

This is what I feel Pak is suffering from. The voice & opinion of sane men is either not being raised or not heard.

Its a call Pak citizens need to take.

 

[Thorn]

Its a call Pak citizens need to take.

Its high time we realize,weve had enough of these ppp and ganja party ruining pakistan.

 

[ashok321]

Hillary Clinton has asked Islamabad to do more about terrorist safe havens in its territory. 'What we ve said to the Pakistanis is look, if there were ever an argument in the past for your policy of hedging against Afghanistan by supporting the Haqqani Network or the Afghan Taliban or the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) against India, those days are over,' she said on a TV


Above UNDERLINED is a cream of the coffee cup.....
Before Pakistan used to have a AAA economy - Allah, Army, America...
Now one crucial A is missing, hence the turmoil in Pakistan.

 

[Leviza]

Hillary Clinton has asked Islamabad to do more about terrorist safe havens in its territory. 'What we ve said to the Pakistanis is look, if there were ever an argument in the past for your policy of hedging against Afghanistan by supporting the Haqqani Network or the Afghan Taliban or the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) against India, those days are over,' she said on a TV

Above UNDERLINED is a cream of the coffee cup.....
Before Pakistan used to have a AAA economy - Allah, Army, America...
Now one crucial A is missing, hence the turmoil in Pakistan.

yes we are proud that we stop keeping/supporting the biggest snake(USA) help , and stopped their routes, keep barking no one listens to you

BTW this lady didn't know where and what her husband doing with Monica and says she knows about safe heavens of talibans and mullah's?

 

[Fazlu]

BTW this lady didn't know where and what her husband doing with Monica and says she knows about safe heavens of talibans and mullah's?

How does it matter to you ?

 

[Leviza]

How does it matter to you ?

LOL this shows how much this lady know what going on around her... No doubt why USA in such a mess, if its still not clear to you then dont try hard its way above...

 

[DrNSAID]

Hillary Clinton has asked Islamabad to do more about terrorist safe havens in its territory. 'What we ve said to the Pakistanis is look, if there were ever an argument in the past for your policy of hedging against Afghanistan by supporting the Haqqani Network or the Afghan Taliban or the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba) against India, those days are over,' she said on a TV


Above UNDERLINED is a cream of the coffee cup.....
Before Pakistan used to have a AAA economy - Allah, Army, America...
Now one crucial A is missing,

I hope your holy bharatmata has a penchant for sour cream.

 

[Black Widow]

LOL this shows how much this lady know what going on around her... No doubt why USA in such a mess, if its still not clear to you then dont try hard its way above...

Height of personal attack. Do you know what you are talking about??? You know who was this lady that time and who is she now... Let me educate you...

Mrs clinton didn't knew about Monica
Secratary of state Clinton knows it...

As a person I and you may be dumb, But as an institution we are not. She is not Lallu Yadav who fart with open mouth, Her statements are verified at government and then comes out...

Hope now you guys will understand to talk sense...

 

[somebozo]

instead of admitting defeat they will continue to beat the dead horse to dust.

US bought democracy actually worked against them...and now they have got nobody else to blame...the same pot head also said that playing a gamble with Musharraf wasn't worth and they welcome the "democratic" gov of Pakistan.

 

[Vortex]

the answer :

A floundering campaign

Javed Hussain
Friday, June 22, 2012 From Print Edition

After the rout of the Taliban in Afghanistan in October 2001, euphoric shouts of victory had resonated across the United States, the loudest coming from the White House, the Pentagon and the Congress.

But these were short-lived as the inevitable Afghan resistance began. Eleven years on, the Americans’ campaign is floundering in a morass of strategic, operational and tactical confusion and despair.

The American military may be the strongest, the most technologically advanced military power in the world in conventional warfare, but in counter-guerrilla warfare, whose strategy and tactics are the antithesis of conventional warfare, they have a lot to learn.

