In the years immediately after the Second World War, American prestige was so great that it covered many of its actions with “that old magic” — the aura of invincibility and power that made it hard for foreign governments to question it. That magic has worn thin.
Pakistan has decided to jail a doctor who helped find Osama Bin Laden. “Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is acknowledging publicly for the first time that a Pakistani doctor provided key information to the U.S. in advance of the successful Navy SEAL assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound last May.
Panetta told CBS’s “60 Minutes,” in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday, that Shakil Afridi helped provide intelligence for the raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Afridi ran a vaccination program for the CIA to collect DNA and verify bin Laden’s presence in the compound.
AdvertisementHe has since been charged by Pakistan with treason. Panetta said he is “very concerned” for the doctor.
The Guardian adds that “Pakistan’s official commission investigating Bin Laden’s presence in the country last year recommended that Afridi be tried for treason.”
The military, which will decide what ultimately happens to Afridi, was furious that the CIA was recruiting Pakistani citizens for clandestine operations inside the country, and officials point out privately that it is a crime to work for a foreign intelligence agency.
But it is not a crime, apparently, to harbor Osama Bin Laden while pretending to be a good friend and ally of the United States and receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer aid from it. Secretary Panetta wonders why the infamous terrorist leader’s presence mere yards from the national military academy never aroused so much as a curious look from Pakistani authorities.
The US defence secretary, who was in charge of the CIA at the time of the Bin Laden raid, also said that while there was no actual evidence of Pakistani complicity in the al-Qaida leader’s presence in Pakistan, suspicions must have been raised about his hideout.
“I personally have always felt that somebody must have had some sense of what – what was happening at this compound. Don’t forget, this compound had 18ft walls … It was the largest compound in the area,” said Panetta.
“So you would have thought that somebody would have asked the question: ‘What the hell’s going on there?’”
It’s a good question, but not one which the Pakistanis are likely to answer. They are outraged, positively livid, at the suggestion that Pakistani honor is anything less than perfect and have decided to charge America higher rates for the privilege of letting them supply Afghanistan over their roads and ports as punishment for doubting their integrity.
In other news, a Chinese newspaper called for economic sanctions on the Philippines in retaliation for that country’s decision to strengthen its military ties with the United States. The Global Times wrote:
China should use its “leverage to cut economic activities” between the Philippines and other Southeast Asian countries and consider “cooling down” business links with its smaller neighbour, according to the editorial published in the Chinese and English versions of the newspaper.
“It should show China’s neighbouring areas that balancing China by siding with the US is not a good choice,” it said.
“Well-measured sanctions against the Philippines will make it ponder the choice of losing a friend such as China and being a vain partner with the US.”
The Chinese newspaper is harping on the well known fact that America never abandons a friend in need. The steadfast support that US politicians have shown for persons and groups that have cast their lot with America is one of the factors that lead freedom loving people all over the world to trust Washington. It’s support for the Pakistani government, for example, is touching.
Meanwhile, “the American Embassy in Cairo on Sunday took the highly unusual step of sheltering U.S. citizens employed by nongovernmental organizations amid fears that they could be detained as part of a crackdown on pro-democracy groups, according to U.S. officials and a former NGO official.” This, in a country allied to the United States and whose revolution was endorsed “from behind” by President Barack Obama. Like Secretary Panetta said, “what the hell’s going on here?”
The move comes a week after Sam LaHood, director of the International Republican Institute’s program in Egypt, was barred from boarding an international flight in Cairo. LaHood is the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Several other NGO workers later learned that they had also been barred from leaving the country.
What’s going on is that America’s enemies — not just the major ones like China, but the tinpot ones too, like the strongmen of Egypt and Pakistan — are taking special delight in demonstrating the impotence of an impotent administration. The Administration has demonstrated an peculiar boldness for punishing the law abiding while toadying to the defiant, something which is being interpreted by strongmen in other other countries as the bluster of a blowhard that has no stomach for confronting anyone who will push back.
Of course that’s not true, but it sure looks like it.
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The one most salient characteristic of Barack Obama and the Obamaroids
is that they are universally what Woodrow Wilson Smith called “reform politicians”. The one thing they can always be counted on to do is to break their word and betray those to whom promises have been made——and justify it all on high-sounding moral grounds.
And as the Old Man noted, this kind only endure in societies that are doomed.
That is why the 2012 Presidential Election has me more than a little worried.
PS: Some of the Ron Paul fanatics are the same way and have proven themselves so in the past.
PPS: Can anybody here link to “Notebooks of Lazarus Long” and show our gang the actual passage? Thanks, fellows.
