After the 9/11 attack on the trade towers Bush said the terrorists would have no sanctuaries to hide. I believe Bush meant what he said at the time but real world conditions cowed him from actually carrying out that promise. Seven years later Osama Bin Laden the mastermind of the attacks is still hiding in Pakistan.
Pakistan’s government and army is completely infiltrated by radical Islamic terrorists and our government knows it. Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda and the Taliban have sanctuary in Pakistan and Pakistan will not deal with the terrorist problem and they also will not allow NATO forces to go in and deal with the terrorist problem. Once in a while they make a pretend effort to go after these rebels to appease us but they have no such intent.
Now with Iraq winding down the U.S. will move more and more troops to Afghanistan but never deal with the real problem and that is the sanctuary allowed by Pakistan. So we are getting into a situation that is very much like Vietnam. In Vietnam the cowed politicians would not let our military take the war to the head of the snake and we are now doing the same thing here. Soon more and more body bags will be coming home and the people in the NATO nations will soon forget why we are there in the first place and they will start pulling out their troops.
We have already allowed conditions for a WMD staging ground in these territories of Pakistan but as the radicals gain more power we may also be allowing a Pakistan terrorist state to emerge that will export nuclear terrorism all over the world. There would be a high likelihood of a Pakistan India nuclear war in the near future.
Pakistan has a difficult political situation but the people of Pakistan created it and they should be told in no uncertain terms that allowing a sanctuary for terrorism against NATO forces in Afghanistan and against India will not be tolerated. They should be given this ultimatum – Deal with your internal security issues and root out the terrorists in your government and end the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan or we will see that as a sign that the people of Pakistan are already being held hostage by the radicals and need outside help from NATO.
They might remind us that they have nuclear weapons and we might remind them that they might lose that capability in one minute of time if they do not comply.
The Army in Pakistan is going to go along with NATO in the end once the face saving bluster has run its course. The leaders of Pakistan are not suicidal. There is also no reason that we should be suicidal either by allow the Vietnamization of Afghanistan and allowing Pakistan to be a staging ground sanctuary for WMD terrorist attacks on NATO countries and India.
It is time to cut off the head of the snake with a joint Pakistan NATO invasion of the rebel held territories. If Pakistan will not help they need to be told to stand down and we will do the job for them and we are not taking no for an answer.
The following article by Chuck Missler will give some additional information on the Pakistani problem.
Musharraf must now answer accusations that he knew about black market sales of Pakistan’s nuclear technology. On the 4th of July, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, scientist and black-marketeer A.Q. Khan, dropped a bomb on Musharraf and his Western allies. Until now, Khan has always said that he is solely responsible for selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. However Khan now claims that Musharraf and Pakistan’s politically powerful army had “complete knowledge” of the shipment of centrifuges to North Korea.
the outcome of Pakistan’s internal conflict could have global repercussions. Pakistan is the only Islamic nation with a declared nuclear weapons program. Pakistan began its secret nuclear weapons program in 1972, and now has between 65 and 90 nukes.