Had they learnt lessons from their own ten-year experience of counter-guerrilla warfare in Vietnam, and that of the Soviets in Afghanistan, they might have fared better. History, indeed, is one of their blind spots because they are too arrogant to learn from it, the arrogance stemming from their exalted status as a superpower.

They had supposedly come to Afghanistan with a mission. Whatever it may have been, eleven years later, after suffering thousands of casualties and spending billions of dollars, that mission is in tatters, that too when their battlefield is confined mainly to the southern and eastern parts of the country, unlike the Soviets, who, with fewer troops than those of the Coalition, had to contend with the whole country as the battlefield.

At last they have rightly concluded that since the war cannot be won they should look for a face-saving political solution – hence the overtures of peace to the Taliban. This is the only sagacious decision they have taken in 11 years, although they appear unabashed by the fact that it essentially signifies a tacit admission of defeat.

Had they taken this decision a few years earlier after the Talibanhad gained ascendancy over them, they could have spared their servicemen and -women much suffering. But their arrogance came in the way and they ignored the writing on the wall.

Instead of carrying out a dispassionate analysis of the causes of their failure and taking appropriate actions to turn the tide in their favour, they chose the line of least resistance-blame Pakistan for all their woes, including what has become the scourge of their soldiers-the improvised explosive device.

And so was born the “do more” refrain to camouflage their inept conduct of the war. Initially it was being sung by the Pentagon and their commanders in Afghanistan. But now, as the US elections and the pullout deadline come nearer, the partisan US Congress and media, instead of holding the Pentagon accountable, have joined them in singing the refrain – led by Leon Panetta, the choirmaster.

The strategy to make Pakistan the scapegoat may have fooled the US Congress and media but the informed world, including the allies in the Coalition, see it as a classic case of a bad workman blaming his tools.

The Americans might also recall a famous saying attributed to their great president, Abraham Lincoln: You can fool all the people some time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

The Americans have been harping on the Taliban having their sanctuaries in Pakistan. If that is so, why have they allowed them to infiltrate into occupied territory, attack, and return to the sanctuaries, with impunity all these years? With over 400,000 troops, including those of the Afghan army, they could surely have put a stop to this by an imaginatively planned uncomplicated defensive manoeuvre to tie down the guerrillas in their sanctuaries, thus achieving operational supremacy over them.

But the reason why this simple prescription for victory was ignored is equally simple – there are no sanctuaries in Pakistan. The Taliban are wiser.

The fact is that both in the south and the east, the Taliban’s sanctuaries are in the HinduKush Mountains. Here they feel far more secure than the tribal areas of Pakistan for three cogent reasons: one, they have greater operational flexibility; two, the Americans are shy of making a serious effort to venture into the mountains; three, were they to operate out of the tribal areas, they would remain vulnerable to interception on the way out and on the way in.

The fact is that the American military leadership, as well as their rank and file, have lacked the prerequisite for conducting a successful counter-guerrilla war – a mental capacity superior to the adversary’s.

That is why, as in Vietnam, so in Afghanistan, the invaders who had come as hunters had soon become the hunted, and this is what led to the onset of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in their combatants in Afghanistan. One manifestation of PTSD is suicide – so far, at the rate of one a day, 154 cases of suicide have been reported – while the rest who reluctantly step out of their bases are given diapers to wear!

“Every special calling in life requires special qualities of intellect and temperament,” Clausewitz said in his treatise “On War.” Sadly for the American people, their military has shown that they lack these. That is why they were outwitted by Gen Vo Nguyen Giap, Mullah Omar and Sirajuddin Haqqani, all masters of their craft.

As the sole superpower they should show sophistication, serenity of mind and understanding of Pakistan’s concerns and constraints, and have the grace to say they are sorry for the deadly attack on Salala posts.

Their uncalled for outbursts and threats would only serve to test the breaking-point of Pakistani people’s patience.



The writer is a retired brigadier.Email: javedhussainpa@yahoo.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrin...D=116015&Cat=9



Post of Niaz on Pakdef.

or "I failed because of him..."

