Obama, Osama, and What’s Next In Pakistan
In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, I am reminded of that great Navy SEAL commercial where there’s no words or music — just footprints on a beach being washed away by the waves. It recalls George Orwell’s observation that we sleep peaceably in our beds at night “because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.” U.S. Special Forces are the best in the business, and the bin Laden operation shows the persistent lethality and reach of the U.S. military.
As for President Obama — good for him. This is the first time he’s coming across like a true commander-in-chief. It’s his best moment. Some conservatives will no doubt temper their joy over bin Laden’s death with the thought that this will help President Obama in 2012. My advice: now is not the time for such thoughts. Rejoice. The election in 2012 will be about the $14 trillion debt and the price of skim milk. But this will certainly be a feather in Obama’s cap. The operation happened on his watch and so he will reap the requisite historical rewards. The full truth will emerge over time. For instance, the intelligence that led to bin Laden came from interrogating terrorists at those maligned secret CIA prisons and detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
So for now, enjoy the irony. Obama got Osama! If you told that to an American in the weeks after 9/11, they’d probably ask “Who’s Obama?” “Oh, he’s a guy in Chicago.” What a country.
Our serious attention should turn now to the broad strategic implications emanating from this raid. American policymakers will be forced to rethink the charade that is the U.S.-Pakistan alliance. President Obama stated that “our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding.” But is this true? If it is, how is it true? Why didn’t we forewarn the Pakistanis about this raid before it happened? Were we worried they would tip bin Laden off, leaving him enough time to escape?
Think about it. Osama bin Laden was the most wanted man in the world since the mid-1990s. There was a very large bounty on his head. He was particularly tall and recognizable. And he was found in a $1 million mansion 35 miles from Pakistan’s capital, in the same town as Pakistan’s West Point-like military academy. There is no way the Pakistanis were unaware of Osama bin Laden’s location.
As Steve Coll writes: “It stretches credulity to think that a mansion of that scale could have been built and occupied by bin Laden for six years without its coming to the attention of anyone in the Pakistani Army.”
President Asif Ali Zardari has a lot of explaining to do. A Pakistani intelligence official told CNN that Pakistan “passed along raw phone-tap data to the United States that eventually led to Osama bin Laden’s killing, but they failed to analyze or interpret the information themselves.” That sounds fishy and contrived.
It’s hard to imagine Osama bin Laden surviving in a cave for a decade. Who did we think he was, Cody Lundin? No. It makes perfect sense that he was being protected. There was bin Laden’s videotaped message to the United States on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, which clearly looked like it was recorded in a studio. Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, has been known as a “state within a state” for some time. It supports Mullah Omar’s Taliban, the deadly Haqqani network, and is said to have orchestrated the barbaric Mumbai attacks in 2008.
So where should we go from here?
This is one story where you can simply forget “knowing” anything about it.
I’d say it’s about hiding assets more than anything else.
This is nonsense! ‘Obama did not get Osama;’ the Navy SEALS did!
Obama gave the OK. He deserves credit for that — but only that.
Let’s see what he will do about the rest of the terrorists and their accessories.
Give it a break, Obamanation gave nothing, he hid behind Jarrett’s skirt! He was briefed only after the fact.
First we invaded the wrong Country we should have invaded Pakistan not Afghanistan.That is blindingly obvious even if you only have half a brain so even moonbats should be able to see it. Now I know for Americans one “Stan” is the same as another and when they hear it they think of Oliver Hardy.But its still not too late to remedy that mistake.
“Tears for Bin Laden: Mourners take to the streets of Pakistan as furore grows over £650m we send to country that harboured terrorist mastermind”
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:23 AM on 4th May 2011
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1383011/Osama-Bin-Laden-dead-David-Cameron-stands-Pakistan-650m-gift-aid.html#ixzz1LLtNyqTG
Second American Democrats and moonbats owe GW and his Govt a profound groveling apology. If Obambi and his Socialist crew had been allowed to do as they wanted i.e. close Gitmo,and stop all the anti scum measures Bush and Cheney put into place then there would have been no CIA to track him no Gitmo evidence as a clue and no Navy Seals to kill him ,they would all be facing Courts Martial for just looking wrongly at Terrorist Scum. History will be the judge and it will praise Bush and eviscerate Obama.