Making no apparent effort to protect or at least obfuscate assistance by a “friend” in Pakistan is no sign of strength, either. I wonder if Dr Afridi can identify what type of bus tires those were on his torso.
It is past time to acknowledge that Pakistan is a hostile regime to the United States. Sadly, we have given them 100,000 hostages in the form of our troops and civilians in Afghanistan. The Pakistani government runs the Taliban who are our nominal enemies in Afghanistan, and allowed (sponsored?) the Al-Qaeda training camps there in the pre-9/11 era.
Here is what we must do:
1. Get our soldiers and civilians out of Afghanistan. They are hostages who must be rescued.
2. Once step 1 is completed, we must destroy as much of Pakistan’s military capability as we can without using boots on the ground (other than some commando raids). Not just the nuclear weapons, although we should do what we can to seize them. We must blow up all the F-16s we sold them, and all of the other neat weapons too.
3. Put Pakistan on the State department lists to seize its assets in the US, ban US citizens from traveling there, etc. We should treat Pakistan the same way we treat Cuba and North Korea.
4. Tell India that Pakistan is now their problem, and that the US will veto any Security Council Resolutions concerning their treatment of Pakistan.
5. Tell China that we will hold them responsible for any Pakistani misuse of the nuclear weapons the Chinese gave to Pakistan — which is all of them. Pakistan can run an electric grid. Do you really think they could build nuclear weapons?
The bad guys have the true measure of the administration. None of the administration’s chosen weapons — guilt, appeals to political correctness, executive orders and lies — have much effect on them, since they are accustomed to employing the same devices with even greater effrontery.
Just as a swindler can sense the presence of another grifer in the room when none of the honest citizens can, the lawless men of other countries have long since sized up the current leaders in Washington — or think they have. Hitler though Neville Chamberlain was “a little worm” and that emboldened him to treat him like one.
As Nathan Thrall and Jesse Wilkins noted in the New York Times, Nikita Kruschev became so contemptuous of John F. Kennedy at their summit in Vienna he thereafter built the Berlin Wall and sent missiles to Cuba.
The real danger to the administration is that even minor, insignificant powers like Egypt will come to believe there are no Red Lines; no point beyond which the President may be bullied. And if they are right then the next few months will see the President pushing hard against those who he can. Taxpayers, law abiding citizens, loyal allies will be milked for all they are worth. In the meantime every General El Bruto in the world will be shoving Washington around.
Is this “smart adhocracy”? Is it “nuanced policy”? Or is it even “leading from behind”? Call it what you will, it is unlikely to work.
Nor those who have repeatedly asked them to leave….
What *is* the level of Chinese economic involvement with the Philippines?
The bad guys have the true measure of the administration.
Y’know, I want to defend Obambus, a little.
Some of this, I’m very much afraid, is just the times that have come, and whoever is president would have just about the same cards to play. Europe is gone, and that is not Obambus’ doing, it’s been a fifty year fall. Russia has been quiescent, but may not stay that way. China has been introverted, and is due to be more active. As modernity gets to dar al-Islam, it will be turbulent. Even South America is showing growing pains.
Fixing the US economy is much more under the control of the US government, than all these foreign affairs. Without a strong economy we don’t have a strong military, and we can’t even afford to bribe people properly.
I doubt I would play much the way Obambus does, but I’m not sure any other strategy would produce much different results, either.
Perhaps the US should send in Seal Team 6 to rescue the good doctor…..
Dr. Evil- Good one! I thought they were all “killed” in a helicopter crash? You know, so don’t bother looking for them…
#1 Dave
As you requested.
http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/lazlong.html
No time to pull out the exact quote you want, but I understand.
Subotai Bahadur
What’s going on is what the rest of the world knows but most BC members refuse to accept. That it isn’t “this administration” that is the issue. It is Washington in general that is the emperor with no clothes. The rest of the world has figured out that there is no moral supremacy, no concern for the welfare of the country, no patriotism, no city on the hill coming out of Washington. They realize that there is only greed, depravity and lust for power to be found there. They realize that they are merely dealing with thugs that have to be bought off, eliminated, or simply played like a musical instrument. They realize that the dollar is in its last death throws. Anyone here silly enough to think Gingrich or Romney are going to change any of this are also silly enough to think that the Iraq war was about WMD.
Gingrich is nothing more than noise being used to distract the sheeple away from Ron Paul’s message. The last time a candidate not vetted by the ruling elites was elected president was possibly Ronald Reagan. More likely the last outsider was Calvin Coolidge. The entire world knows this, only American “patriots” insist on continuing on in their dancing with the stars bubble.
