Rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has been irresponsibly lighting matches with his shortsighted use of Special Forces and drone strikes. 'Beyond Madness': Obama's War on Terror Setting Nuclear-Armed Pakistan on Fire AlterNet / By Fred Branfman
November 3, 2010 | Few countries on earth face as many serious problems as giant, nuclear-armed Pakistan, which is today like a seething, heaving, bubbling, and combustible pool of chemicals in increasing danger of explosion. America badly needs to try and stabilize the nation, through a vast increase in economic aid on the order of the tens of billions of dollars it is wasting in Afghanistan – most importantly to reduce the dangers of nuclear proliferation through "immense threats of theft from nuclear insiders with extremist sympathies, al Qaeda or Taliban outsider attacks, and a weak state," of which one observer warned last April.
But rather than seeking to stabilize Pakistan, General David Petraeus has, incredibly, been irresponsibly lighting matches through his shortsighted and relentless effort to secure Afghanistan by using U.S. forces and drone strikes, and pressuring the Pakistani Army to attack Taliban “sanctuaries” in Pakistan’s northwest provinces. Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Pakistan's High Commissioner to London for the past 16 years and a pillar of the Establishment, has recently stated that U.S. drone and gunship attacks in Pakistan have “set the country on fire” and threatened that such acts could eventually lead to attacks on U.S. personnel in Pakistan.
Petraeus has disastrously miscalculated. The more “progress” he tries to show in Afghanistan, the more he weakens the U.S. position in far more important Pakistan. As reported in this space 16 months ago, unless General Petraeus is replaced U.S. leaders may well face a catastrophe in Pakistan that would dwarf their disastrous miscalculations in invading Indochina, supporting the Shah of Iran and occupying Iraq.The single most important -- yet surprisingly ignored -- revelation of Bob Woodward's new book, Obama's Wars, is that Petraeus and the Obama team never discussed how their strategy for attacking Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan was weakening the Pakistani state. Woodward also makes clear that it is Petraeus, not Obama, who is driving U.S. policy in “Af-Pak.”
CIA Director Leon Panetta declared that "no Democratic president can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it. So just do it. Do what they say," according to the book. Petraeus’ power derives from America’s unconscious need for a military hero and his perceived and overblown success in Iraq. But this perception has blinded normally sensible observers to his disastrous performance in Pakistan since becoming Centcom commander in October 2008.
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While U.S. assassination has undoubtedly killed a handful of genuine insurgent leaders -- 18 of the 1659 Pakistanis murdered since 2006 according to the far right-wing Long War Journal, it has created far more jihadists who are cooperating far more and are far more motivated to do far more damage in a far greater area of Pakistan. And beyond. The "Times Square Bomber" who almost killed many Americans described how he was motivated by his anger toward the U.S. government for its routine murder of Pakistanis by drones. Foreign Policy reports that total suicide attacks worldwide have risen sixfold since 2004, and that “over 90 percent of suicide attacks worldwide are now anti-American. The vast majority of suicide terrorists hail from the local region threatened by foreign troops."
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