 

[Solomon2]

US bought democracy actually worked against them...and now they have got nobody else to blame...the same pot head also said that playing a gamble with Musharraf wasn't worth and they welcome the "democratic" gov of Pakistan.

I think there is some truth to your words, though I can't agree with "nobody else to blame", which implies that Pakistani leaders are innocent and not responsible for their own decisions.

 

[third eye]

The title is misleading but the contents are relevant.


US, Pakistan heading towards collision | DAWN.COM


WASHINGTON: The US-Pakistan relationship appeared to be heading towards a head-on collision as an American general blamed Friday’s deadly attack on a Kabul hotel on Fata-based militants and the White House vowed to take the steps needed to mitigate this threat.

Earlier on Friday, the US media reported that Washington had considered launching retaliatory attacks at terrorist targets inside Fata but concerns about destabilising Pakistan prevented it from doing so.

“We’ll take steps necessary to mitigate that threat,” said a White House official, while commenting on AP report.

Asked if the White House could send US soldiers across the border to chase down those militants, White House Principal Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest said: “I won’t preview the kinds of things that are being discussed, and frankly, whether or not they’re even being discussed by the administration.”

But, he said, he could share with the reporters that “this threat is something that we have talked about quite extensively both publicly and privately.”

The White House official pointed out that the US had raised this issue with the Pakistanis and remained committed to finding ways to work with them to combat the threat that these groups posed both to US forces and innocent Pakistani civilians.

Earlier, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan said that the deadly attack on the Kabul hotel bore the signature of the Haqqani group which he said continued to operate from Pakistan.

Commenting on the statement, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland told reporters in Washington that the United States had been pushing Pakistan for a long time to ‘squeeze’ this terrorist outfit.

Also on Friday, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta indicated that the US was not going to accept Pakistan’s demand for an apology over the Salala incident, which caused Islamabad to block Nato supply routes to Afghanistan.

Pakistan is unwilling to reopen the routes without an apology.

Asked whether he would oppose any further apology, Mr Panetta told the Reuters news agency: “We’ve made clear what our position is, and I think it’s time to move on.”

He added: “If we keep going back to the past, if we keep beating up each other based on past differences, we’ll never get anywhere.”


But the most detailed analysis of US-Pakistan relations came in a televised discussion between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one of her predecessors, James A. Baker.

Secretary Baker noted that the relationship was in a ‘terrible’ shape, adding that this was “really sad, because for the duration of the Cold War they were our ally, and India was the ally of the Soviet Union, and now all of that is changed”.

Mr Baker disagreed with those who suggested severing ties to Pakistan.

“I think we need to maintain a relationship with them because they’re a nuclear power and because it’s really important that we not see nuclear conflagration in the subcontinent. And we don’t want to see any more proliferation than we’ve seen from Pakistan,” he said.

He suggested cutting off US aid to Pakistan to “get their attention” while maintaining a relationship with them.

Secretary Clinton observed that America’s relationship with Pakistan has been challenging for a long time.

“Some of it is of our own making,” she said, adding that she believed the US should have been more concerned about “what was going to happen to the Pakistanis” after the Soviet withdrawal from Pakistan.

“First of all, I completely agree it is not in our interests to cut off our relationship,” she said while explaining her approach. “It is in our interest to try to better direct and manage that relationship.”

She said there were several things that the US was now asking the Pakistanis to do: “Number one, they’ve got to do more about the safe havens inside their own country” because “the extremists have an ace in the hole. They just cross the border; they get direction and funding and fighters, and they go back across the border.”

She urged Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network as well as the LET, noting that the militants had already killed more than 30,000 Pakistanis.

“Secondly, they have to be willing to recognise that as we withdraw from Afghanistan, it is in their interest to have a strong, stable Afghan government” and they should stop “doing everything possible to try to undermine it.”

“And at the very least, they ought to stop double-dealing us,” said Secretary Baker. “Yeah, at the very least,” Secretary Clinton agreed.

“And they should release Dr Afridi,” she added.