EW – kudos for continuing to beat the drums on the dangers of Pakistan. I was very concerned about the Red Mosque attack this past week – another example of the fractures in Pakistani society, and the increasing inability of the Punjabi-dominated military to control events. I don’t know if the Red Mosque will become a Golden Temple moment, like the Sikhs in India, but clearly there will be no movement against the Taliban in the border provinces of Afghanistan in this climate, and certainly Osama is as safe in Pakistan now as he ever was in Sudan or Affghanistan.

DemFromCt

Perhaps the issue is regionalizing it. We can’t fix Iraq. The sole goal, at this point, must be avoiding all-out regional war. Though, as I said, that seems to be Cheney’s (and with him, probably Bandar’s) goal.

Dem from Ct – yes, Iraq must be dealt with, but it is my view that Iraq was the first step in Cheney’s plan to create an American- dominated region in the Middle East from Iraq to the Stans – remember â€Real men want to go to Tehran!†Control of the Middle East and Caspian oil and gas would be essential to Cheney’s goal of hemming in Russia and confronting China with an energy vise.

Rayne

If Pakistan’s current governmetn goes under, the Taliban and Al Qaeda sympathizers have a good shot at taking over. It would give them a seaport and another major airport. Containers of opium, containers of who-knows-what, immigration run by people they control. That’s ust off the top of my head.

I was thinking about Pakistan last night: JoeL and the administration are pushing hard at Iran because Iran is trying to build nukes (I would be doing that too, if I were in their position) and ignoring Pakistan, which has nukes and a shaky government, next door to India, which has nukes and a bad relationship with Pakistan. It’s a recipe for making-it-worse really, really fast.

Cheney organized a trade-off in Pakistan. If Musharraf would make Baluchistan (the province that borders on Iran) safe for American bases and special operations over that border, and he did, then the Bush administration would give him a pass on the Afghan-border provinces, and they did.

The cover story that Cheney lectured Musharraf this spring about controlling al-Qaeda/Taliban activity along the border with Afghanistan was just that — propaganda. Cheney has never cared about al-Qaeda or Afghanistan and doesn’t care now. He knows that it was always impossible for Musharraf to do more than pay lip-service to that project, and he does not care. Iran is his endgame.

I write as a distressed Canadian who can’t respect generals who don’t even know where the main battlefield is, and our stupid generals, who keep telling us that it is in Afghanistan, seem to me to have colluded with the Bush administration to throw away a lot of Canadian and Afghan lives as a sideshow to the main event.

I actually believe that we could be doing good in Afghanistan, but we aren’t; we can’t, not in this context. If Cheney gets away with his attack on Iran, yes, worse will follow — in Pakistan, Afghanistan, maybe even Turkey.

skdadl – do have any links to share on the Baluchistan deal? would like to know more. thanks!

P J Evans 9:27 — I hear you, but I think drug trade and anything else moving through Pakistan’s seaports are chickenfeed to the universal fascists at work. They will use such illicit trade as they did during Iran-Contra, to fund their efforts, but the real game is disturbance of any relationships between the other major world powers and the supply of potential energy sources, to keep them suppressed and from realizing their full strength (imagine a fully developed China with nuclear weapons), and to exponentially increase the value of existing energy reserves elsewhere across the globe as fossil fuels dwindle or are threatened by instability.

DemFromCT

In defense of my word, â€distractionâ€â€“I think it fair insofar as the possible end result of our focus on Iraq is, by design, not going to result in any fewer American deaths (or Muslim deaths or anything of the sort) and it’s soaking up all the energy in Congress. So long as Dems accept the frame Iraq (obsession) Iran (carte blanche) Pakistan (huh?), then we’re handing away our negotiating points and pretty much acquiesing to a disastrous policy guaranteed to fail. The actual political obsession with Iraq is a teeny tiny cricket noise against the raging background of the larger, catastrophic policy.

P J Evans — oh, most def, we puny human citizen/voters around the world will draw the short straw on whatever these monsters set in motion in their global chess game. And I do believe that the concentration of manufacturing in China for the benefit of American retailers is a chit in this asymmetric warfare. The first disruption we puny people will feel is a rapid increase in the cost of any product that requires plastics or is made of plastic, since both petroleum and natural gas are used in its manufacture. W*lmart would feel the hit in pricing, attempt to pass it on to vendors first before its customers, but eventually there will be inflationary pressure on prices.