Every one of Obama’s promises comes with an expiration date. Every one.
So Egypt, Pakistan, etc. have correctly concluded that nothing Obambus states is to be believed.
What’s depressing is that so many Americans have NOT figured this out. However, there are still a few months for the rubes to self-identify. The big question then becomes, are they man enough to admit they were wrong, and do the right thing this time around? I am still optimistic…
wrechard @ #4: Before Hannibal crossed the Alps he first besieged a Roman-allied city in Spain called Saguntum. It held for a while as the Senate temporized and made speeches, but ultimately Hannibal prevailed, and those defenders who did not immolate themselves and their families were otherwise put to the sword. Afterwards, Livy tells us, the Romans belatedly sent emmisaries to other city-states and tribes in Spain, seeking allies that would help them blunt the Carthagenian advance:
‘Thence they came to the Volciani, whose reply being celebrated through Spain, dissuaded the other states from an alliance with the Romans; for thus the oldest member in their council made answer: “What sense of shame have ye, Romans, to ask of us that we should prefer your friendship to that of the Carthaginians, when you, their allies, betrayed the Saguntines with greater cruelty than that with which the Carthaginians, their enemies, destroyed them? There, methinks, you should look for allies, where the massacre of Saguntum is unknown. The ruins of Saguntum will remain a warning as melancholy as memorable to the states of Spain, that no one should confide in the faith or alliance of Rome.” Having been then commanded to depart immediately from the territory of the Volciani, they afterwards received no kinder words from any of the councils of Spain: they therefore pass into Gaul, after having gone about through Spain to no purpose.’
Rome of course paid the butcher’s bill at Trebia, Trasimene and Cannae, as any schoolboy once could tell you.
Josh – “I’m very much afraid, is just the times that have come, and whoever is president would have just about the same cards to play.”
You got to be kidding? Do you suppose that Pakistan, Iran, or China would be as beligerent under the man who invaded Iraq? I don’t. And as far as the economy is concerned, Obama screwed the pooch as a scheme to raid the treasury. He couldn’t line his own pockets but he sure could line the pockets of his friends. Crack junky got the national check book and the dems and the MSM let him do it.
You may now return to the 24/7 Ron Paul commercial. I fart in your general direction. Turns head and waves hand.
I think the thing is, Josh, that being in the middle of a mess but going somewhere sensible and better is just about the opposite of being in the middle of a mess and also being clueless, rudderless, and at the mercy of the winds.
10. ConfederateH
I’ll see your ”throws” and raise you two throes.
maineman, it is hard to attribute purpose but Obama is doing what he is doing on purpose, there can be little about it. He has buttressed the grip of an ever growing federal government and has openly and brazenly abandoned the middle class. There is a purpose. I suspect that Obama is attracted to power and the vocal poor and OWS types, labor unions have power in their numbers. He also respects Wall Street and mega corps like GE because they have money, and he respects and bows to foreign dictators because they have power and are willing to use violent oppression to maintain that power. Obama is an elite and intends to rule the nation as one. His upbringing has not only made him an elite, he is an elite with a bad attitude and has contempt for America, mother, and apple pie.
Does not matter much with any of the recent topics. Leaders that, beguiled by the popular opinions of the day, the beliefs en vogue aujourd’hui, lead in the wrong direction, well that is the definition of misleading. AGW, social collectivism, Obamacare, whatever.
And only fools follow such people and there is never a shortage of fools. That is one resource that has never been scarce.
Annoy, probably a good deal more complicated than that, including Josh’s point that the whole grand shooting match was headed downhill no matter what.
No doubt about the power part. Paul Johnson makes the point that intellectuals, especially academics, are always fascinated by power. Not to mention Obie’s Marxist pedigree insists that he worship, literally, power to begin with.
The contempt for America and, ultimately, himself is also about the insidious impact of liberalism, and that part’s been going on for more than a century if you count the European slide into relativistic oblivion.
And Epi touches on perhaps the most important aspect of this. As a recent First Things article points out, there are two kinds of empires, the Babelian type that involves trying to control everything and which ultimately crumbles, and that which is transcendent and seeks to spread the universal gospel of the true, good, beautiful, and permanent.
10. ConfederateH
Gingrich is nothing more than noise being used to distract the sheeple away from Ron Paul’s message.
So does that mean you’re in favor of Zhirinovsky for president?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16750990
Josh @ 6: “Y’know, I want to defend Obambus, a little.”
If you want to defend the Obamination, then you perforce have to look at the other players in this Great Game. Specifically, Congress.