Lastly my dedication to Obama’s and all his narcissistic speeches “I me me mine” by George Harrison.
Reminds me of the old song about Pancho Villa: “All the federales say, we could have had him any day”.
Anyway, the grunts on the ground never get the recognition; only generals get statues erected in the parks. However, those of us who were grunts understand the true story and do honor those who fought, bled and died throughout our history. Obama and his entourage sat in the war room, probably had coffee and donuts catered in (at taxpayer expense) while our true heroes were doing the dirty work.
Eight years ago the American government told us that Osama was a very ill man requiring kidney dialysis. Apparently he has survived in spite of this disabilty. Now the same American government tells us that he was killed in a brilliant military operation directed by the god president Obama. Who really believes anything that is broadcast by the American government and its toadies.
My thinking 10 years ago when the Taliban ran into Pakistan, was to follow them and keep following them until we crushed them between us and the Indian Army. We defeated the Nazis by crushing them between us and the Soviets. Then we created the U.N. and quit fighting to win.
“Afghanistan is about Pakistan and India.”
You forgot China and Russia and Iran and various other members of the so-called Shanghai Organization for Cooperation (SOC). This is about China pretending to be a friend of India because they are both growing nations with a huge economic potential and gigantic human capital. All the while they are competing for the same resources (oil and natural gas): whatever is left after the west is done buying it up.
the Indians have yet to completely cozy up to China because they aren’t that stupid. The Chinese will be happy to cut US down to size first before eventually getting around to India (and they know that).
The Pakis are trying to survive, period. The only way to survive in that country is to get money, money and more money so that the individuals who momentarily rest at the top can keep paying off the headsman to either pick someone else to chop or to move the date off a little further. the only people that survive in that government or military are either total do nothings or the most cynical, double crossing, greedy bastards on the planet. If there was ever a nation where the term “sell his own mother” was a form of a compliment, that is Pakistan.
Recall that the Clinton CIA had slipped the AQ Khan network (AQ-anybody ever thought on that?) a set of Chinese nuclear blue prints that were allegedly incorrect in several areas. Who gave us those designs? Who helped Khan et al develop a nuclear weapon? And kept the IAEA off the Pakis backs in the UN? Khan then slips the designs to North Korea, but apparently without all the details. Of course, because China does not want NK on it’s flanks with the crazies in charge to start a nuclear war because that isn’t the point.
The SOC is meant to be an economic and strategic offset of NATO except that they all are still playing mostly their own games underneath the apparent cooperation. Still, China plans to be the dominant power. They don’t want us destroyed, they just want to be on top.
Khan slips the designs to Iran (an “observer” in the SOC) while Russia helps build it’s nuclear power plant. Russia is playing it’s own game even above what China wants out of Iran. China wants Iran’s oil and natural gas, plus another economic outlet for their goods. Setting Pakistan up with arms and money to balance out India, their potential rival and the closest force that could take out the substantial oil and natural gas pipeline they recently inked a deal with Iran for (2007 I believe).
Russia wants Iran as it’s shoe horn against the OPEC crowd in the ME. It also likes Iran on the Caspian Sea where there is considerable amount of oil and their ongoing unrest in Chechnya, Dagastan, etc where major oil drilling and transportation delivers oil to Stavrapol port on Black Sea, their only exit into the Mediterranean.
Russian economy is almost 70% based on oil exports. That is why they were so upset w/US negotiating with Khazakstan, etc, tearing up their flank and threatening their oil conglomeration with these ‘stans.
However, Russia is not so comfortable with the crazies in Iran either. Witness how long it is taking them to build this nuclear plant and the many, many problems resulting in fueling delays or taking fuel out and putting it back in. Plus, they must know that it drives us crazy.
The Iranians facilitate the Salafi Sunni Jihadis because they want to offset the US and Saudi Arabia relationship in ME because they want to be the power house of that region. Which would help them achieve their goals and those of their ally China and Russia.
