IMO, It’s always worth noting Dawn is a Moonie owned and operated enterprise / source.

And the Hubris continues. R.I.P. oligarch toy soldiers.

Yeh wonder how effective or truthfully reported these offensives by the Pakistani Army really are, especially since the ISI had supported insurgents in Afghanistan, that then moved into Pakistan, or the disappearance of the $5.5 Billion Bushco gave the Military from ‘02 to ‘06.

“…the now-successfully-demagoged Kerry-Lugar-Berman aid bill.”

Please explain this dismissive comment. I checked the link, and I don’t understand your characterization. The Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill seems like exactly the kind of approach we need in the area. Better this kind of aid than bombs and troops. I know some Pakistani generals are crying in their beer that their gravy train might be disrupted.

Bob in AZ

Do you have something showing the ownership of Dawn? The last you mentioned that it was owned by Moonies, I looked a bit but couldn’t find anything.

Heh. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if the Paks were more successful counterinsugents than the vaunted U.S. military? Don’t suppose we’ll ever know in my lifetime.

The very last thing that either the Pakistani Army or the embattled Zadari government needs at this point is a real civil war. Kayani has to walk a very fine line here, satisfying (mostly external) demands that the government act against the Pakistani insurgent syndicate without actually creating a situation where there will be ongoing, escalating hostilities. The result, sadly, is a lot of dramatic theater that hurts and displaces a lot of regular folks, but is carefully calibrated to allow the insurgents to move out of the area without serious damage.

To say Pakistan is not friendly with the Karzai government is an understatement, and the United States is only slightly more popular than India throughout the Pakistani population. If the Pakistani government is seen by the population as acting as an American puppet against the Pakistani people, the likelihood of a much wider civil conflict increases. And don’t ever underestimate what an unpopular and discredited political leadership like Zardari’s administration might do to exploit public perception.

So to the Pakistanis, the best outcome here is a fairly quick return to the status quo ante, with minimal harm to any of the players. As long as the geo-political situation is roughly similar to what it is now, the Americans will continue to be disappointed with that actions and performance of their Pakistani “ally”, and the Pakistani military will continue to try to walk that fine line, keeping everybody just unhappy enough, without tipping the situation over into a large scale internal conflict….

mikey

Hey, I didn’t mean to impugn the K-L-B act at all. What I meant was the Pak military has demagogued the shit out of it, saying, against all discernable reality (and the Pak foreign minister), that it’s the first step toward a US takeover of Pakistan. That’s it & that’s all I meant.

roughly 3,310 square kilometres…

So it’s ten troopers per sq km. Or maybe 100 per village.

Good luck with that, I suspect the going will be a bit uphill, not to mention the surprises when turning over rocks.

An eyewitness in the region tells the BBC of indiscriminate airstrikes:

“There are bombs going off everywhere – you must tell the world what is happening,” Sher Gul, a terrified resident of Tiarza in South Waziristan told the BBC after arriving in Dera Ismail Khan.

“My house was destroyed and many people in my village have been killed.”

And a BBC crew in the town of tank, gateway to South Waziristan, found that the road refugees would use to leave the area had been closed by the Pakistani military.

Fallujah in the mountains? Or maybe a mountain replay of IDF v Hizbullah?

Regards, Steve

What I meant was the Pak military has demagogued the shit out of it, saying, against all discernable reality (and the Pak foreign minister), that it’s the first step toward a US takeover of Pakistan.

If by ‘reality’ you mean the Af-Pak-COIN-latest version of ‘they hate us for our freedom’ bullshit peddled by the same neoclowns (see: Foreign Policy Initiative) that brought us that lovely success called Iraq, then you’re right.

If instead you meant that other reality, the one where we’ve installed a farce called a government in Islamabad starring the corrupt buffoon Zardari and Mossad groomed Malik (who together made one hell of a team laundering money and selling info during their exile from Pakistan), then you’re wrong and it would seem that we are making one hell of an effort to destabilize Pakistan.

I’ve no problem with armchair analysis, but the question you should be asking is Why? Everything from the military green-zoning of Islamabad, to the indiscriminate drone killings across Pakistan, to the now overt meddling in the country’s one pillar of stability, the Pak military, through the KLB pay-off –all of this points to an effort to turn a nuclear armed country into a basket case.

