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US Defense Secretary Panetta threatens ground intervention into Pakistan

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hey Buddy ... i dont believe ur lies and excuses while u kill thousands innocent peoples in Iraq and Afghanistan, and willing to do more. the fact is real tht u kill thousands of people for the sake of 9/11 and to get happy ur zionists masters.

get ur A*sses out of Afghanistan and world would be in peace

Lets get real. American military will do whatever needs to be done to keep interdicting these terrorists in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region so that they are not able to attack American Homeland. What's happening now is just a strong arm tactic to force Pakistan to go after the Haqquani group. And AFAIK, the situation between the 2 countries is not as bad as it is made out to be in media. On the contrary, its much better than that. A lot of animosity (or show of animosity) is just a front to disassociate Pakistan from American actions, so that terrorists in Pakistan do not increase their attacks on Pakistan.
 
Lets get real. American military will do whatever needs to be done to keep interdicting these terrorists in the Afghanistan and Pakistan region so that they are not able to attack American Homeland. What's happening now is just a strong arm tactic to force Pakistan to go after the Haqquani group. And AFAIK, the situation between the 2 countries is not as bad as it is made out to be in media. On the contrary, its much better than that. A lot of animosity (or show of animosity) is just a front to disassociate Pakistan from American actions, so that terrorists in Pakistan do not increase their attacks on Pakistan.


I wish the terrorists were that gullible
the American actions will only turn the whole Pakistan into a Pak-Afghan badland, a heaven for Al Qaeda and taliban just like in the countries where there was not even a trace of Al Qaeda e.g. Iraq and Libya (dictatorships but strictly secular).

these guys dont have established HQs like Pentagon or Rawalpindi GHQ.. they are here today and tomorrow they might be spending the night within 5 or 10 miles from the Presidential palace in Kabul.

hammering them for past 10 years has been tried. I dont know what more can be achieved by yet another operation apart causing collateral and giving them free recruits and sympathisers.

opening of Doha office for Taliban was a good move, loath them as much you will but these rascals have a following and if they are willing to talk then lets talk and negotiate some stability and peace. they got nothing to loose,
only the enemies of Pakistan and America will wish this war to continue forever.
north Wazirisitan is not a heaven. it has military presence and is under constant drone attacks. only difference is that the scale is not as huge as Mehmund, Khybar and rest of Waziristan.

and if you think Haqqanis will be that stupid to continue to live in the same area that America has marked for a kill then would have been history few years ago already.

I suspect Panetta is acting like a bad cop for the administration to get an image of a hard man on behalf of Democrats that are being blamed for having a softy approach in war on terror.

its a bloody quagmire America can definitely attack unilaterally and bomb the place to bits but it will be digging itself further deep rather than coming out.


I am all up for an operation in any remaining parts of Waziristan if the American concerns are backed up with sufficient proof and intel. it has to be done but not in a brass way the good old Panetta is conducting his press conferences.
 
When will someone try to win hearts and minds?
 
- The Islamic world won't bat an eye.
- The carpet bombing would be done by the US.
- No one is talking of ground invasion -- only aerial bombing to decimate Pakistan's military assets.
- Pakistan's nuclear capability is useless against the US.

Please understand that the title hyperpower is not lightly earned.

There is no need to consider large scale bombing of military assets within Pakistan. A policy of steady political and economic engagement is likely to continue to give the best chances for meeting the required goals in the region.
 
There is no need to consider large scale bombing of military assets within Pakistan. A policy of steady political and economic engagement is likely to continue to give the best chances for meeting the required goals in the region.

do you see any chance of resumption of the Dialogue with taliban? they were already setting up an office in Dubai and even Haqqanis were on-board.

if we think this is a lost cause and decide that a full scale operation in North Waziristian is the answer to all our problems then tell me what are the chances that these guys wont melt away in the surrounding areas of Afghanistan or Pakistan?

they couldnt be contained even a smaller place of Tora Bora when the American might came with all its fury. North Waziristan ro rest of Pakistan is even a bigger playground for them to play hide and seek. lets consider that Pakistani military is either totally eliminated or at full disposal of Pentagon even then is there any surety that there will be a conclusion?

or will India and/ or Iran be accused next of harbouring them? and then China? why do we want to play their game?

they are just banking on Americans to do what they have been doing for the past 10 years. the terrorists will have even a bigger pool of recruits.
 
............ lets consider that Pakistani military is either totally eliminated or at full disposal of Pentagon even then is there any surety that there will be a conclusion?............

A conclusive elimination of terrorism sanctuaries in FATA as well as creeping radicalism throughout Pakistani society will take many aspects working together, not just military.

Just like some here are concentrating on only the supply routes issue, it would be wrong to look at only the limited usefulness of a military operation in NWA.

One needs to look at the wider picture for a proper solution.
 