The Saudi’s are stuck funding their creation of Salafi Jihadis and mosques because they believe that spreading the “true religion” of Mecca helps them build an insulation against these maneuvers spreading their “empire” under the cover of religion. The Pakis play the game, too because they want to offset India. Thus, they control the Taliban, al Talib, etc, etc, etc.
Between the Saudis, Russians and Chinese, there is a butt load of money and weapons floating around the area. Or, as nobody wondered where the huge amounts of 7.62 ammo, AK-47s and Russian/Chinese RPGs come from? Recall one of the Gulf states intercepting an Iranian shipment of weapons being sent to Yemen.
We are playing our own deep game. Whatever the intent of Afghanistan is seems like a proxy war against Pakistan govt or elements there in. Considering how much money and training we are giving them, we must have determined that the best way to play their game is the old fashioned “wasta” and “baksheb”, helping us to buy some internals.
As I mentioned, these guys have learned the art of survival over centuries, playing people against each other and getting paid for it.
China wants the US to be weaker or simply back off eventually because they need the oil and natural gas in the ME for their 1 point something billions of people, growing it’s economy and sitting on top of the globe.
Still, they don’t want the US to be destroyed. Who would buy their lead and toxic materials products for their economy (for now)?
As for the Russians and the Chinese, did I mention that Russia has a lot of oil and gas and the Chinese want it? The Russians, declining in citizens and, until recently, declining in real estate, are okay with the alliance, but do not want to be swallowed up by the Chinese juggernaut. So they essentially make very small deals for energy to China. Just enough to keep them on a string.
What does that mean for terrorism? There are a lot of people playing fast and loose with these terror groups, fighting a serious proxy war under a giant nuclear umbrella.
I did not even mention the greater Sunni/Shia/Salafi religious war adding layers to layers or the Arab Spring. Try analyzing that against the giant ugly backdrop that is Cold War II.
Total reality check. Scary.
Wow! Very cool synopsis…and I didn’t even see he word “Palestinian” or “Israeli,” when everybody knows the whole problem of the whole world is that Jews build additions onto their apartments!!
The fact UBL is dead is essentially irrelevent! What is relevent, is that the U.S. is stuck in the middle of religious and political ideological divided countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan within the greater Middle East region who share the same radicalism and threat to the free world. What is missing is a strategy to prevent literally, the type of war that can linger on for centuries in that region of historic conflict. Pakistan has nuclear weaponry and Iran is desparate to have the same.
Likewise, this all comes at a time when there are again strained relations between the U. S., Russia, China, North Korea and many others while the U.S. is nearly bankrupt, in horrible threatening debt and experiencing an internal economic problem that is going to literally linger for some decades to come.
Juvenile thinking and strategies of the last several decades is what has put the U.S. in this corner today. I hardly think that is a viable solution to continue going forward. Post WWII nation building and peace keeping along with globalization stategies developed through the UN has proved especially disasterous for the U.S. Do we continue on this path or, do we have the brass to effect significant changes in our strategies for the future?
The effective strategy should have been long ago, to ‘STOP’ Pakistan from getting nuclear weapons and taken Iran’s heirarchy out in more recent times after having helped manipulated that mess, post WWII through the 70′s….leaving them alone to do as they wish so long as they didn’t tread on anybody of the free world.
Tough superficial talk is fine if one is in the position to ‘effectively’ back it up with some old fashioned whoopass in short time…..and go home! If not…………
Where do you get, “UBL”? He’s OSAMA bin laden not Usama bin laden?
Usama bin Laden/Osama bin Laden is the same guy, different spelling. Arabic phonetic translation depends on who is doing the translation.
Thats right Kat Arabic is a primitive language with a very limited vocabulary where one word can have many meanings as opposed to English where one meaning has many ways of being described. Primitive Arabic can be twisted any way you want it. Which is why Mohammedans always run and hide behind it when trying to defend the indefensible contradictory, mistake laden, violent, nonsense filled, turgid, antisemitic, misogynistic Arab supremacist Koran.
Pakistan is a nominal ally with nuclear weapons athwart our supply lines to Afghanistan. What, exactly do we do now?
This is much like our relationship with Saudi Arabia. There isn’t much to like there either. We need their oil. They need us to buy it and to protect them. It’s not like we’re best friends forever.