Not to mention the debt. Ugh.

My point, Dem, is that Bush and Cheney don’t give a damn that only 25% of the country supports them. So long as that’s true–and the Dems in Congress don’t make that costly for their counterparts across teh aisle–it doesn’t matter what the American people think.

Until we assert some muscle in Congress, it doesn’t matter what the polls say. And since we’re abdicating any and all muscle, how are we going to make it an issue?

Could one look to the civil war created by Cheney in Palestine as a good example of the administration’s approach to the region. If there is a regional war between Sunni and Shia, like Hamas and Fatah, then those sects can only fight each other and are unable to launch terrorist attacks on the west or Israel. The administration’s narrative for Anbar Province is similar in that they want us to believe that the Sunnis have now decided that they hate Al Qaeda in Iraq more than they hate the US military.

All of this is too clever by half and, I think, reflects the millenialist thinking of Cheney and the neocons. They are willing to overlook and risk global instability (and extreme carnage) to eliminate all Islamic states. They will (gladly) set in motion a regional war that will surely last a generation(s) and effectively depopulate large areas of the middle east.

The alternative, practicing legitimate statecraft, is viewed negatively by this administration. I can’t think of an instance in the past few years where a conventionally brokered agreement or treaty was presented by our government as a (truly) positive development. In there minds, foreign policy is conflict, or as Rice would say, â€birth pangs.†It isn’t that they aren’t aware of an alternative, they just use the language of diplomacy to conceal their true aims.

The American people would like our government to resolve conflicts militarily or diplomatically, finally, to achieve peace or stability in other parts of the globe. This government

where cheney is concerned and involved

â€pure stupidityâ€

explains by far the largest proportion of variance.

what has he been involved in in the last six years that was successful?

the man is Chaos walking about the earth.

thank you for the links, skdadl

I wonder how long it will be be before the Mainstream Republicans start telling us that Tillman was a left-wing liberal who undermined the war on terror, deserved to be shot, and was an overrated and lousy football player.

I mean, that basically the same game plan they used for Valerie Wilson, telling us that Wilson was a left wing liberal who undermined the President’s policies, deserved to be outed, and was an overrated and lousy spy anyway.

After all, if it worked for a CIA NOC, it should work for a football player.

Right?

Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and perhaps even Iran and Saudi Arabia are pretty much like bungie/pungie/pongee (sp) sticks from the Viet Nam era. The more you are there and simply walk around the more you are harmed and there’s nothing ever to be gained.

Our problem is akin to the War on Drugs. It’s a phony, but so long as we have leaders who enforce these addictions on our nation, then we have to fight like the dickins to free ourselves — but it’s hopeless.

The War on Drugs is best won by simply declaring it over, legalizing marijuana for anyone 18 or older and then treating anyone addicted to harsh stuff.

The War on Oil Dependence is best won by retreating to home and trying to get away from Big Oil as quickly as possible. That means breaking the hold America’s Big Oil has on our presidential politics and on our automobile industry (we need electric or at least renewable bio-fuel hybrid cars!) as well as trying to keep oil producing countries from destroying our economy.

The War on Terror is probably just a sideshow to the War on Oil Dependence and as such is an expensive diversion. If there is a real terrorist enemy we should get some better proof more Americans can agree on and we should actually go after them, rather than putzing around in Iraq pretending we’re fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq.

If there are

If ObL is tied to a dialysis machine, then why haven’t we captured or killed him yet?

If 9/11 was obviously AQ, then why are there so many untidy loose ends?

Let’s get past the lies and charade and solve the real problems.