- The Islamic world won't bat an eye.
- The carpet bombing would be done by the US.
- No one is talking of ground invasion -- only aerial bombing to decimate Pakistan's military assets.
- Pakistan's nuclear capability is useless against the US.

Please understand that the title hyperpower is not lightly earned.

Can you really predict or guarantee what Pakistan's response would be under these circumstances. Desperation?? Does anyone really want to find out??
 
A conclusive elimination of terrorism sanctuaries in FATA as well as creeping radicalism throughout Pakistani society will take many aspects working together, not just military.

Just like some here are concentrating on only the supply routes issue, it would be wrong to look at only the limited usefulness of a military operation in NWA.

One needs to look at the wider picture for a proper solution.

please do share your thoughts with Paneta

he thinks killing tribals in peaceful gatherings and invading Pakistan is the solution to all his problems. seems like he is getting Memo's from AQ central.
 
please do share your thoughts with Paneta

he thinks killing tribals in peaceful gatherings and invading Pakistan is the solution to all his problems. seems like he is getting Memo's from AQ central.

He knows that already, trust me.
 
please do share your thoughts with Paneta

he thinks killing tribals in peaceful gatherings and invading Pakistan is the solution to all his problems. seems like he is getting Memo's from AQ central.

Sirji,

The question is what is pakistan doing? where is the hard posturing, these supply route stuff is passive aggressive. Pakistan is a sovereign nation, why are you letting drones come into pakistan. You need a hard stand, if it flies it dies. If US need's any hot pursuit, US needs to intimate pakistani forces and pakistan will do the needful as is deemed necessary. This needs to be both kiyani's and geelani's stand. If not bring back musharraff, rest assured no one is going to ask him to look him in the eye and say anything with conviction. Stick some Spada 2000 systems along the borders and lets see how many drones dare to enter pakistan. Send a proper foriegn affairs minister to decry the blatant violations of sovereignty in UNSC (Pak is non-permanent member state). Ask for support from India, Russia and China, perfect time as it's obama's re-election, opposition will eat into him for mis-handling pakistan.
 
I am all up for an operation in any remaining parts of Waziristan if the American concerns are backed up with sufficient proof and intel. .

Let me ask you a simple question. Why do you need this proof? Its your own country. You can send your military anywhere in that country if you want. And who can have better intel about Pakistan than Pakistan Military. ?

If resources are an issue, ask us for an advance reimbursement for leading the operation since its we who are asking for this operation. But there is no positive response shown by Pakistani Govt to our concerns about those terrorist havens on your soil. Which in turn creates unnecessary trust.

Just like you accuse us of being brash, for us, you come across as trying to protect those who attack us in Afghanistan. And therein lies the crux of the issue.

When will someone try to win hearts and minds?

If you've got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow
 
A good article for discussion:

from: Quick Study: Peter Tomsen on war in Afghanistan: How to hop out of a cauldron | The Economist

Quick Study: Peter Tomsen on war in Afghanistan
How to hop out of a cauldron
Jun 1st 2012, 10:18 by A.B.


Peter Tomsen was George H.W. Bush’s special envoy to the Afghan resistance, with the rank of ambassador from 1989 to 1992. As such, he met many Afghan tribal leaders, commanders and ulema who remain active today. Tomsen entered America’s foreign service in 1967 and was posted to Vietnam’s Mekong delta as a civilian military advisor in 1969. He has served in India, China, Moscow and (as ambassador) Armenia. He is the author of “The Wars of Afghanistan” (2011).

What is the West going to do about Afghanistan?

There are two main challenges in the way ahead. They can be met if we understand how we got to this position in the Afghan war. The first is Pakistan’s double game. The second is to pass responsibility to the Afghans as quickly as possible and draw down our forces. In this structure the Afghans would become the supported side and the coalition would become the supporting side. It’s pretty much the framework we had in the anti-Soviet war. We provided the wherewithal for the mujahideen to defeat the Soviet army and they did the fighting. Afghans need to have custody over their own country, a point that President Obama underscored during his May 1st visit to Afghanistan. We should not attempt to displace them as we have done over the past nine years and make it into a coalition war against the Taliban. We’re on the right track—since 2009 the coalition has shifted to a training and mentoring role, equipping the Afghans to take on the insurgents. We should have done this at the beginning in 2002 as recommended by the Pentagon.

Why didn’t we?

The Bush administration decided the Afghan war had been won when it had not been won. The Taliban simply returned to the old sanctuaries in Pakistan, regrouped and were sent back into Afghanistan in 2005 in their thousands. There wasn’t any military force to resist them because the Bush administration had made the strategic decision to shift our military resources to fight in Iraq. When the Taliban made their comeback there was no Afghan army to resist them, only warlords paid by the CIA. So the Taliban had an easy time and we responded by sending more and more Western troops to Afghanistan because there was no Afghan army to resist this new invasion from the Pakistani sanctuaries. The officials involved in Afghanistan don’t seem to understand the cultural and societal context of the country.