We should drill for our oil and gas and construct nuclear power plants to free ourselves from that entanglement. Them there and us here goes a long way toward ensuring our safety.
Obama would not have had this moment had it not been for the previous 8 years of dogged determination of our intelligence community, our military and the foreign policy decisions that were put in place in the wake of 9/11. And I for one firmly believe that Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming to do this (possibly by Leon Panetta). Had he not done it, as sure as G-d made little green apples, it would have been leaked and Hilary or the Republican candidate would be the 45th President of the USA.
Election day is 18 months from now and this will all but be forgotten, especially if by then gas is anywhere near $5.00 a gallon, we have rampant stagflation and real U-6 unemployment is near 18.5% as it is right now. Sadly, I believe that that will be the case.
It is big news. But who knows what happen next.
It was big news. But who knows what happen next
Yes.nothing is impossible.
I think It recalls George Orwell’s observation that we sleep peaceably in our beds at night
There is a another bin Laden
I read some of Robert Spencer’s stuff, and if I remember correctly the Pakis get money from Uncle Sam (1.5 billion a year), then give some of theat money to AQ.
The Paki’s are not on our side. They protected OBL all this time in a million $ home. Stinking moon god worshipers.
The fact that we give billions per year to Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority (now allied with genocidal Hamas) and the U.N. drives me insane!
As I said a long time ago when the North African riots started, US needs a new bogey man to keep its military well funded. Obama has to be a liberal and keep the military business alive. Expect major regional conflicts that will force the US to provide “shields” to protect democracy. New bogey men are lining up to be recruited for TV news appearances. This all is necessary to keep the US tax payer from saying “why are we spending so much on military”. So I expect that all cameras will be focused on Qom where there are a lot wackos willing to come forward as bogey men.
DESPERATE OBAMA ORDERS KILLING OF BIN LADEN
Sometimes desperate men do desperate things to save themselves from failure and defeat. And such a man is Barack Hussein Obama. Indeed, our blundering, ill-starred, failing president faced with a faultering economy, rising deficits, a weakening dollar and turmoil in the Middle East ordered the death of Osama bin Laden as a desperate measure to save his disastrous presidency. That is the truth. Patriotism, national security, the common good had little or nothing to do with Obama’s “gutsy” move. For Obama is too political, too partisan, to un-American and narcissistic for that. What Obama did on the historic night of May 1st he did mostly for himself-for his political fortunes and legacy. Did he have the tragedy of 9/11 in mind, and the deaths of 3000 Americans? No! Not the man who backed the Islamist mosque at Ground Zero; not the man who sat in a racist church for 20 years listening to the lunatic ravings of an American hating preacher who saw in 9/11 the avenging hand of God. Not the power grabbing, big government statist who hates this unjust, capitalist country to such an inordinate degree that he wants to “fundamentally and foundationally” transform it. What Obama did on May 1st was not for me and you, but for he.
Click my name to read the rest of this piece.
Hillary Clinton’s recent speech about the help we got from Pakistan was either the speech of a clueless idiot or the speech of someone covering for support Pakistan really gave us but that they do not want to admit. I don’t think the Secretary Clinton is an idiot.
“There is no way the Pakistanis were unaware of Osama bin Laden’s location.”
I disagree. Pakistan is a violent Third World country. It has thousands of large semi-fortified houses occupied by men of wealth or power. Osama’s house was not unusual.
And in that part of the world, private homes are *very* private, by long tradition. Kipling, writing of 19th century Lahore, called it “the City where each man’s house is as guarded and unknowable as the grave.”
And Al-Qaeda apparently maintained very tight security on this: no phone or internet connection, and only one ultra-trusted courier going in and out.
Pakistan has given us many Al-Qaeda operatives, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Why would they do that and protect Osama? ISI has dealings with the Taliban, but that is because some of them see the Taliban as a force they can use in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda is of no use to them.
The Abbottabad location was clever: an area under firm Pakistani control, and therefore *not* focused on by U.S. intelligence which has built up a net all through the border area.
There are questions to be asked, but no reason to jump to conclusions about Pakistan.
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