Reply #16: The white man's burden in Pakistan

[soryang]

This is a further extension on the propaganda theme that Pakistan can't defend Pakistan, which is, I think, a mistaken portrayal of the situation. Of course, the mainstream and left alternative media have been the vehicle for propagating the falsehood that Pakistan can't defend its nuclear weapons either and that it is the "white man's burden" to keep their armies in Afghanistan indefinitely until this threat to world peace is ended.

The real question is can the US and its NATO supporters really maintain their forces in Afghanistan with active opposition from the Pakistani Armed Forces? It is not that much of an achievement to penetrate a foreign nations territory with low flying aircraft. That is simply a tactic. It is especially easy where a country a priori has determined that a major war is not in its interest and has gone out of its way to restrain it capability to defend itself in the interest of avoiding uncontrolled war. After all, if you shoot down a US military aircraft in anger, the prospects for future peace don't look good.

Could the US avoid interdiction of its supply lines to Afghanistan in the event of overt conflict with Pakistan? The US forces on the ground there would need to rely on other countries for inferior ground logistics and for a time be presented with a "Berlin crisis" of a military nature. Would the US go ahead then and bomb the hell out of Pakistan? I think so. Would China sit by and do nothing? In lieu of WW III, China could simply move its most advanced anti air missiles into Pakistan and perhaps Afghanistan to interfere with US air operations and begin organizing and mobilizing for general war at an unspecified future date. This is a very ugly prospect.

As the economic crisis in the US continues, it is irresponsible brinkmanship to continue drone attacks and other military incursions into Pakistan. American forces need to be pulled out of central Asia or we risk at the very least, a catastrophe much larger than that sustained in Vietnam, and possibly a nuclear war. I say nuclear war, because it is already official Pentagon policy, which they declared before the irresponsible invasion of Iraq, to commit "preemptive" nuclear strikes rather than sustain surprise military reversals on the ground.