US troops are getting shot at in AfPak; US borrowings are getting spent there too. There is a lot that Congress could change if they wanted to stand up and be counted; remember how Congressional Democrats chose to throw South Vietnam to the wolves? But House & Sentate will not stand up, because they are mostly part of the Establishment, the hated Political Class.
Certainly more complicated and no doubt that there was a momentous loss in the offing but 99% of the impact was against the FIRE economy. A sector of the economy that does very little to keep the world running. It greases the skids and provides capital but with the dashing of Glass Segal the only grease they spread around was to government and themselves. They were busy getting rich while the rest of us were just slogging along. All the fed had to do is nothing and things would have sprung back. The poison in the markets would have fixed themselves but the fed just gave them another hit of junk to keep them high and rich. TBTF is a momentous fraud and a president could have stopped it. Obama is therefore a failed president and you can ponder whether or not anyone would have screwed it up.
Obama took the opportunity to change the US forever. Any patriotic American would have done the opposite. Obama grew government as a remedy to economic stagnation! He sucked the life out of it and transferred the wealth to the labor unions (illegally I might add), small business be damned. Try to blame that on anyone else. OK, it was GWB’s fault. Go ahead and say it. I am calling bullshit because GWB didn’t do it. Obama did. And I refuse to believe that anyone else would have had the cynical gumption to do what Obama did all by himself. The nation and the MSM have Stockholm syndrome because of the pigmentation of O’s skin but O is as black as I am. He is hiding behind the civil rights movement to do what he is doing and he is doing wrong.
One of Charles Dickens’ lessor known works, “Little Dorrit” includes the devasting loss of fortunes in investment fraud that we would now call a Ponzi Scheme. Couple of hundred years before Bernie Made-off with a stack of cash.
Next we review the latest sky-is-falling deception. Apparently, as a species, though we “know more”, we are not possessing of greater wisdom. we still fall for the time-tested snake oil.
Folks a BC ought to realize, the constitutional republic was based on wisdom far above average perspicacity. That is why, from time-to-time, some have sought to inform that democracy does not produce good results. In our case it has produced a stalemate, with neither the wise nor the foolish able to gain the upper hand. The paddlers in the canoe are working in opposition while the great falls are rapidly drawing nigh, very nigh.
We need leadership with wisdom beyond the grasp of common man, plus a fortunate wind, to correct the course of the great ship of state. Democracies produce mediocrities. We began our independence something much better, but lost our way. SCOTUS has been asleep at the switch since biting into the apple of social collectivism under FDR.
We’ll make this world more fair has been the rallying cry of evil disguised has helping our fellow man. Enslaving the nation, one dollar at a time. When Smith or Gonzales in Houston has to pay a dollar of tax, depriving his family of freedom to enjoy the fruits of liberty in order to finance another government mandated plan to control health care or college tuition, an injustice is enacted.
Administration should preface all of their hope & change plans with this clause-”we want to control the people of America so that” then continue with their usual ruse, such as …everyone has a level playing field. Every statement should be prefaced with “we want to control everyone so that…”
I Lust want to put one thing straight. It is always asserted that the OBL compound had high walls around it. Clue time – EVERY ‘compound’ in the ME has high wall around it – to keep the goats out. Not unusual.
All the other points are valid and applicable, but implying that a particular ‘compound’ would have stood out as unusual because it had ‘high walls’ sort of indicates that the speaker is somewhat inexperienced about the area.
What is Pakistan? There is an amalgamation of four ethnically based provinces that have nothing in common except that 1. they were part of British India and 2. their populations are almost exclusively Muslim. Consider the divergent interests of the four groups.
1. The Baluchis are dispersed across three countries with significant numbers in Afghanistan and Iran. In the 1960s a Baluchi nationalist movement was sponsored by the Soviets to discomfit the then American backed government of Pakistan. They have little reason to either be loyal to or confrontational towards any neighbor, although the abuse of their kin by Iranians may become an issue, or for that matter to the government of the country they reside in. They are not the dominant group in Pakistan, where the Punjabis are, nor are they in Afghanistan, where the Pashtun are. That may become a source of discontent but does not obviously lead to them as a group becoming a prime threat to Pakistani stability.
2. The Sindhis are largely self contained within their province. This reduces their interaction with external groups and also reduces their dependence on Pakistan to guarantee their identity.
3. The Pashtun reside largely in the North-west Frontier Province and the FATA, as well as across the border in Afghanistan. There they dominate over other tribes. There is no reason to assume their identification as a group with Pakistan.
4. The Punjabis dominate the central government and military. They differ from their co-linguists and often cousins in India solely on the basis of their religion. They fought a bitter civil war and suffered and caused millions of deaths to create a separate Pakistan that they could dominate. For them the existence of Pakistan, and its perpetual conflict with India, is the key to their identity.
