hopefully Obama is wiser than the Generals on this
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09084/957975-374.stm#ixzz0VXJIx6Kn "snip...There is a logic inherent in the current situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan that says clearly to the administration of President Barack Obama, "Don't go any further with this one."
It is simple. It is impossible to fix Afghanistan without fixing Pakistan. It is impossible to fix Pakistan. Thus, Afghanistan is and will remain an impossible sinkhole.
It will, in fact, be the same kind of quicksand for the United States in terms of unwinnability that the Vietnam War was for more than a decade.
The further implication for the Obama administration is that, as was the case with the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, all of its great objectives to meet the short- and long-term needs of the United States at home will go over the falls as it wrestles to find the resources and energy to contend with an expensive war that it cannot win and does not have the courage to end
..snip
http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis20.html Afghan tribes are taking up arms against their foreign occupiers. I saw this happen during the 1980s, when growing hatred of Soviet occupation forces ignited a national uprising.
PAKISTAN NEAR COLAPSE... what will we do if Pakistan collapses into Jihad Hell..?? and what will we do, considering how many nukes they have..??, where will that put our soldiers in Afghanistan, how will we get them out safely in total civil war.??
http://www.acus.org/new_atlanticist/pakistan-nearing-collapseMeanwhile courts throughout the Malakand division, of which Swat and Buner are a part, have closed in deference to the new agreement calling for the implementation Shari'a, law. "If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, head of one of the country's Islamic political parties, warned in Parliament Wednesday. Rehman said the Margalla Hills, a small mountain range north of the capital that separates it from Buner, appears to be "the only hurdle in their march toward the federal capital," The only solution, he said, was for the entire nation to accept Shari'a law in order to deprive the Taliban of their principal cause...snip
snip..Shuja Nuwaz, head of our South Asia Center, told al Jazeera in mid February that the agreement was "a repeat of what happened when prime minister Benazir Bhutto was in power in 1994 and a number of districts in Swat and Malakand were handed over to essentially the same group so they could impose their rather convoluted view of sharia on those districts." Prophetically, he continued, "The moment you cede space to them, the Taliban will want to extend that control and then the government will have to go through this business of sending in the military yet again to clear and hold the territory."..snip
http://www.rediff.com/news/2009/mar/10guest-is-india-ready-for-pakistans-coming-collapse.htmPakistan, a nuclear armed state of 170 million people, is facing a virtual meltdown and its political leadership seems utterly incapable of steering the country through the present mess. The international community has few levers left that might have any significant impact on the course of events. And so everyone is just waiting with bated breath for events to unfold in what is probably the worst crisis in Pakistan's troubled history.
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why arent we on a Manhatten style Project to free us from imported oil with this Shit Storm blooming on the horizon..???