Freepatriot, the Prussian war you cite was not with Sweden, it was with Denmark. Twas in two parts, 1862 and 64. The dutchies of Holstein and Schleswig belonged to the Danish Royal House, and after Denmark became a Constitutional Monarchy in 1848 they remained under Royal Control. The cause of the war is generally understood as Bismark’s interest in building the Keil Canal — with the best location being on Danish Royal lands. Prussia got both dutchies after defeating Denmark in 1864, but after Versailles, Denmark was authorized to hold a plebsite, and a little less than half of Schleswig was returned to Denmark. After World War II, Churchill offered the Danes a slightly larger slice, (wonderful cartoon with John Bull, as butcher, holding up Jutland, and asking little mother Denmark, How Much? as a butcher might ask about a side of meat.) Anyhow, Denmark said no thanks, they didn’t want any more Germans than they already had living amongst them.

I think Austria’s primary motivation for joining the war had to do with the fact that Denmark had become a Constitutional Monarchy, with an elected parliment, constitution, political parties and all that — and both Bismark and the Hapsburg’s were holding on for dear life to Divine Right notions, as Italy was in the process to nationalizing Papal Lands and all that. Bismark wanted his canal for military reasons, Denmark owned the best site for a North Sea – Baltic Canal, thus the practical could be combined with the ideological so as to bring in Austria.

But the Danes also blame their Politicians of the time — many believe Denmark should have proposed a jointly owned company to dig and operate the Canal (diplomacy in effect). This remains a hot topic in Denmark — it is rather like our own civil war in many ways. Since I had the experience of being an exchange student once upon a time in DK — I got the full treatment. Learning Danish had a lot to do with appreciating the Battle of Double Mill — much as if one taught American English by teaching Picketts Charge at Gettysburg.

By the way, the one great innovation at the Battle of Double Mill was the invention of the wheeled litter to remove the wounded from the battlefield. You can see the same design in slightly more advanced form on the news these days when you see our wounded taken off the medivac helicopters and wheeled into the hospital in Iraq. It was an application of what became the early bicycle tire system. Double Mill is an early 18th century experiment with double bladed windmills — perhaps ten KM from that site is the little school where in 1972 some Danish Hojskole Students first experimented with modern materials and aerodynamic knowledge to invent the modern Wind Turbine. The Danish Government appreciated the effort, sent real engineers and development money, and thus was born the first modern wind farm.

This is a serious business, so maybe I relaxed too much this weekend.

As I have read this thread, and a few before, I keep seeing emptywheel’s constant search for VP Cheney’s finger prints on dastardly plots as similar to Sherlock Holmes constant belief in and search for the Evil Dr Moriarty.

And then DemFromCT comes up with a very sage like knowing presence like Kwai Chang (David Carradine) in the new Yellow Book TV spots.

I’m more and more convinced this is Dick Cheney’s design. … What other logic is there–besides pure stupidity–for ignoring nuclear-armed and increasingly extremist Pakistan–while ratcheting up war against Iran?

Marcy, you are Dick Cheney waaay too much credit — pure stupidity, fueled by blind lust, is closer to the truth.

Dick Cheney is a lusty guy — Power Lust, Oil Lust, and Blood Lust in service of the others. Dick Cheney sees himself as the Hot Stud of the GOP Imperial Presidency, and his lust for power is the V*g*ra that blinds him to anything that doesn’t serve his lust.

Dick Cheney’s lust for power makes facts irrelevant — if facts or persons don’t serve his interests, they are irrelevant trifles to be swept aside. If facts or persons impede his goals, they are enemies to be crushed. If anything serves his interests, it is elevated to the highest exalted status — until it is no longer useful.

Shorter (Shooter) version — Dick Cheney doesn’t see the forest of reality, because he doesn’t see anything beyond his power lust woody.

Boston1775 — not at all. Took nearly a trillion dollars and 6-plus years to do all that.

But a volatile environment is one in which the most profits can be made. I still suffer guilt pangs for buying a market index fund the day after Shock-and-Awe began, selling it a couple years later at a substantial profit, based on that very premise. And if I did it. you can bet your keister that’s EXACTLY what DeadEye and all his peeps did both straight up and in a more convoluted fashion.

What they don’t ken or appear to ignore is that at some point, the market crashes. Will they be out in time after precipitating the fall? Will they be converted to other currencies (in the form of gold, cash, energy) that will retain value after the fall? We’ll see.

Rayne, the questions are: how close are we to our market not being able to sustain the drain?
can we wind this mess down, pay our bills and begin to reinvest in our own country?