Ask: Why would we do such a thing? Who would benefit from the result?

Could you explain what you are meaning to say when you announce that there is “meddling” with the Pak military?

They are called the tribal areas since the Brits were never able to establish control of them during the long years of the Empire. They have their own laws and governments as kind of autonomous provinces within Pakistan. I’m sure the Pakistanis would love to have them knuckle under, but I doubt they plan a permanent presence. Nonetheless this move may be quite effective at temporarily quelling foreign terrorist presence.

Book Salon up at the Mothership with Bruce Bartlett’s The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward hosted by James Galbraith

“Overt meddling” and “stability” were the 2 points I was clumsily trying to emphasize…

Two things should be understood and if you know this stuff, I apologize for the redundancy:

a) like most third world countries, Pak’s government is a hot bed of corruption. Despite that fact, the one thing the Pakistani people have been able to rely on is that their military would not just protect its people from foreign threats (basically, India) but also domestic ones –basically, its own government.

Historically, whenever government corruption reached a point of seriously disrupting the basic freedoms/rights/lifestyle of Pak’s upper classes (yep, that’s the third world -have and have not), the military would intervene. And so, unsurprisingly, the Pakistani people view their military as the people’s army.

b) like most third world countries, Pak’s military has had a long, quiet relationship with the US. The military’s upper ranks have attended universities here and in the UK, been trained by our military advisors, and equipped with US arms (and everyone knows the Stinger/mujahideen part of this story).

Because of Pakistani Indian paranoia and our former Cold War strategies, the US/Pak relationship was built on a lot of common objectives but other global concerns linked to the then Soviets, India, China, Iran and, of course, oil, kept this stuff off the radar for nearly everyone except ‘regional analysts.’ This is why Pakistan was never really considered a client state of the US, even though the relationship probably satisfied the definition.

Anyway, that’s a snapshot of the background. Fast forward to now and Section 302 of the Kerry Lugar blood contract that states that the Secretary of State will file a report that includes:

‘a description of the extent to which civilian executive leaders and parliament exercise oversight and approval of military budgets, the chain of command, the process of promotion for senior military leaders, civilian involvement in strategic guidance and planning, and military involvement in civil administration.’ Future military aid is dependent on this report and the report is looking to document a cementing of the civilian-military relationship in Pakistan.

In other words, the US is saying: if the Pakistani military wants to keep the money flowing, keeps its traditional relationship with the US intact, then they are beholden to a civilian government in Pakistan that has a long history of corruption, of working against the interests of its own people. And since this bill follows the US support of the very same characters who were once jailed by the Pak military for corruption, it looks as though the US is telling the chickens to obey the foxes if they want to stay in the hen house.

That’s the ‘overt meddling’ I was referring to earlier. There was likely always some kind of US check on its support for the Pak military, but it was never *formalized* publicly as it is now in the KLB. And as ordinary Pakistanis, already disgusted by the last year of escalating daily violence, see their military, the sole force of stability in Pakistan, being made to sacrifice its independence through this US instigated link to their civilian government, their outrage and brewing anti-Americanism is only intensified and the total breakdown of Pakistani society inches closer to reality.

Again: why?

Thanks for the explanation.
Perhaps your interpretation of that provision in Sec 302 is not the only possible one. It seems to me that it might be read as constricting the options of the civilian government.
Either way, it’s meddlesome, but that’s to be expected if the US is going to keep bankrolling the Pakistani military.
We have been paying the Pakistani government for services that haven’t been rendered for a half-dozen years.

Thanks for the clarification!

Bob in AZ

Either way, it’s meddlesome, but that’s to be expected if the US is going to keep bankrolling the Pakistani military.
We have been paying the Pakistani government for services that haven’t been rendered for a half-dozen years.

Terrific! You have a monkey that can type. Now you need to teach it to think.

Why is the US giving the Pak military and/or gov’t money? What are these services you are referring to? Can you document them or is this simply more conjecture from the monkey?

Not just a monkey, it’s a macaque! A very nice one.

Would you like to kiss macaque?