The Muslim Bengali community of former East Pakistan broke free from domination of the West Pakistani Punjabi elite. The others are trapped in the grip of a group whose leaders justify their power through endless confrontation manipulation paranoia and grievance. This has little to do with religion and much to do with group identification and power politics.
Obama may have absorbed this model during his college trip with his Columbia roommate.
23 @West
For what breed of goat do you need an 18 foot wall?
23. West
You dunce: in its neighborhood OBL’s quarters entirely stood out.
This is something that the CIA called out way back when they revealed the operation.
In the beginning Abbottabad was built, more or less, to be a slice of Britain. It was built up from ‘greenfield’ conditions by Abbott — that is — out of farmland.
So the local architecture does NOT go back centuries, using the classic middle eastern wall-on-the-outside scheme.
Indeed, most visitors remark upon just how British the layout is.
But, beyond that, Abbottabad is a MILITARY CITY — rather like Los Alamos — wherein you don’t just roll in. You have to pass ‘security’ and live under a watchful eye.
It’s an arrangement completely unlike ordinary urban life — a cross between a pure military base and an attempt at routine life. The vast bulk of the community is either in the military, retired from it, or an adjunct to it: the MIC. All others are excluded.
@19. Charles
“So does that mean you’re in favor of Zhirinovsky for president?”
Not likely, but if you will notice all 5 of them are tied in some fashion to the Kremlin, and none of them comes close to being libertarian nor are they big believers in individual or states rights.
I think that the interesting question is does the same power elite who vet Russian candidates also vet the US candidates? I would say no, but I would add that those who perform the vetting are members of the same club. This club revolves around the banking elites and more specifically the central banking elites. For if you control the central bank eventually you control the country. That’s why in all these G8/G20/Davos the bankers and their handlers are busy coordinating the continuance of the fiat money regime that is in the process of enslaving the entire planet.
They control the west’s money machines and through them they want to eliminate paper money, control all transactions, take control of the internet, take control of the food, water, healthcare and energy supplies.
This has been going on probably since the American Revolution, but it wasn’t nearly as insidious or omnipresent then. Now with computer technology the elites are on the threshold of a new era of enslavement by computer control. The stakes are extremely high, and right now the main battle is for the internet.
Oh, and one other thing. In this battle Washington is Mordor.
Josh – “I’m very much afraid, is just the times that have come, and whoever is president would have just about the same cards to play.”
Josh, as Annoy correctly hammered , such thinking is just weak Progressive gruel.
Much of the problem is not just about Pakistan or the Norks or Iran, it is about how America approaches, maintains and uses it power.
What we need is the inverse of what Wretchard describes as ” the true measure of the administration”. If Amerca were at the top of her game, politically, economically and militarily, no tinpot dictator or faux democracy like Pakistan would want to mess with her. If we were fully energy independent, were still an unrivaled manufacturing powerhouse, were not heavily indebted to foreign sovereigns and the fraudulent banksters, and swatted into oblivion purveyors of evil and terror like Pakistan every time the need arose, I don’t think we would be having these kind of problems.
To fully protect America’s way of life, we need to project American power and keep out potential enemies in line. We must harness and use all our political, economic and military power to shape that potential battlespace.
What the Left, Obama , Ron Paul and his acolytes like Confed H, and to a lesser extent the Rino’s like Romney, have done is to attack and whittle away the foundations of American power in such a way that now invites our enemies to attack and harass us with little worry of counterattack. The arguments and stance by the Left, the Progressives, the Rino’s and the Paulbots, that we must placate or run away from this or that domestic or foreign evil have brought us to this place where we seem beseiged on all fronts. The only way out is to forcefully rebuild using America’s strengths as a Republic protecting all our god given rights, as a free market economy capable of producing as the world as never known, and as the World’s lone Superpower.
Has anyone else wondered why we can get Bin Laden in Pakistan but we can’t take out the drug cartel kings in Mexico? Who has killed more people over a longer period of time? Which nation would be more likely to be a functional democracy if ridded of corruption and violence? Which would benefit the US most?
Just askin’.
SpeakEasy- I’d stay away from Bin Laden theories, because most are wrong and inflammatory. As for cartels though- don’t assume that even a fifth of the news from Mexico (or anyplace in South America) is true. For one thing, there aren’t that many drug users in the US. Secondly, … I can’t think of anything. But I wouldn’t trust what you read anyway.
The “Notebooks of Lazarus Long”
http://www.bobgod.com/lazaruslong.html