Why not? Why don’t they read up?

It’s such a complex environment. You have the mosaic of hundreds of tribes and six major ethnic groups. Then, across the border in Pakistan, you have Pushtun tribes connected to the Afghan Pushtun and you have a history of inter-tribal and inter-ethnic rivalry that goes back hundreds of years. When the British invaded Afghanistan in the 19th century they didn’t face a conventional army and couldn’t attack the nerve centre of the enemy. They faced thousands of these little tribal communities that would rise up in ambush in their local area. Eventually, and this is what happened in the Soviet war as well, you had about 130,000 insurgents fighting in different parts of the country and chipping away at the Soviet army in small-unit engagements.

So what do we do?

We are going in the right direction now, arming, training and mentoring the Afghan security forces and passing more responsibility to civilian officials, but the war will not end as long as sanctuaries in Pakistan continue to churn out extremist jihadists. Pakistan is sponsoring a terrorist infrastructure that inflicts terror on the region, but also globally. Our policy has been contradictory and duplicitous—on the one hand accepting Pakistan’s claims that it is an ally, and on the other hand indulging and tolerating Pakistan’s continuing fostering of terrorism.

So the West has to get tough on Pakistan?

If these sanctuaries are not closed down this is going to get worse in the future. We need to worry about the Arab Spring. There are radical jihadist groups embedded in the groups emerging to replace the long-time military dictators in the region. They are connected to extremists on the Pakistani frontier and, indirectly, to Pakistani military intelligence. The army has fostered these networks and uses them as proxies in Pakistani foreign policy. We need a policy shift that will have a strategic effect on the Afghan war and addresses the global terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

The November 2nd, 2011 Istanbul international conference and its concluding statement called for all outside powers to exercise mutual restraint in Afghanistan. No outside power would attempt to gain a strategic foothold to use against other outside powers. This is the structure of agreement that the British colonial empire and the Russian empire worked out in the 1890s. The Afghan buffer between rival great powers kept the peace for almost a century, up to the Afghan Communist coup and the 1979 Soviet invasion. In June 2012 there will be another conference at which Afghanistan’s neighbours must agree to honour Afghanistan’s sovereignty and integrity, but this means convincing Pakistan that its extremist networks are more a liability than an asset.

Are you optimistic?

I’m optimistic in the long run. Pakistan must change its jihadist approach if this long-term policy is to be successful and peace is going to return to Afghanistan.

Another important prong of the coalition’s policy is to encourage reconciliation among the warring powers in Afghanistan, the government, the Taliban and others. We have to be careful that we don’t end up like the Soviets and the 19th century British in the Afghan political cauldron, attempting to arrange inter-Afghan negotiations. Outsiders, including Pakistan and Afghanistan’s other neighbors, should stand back and let the Afghans work out their own way ahead.
 
Let me ask you a simple question. Why do you need this proof? Its your own country. You can send your military anywhere in that country if you want. And who can have better intel about Pakistan than Pakistan Military. ?

If resources are an issue, ask us for an advance reimbursement for leading the operation since its we who are asking for this operation. But there is no positive response shown by Pakistani Govt to our concerns about those terrorist havens on your soil. Which in turn creates unnecessary trust.

Just like you accuse us of being brash, for us, you come across as trying to protect those who attack us in Afghanistan. And therein lies the crux of the issue.


I wish it was that easy and simple

just tell about 30k odd soldiers to pack up and be there by noon.

if you can led the Startrek transporter then it might be possible.

wait do you know the geography of the area and the size of it?

have you seen the videos where Taliban occupy the American bases? ever thought of getting them back?
why not?

logistics?
costs?
impractical?
too much stretched?

.. talk to me
 
Hey Buddy.. I empathize with this feeling, specially when civilians get killed. But look at it from our perspective. We have close of 150K troops in Afghanistan and terrorists from Pakistan attack them, and then scurry back into the tribal regions of Pakistan. Does not leave us with any option of going after them, since sending in ground troops will escalate the situation to a large degree. The only remaining option is to hit whichever HVT we can find and keep trying to interdict the terrorist network in North and South Waziristan.. We value Pakistani lives, but like any other nation we value them a little less than how much we value lives of our own citizens and troops. Its a bad situation, but one's got to play the card one is dealt.

See post #266 of this thread. It's on pg 18.
 
Everything was going well between the US n Pak as for as the negotiation across the table. US agreed to pay 500 instead of 240. But Pakistanis were stuck on Apology and its wording.....however it seems like Pakistani slain soldiers were compensanted by the USG. So, now to upset the apple cart, just as pakistan is doing (which is not in its favour) to shoot its own foot, does not auger well for them, just because the US has set a simple demand, and a very legitimate one - dismantle safe havens for terrorist........whats wrong here my friends....even china has admonished Pakistan on Uighur muslims involvement.

Let the prudence prevail....
 
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