Freidman says America is playing the sucker. His appraisal of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia of double dealing the US is right on.
The trove of WikiLeaks about the faltering U.S. war effort in Afghanistan has provoked many reactions, but for me it contains one clear message. It’s actually an old piece of advice your parents may have given you before you went off to college: “If you are in a poker game and you don’t know who the sucker is, it’s probably you.”
In the case of the Great Game of Central Asia, that’s us.
Best I can tell from the WikiLeaks documents and other sources, we are paying Pakistan’s Army and intelligence service to be two-faced. Otherwise, they would be just one-faced and 100 percent against us. The same could probably be said of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai. But then everyone out there is wearing a mask — or two.
China supports Pakistan, seeks out mining contracts in Afghanistan and lets America make Afghanistan safe for Chinese companies, all while smiling at the bloody nose America is getting in Kabul because anything that ties down the U.S. military makes China’s military happy. America, meanwhile, sends its soldiers to fight in Afghanistan at the same time that it rejects an energy policy that would begin to reduce our oil consumption, which indirectly helps to fund the very Taliban schools and warriors our soldiers are fighting against.
So why put up with all this duplicity? Is President Obama just foolish?
It is more complicated. This double game goes back to 9/11. That terrorist attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis. And we responded by invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? The short answer is because Pakistan has nukes that we fear and Saudi Arabia has oil that we crave.
So we tried to impact them by indirection. We hoped that building a decent democratizing government in Iraq would influence reform in Saudi Arabia and beyond. And after expelling Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, we stayed on to stabilize the place, largely out of fears that instability in Afghanistan could spill into Pakistan and lead to Islamist radicals taking over Islamabad and its nukes.
That strategy has not really worked because Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are built on ruling bargains that are the source of their pathologies and our fears.
Pakistan, 63 years after its founding, still exists not to be India. The Pakistani Army is obsessed with what it says is the threat from India — and keeping that threat alive is what keeps the Pakistani Army in control of the country and its key resources. The absence of either stable democracy in Pakistan or a decent public education system only swells the ranks of the Taliban and other Islamic resistance forces there. Pakistan thinks it must control Afghanistan for “strategic depth” because, if India dominated Afghanistan, Pakistan would be wedged between the two.
Alas, if Pakistan built its identity around its own talented people and saw its strategic depth as the quality of its schools, farms and industry, instead of Afghanistan, it might be able to produce a stable democracy — and we wouldn’t care about Pakistan’s nukes any more than India’s.
Saudi Arabia is built around a ruling bargain between the moderate al-Saud family and the Wahhabi fundamentalist establishment: The al-Sauds get to rule and the Wahhabis get to impose on their society the most puritanical Islam — and export it to mosques and schools across the Muslim world, including to Pakistan, with money earned by selling oil to the West.
So Pakistan’s nukes are a problem for us because of the nature of that regime, and Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth is a problem for us because of the nature of that regime. We have chosen to play a double game with both because we think the alternatives are worse.
So we pay Pakistan to help us in Afghanistan, even though we know some of that money is killing our own soldiers, because we fear that just leaving could lead to Pakistan’s Islamists controlling its bomb. And we send Saudi Arabia money for oil, even though we know that some of it ends up financing the very people we are fighting, because confronting the Saudis over their ideological exports seems too destabilizing. (Addicts never tell the truth to their pushers.)
Is there another a way? Yes. If we can’t just walk away, we should at least reduce our bets. We should limit our presence and goals in Afghanistan to the bare minimum required to make sure that turmoil there doesn’t spill over into Pakistan or allow Al Qaeda to return. And we should diminish our dependence on oil so we are less impacted by what happens in Saudi Arabia, so we shrink the funds going to people who hate us and we make economic and political reform a necessity for them, not a hobby.
Alas, we don’t have the money, manpower or time required to fully transform the most troubled states of this region. It will only happen when they want it to. We do, though, have the technology, necessity and innovators to protect ourselves from them — and to increase the pressure on them to want to change — by developing alternatives to oil. It is time we started that surge. I am tired of being the sucker in this game.
Yamit: When was the last time you were in shule? Do you have a rabbi for counselling? You seem very angry. I think that you can use a few SESSIONS IN PRAYER AND MEDITATION. Without knowing you, I sense a very troubled soul. A very lonely, friendless person. how far are from a shule?. Are you a Canadian or American? Remember Hashem is close to you. Don’t, I repeat don’t turn your back on Hashem. Treat your fellow Jew with honor and respect. And then you will be truly blessed.
Please regard me as your friend.
Hymie I gave you sources do you want the exact chapter and verse? You are as usual out of your level of competence to maintain this persona go back to Kendraa and……! Or just die fagot!
Yamit: Are you telling me that you are speaking on behalf of Hashem?
http://il.youtube.com/watch?v=BtKjLwuMP_0&feature=related
Source pls. That nuking preemptively those first who would nuke us is evil and unjewish? I suppose you think being incinerated by Iran or anybody else is Jewish?
Din Rodef!!!! The Talmudic discussion of this Exodus passage introduces the classic Jewish principle of self-defense, “Im ba l’hargekha, hashkem l’hargo,” “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him (first).” If there is homicidal intent, self-defense is more than permitted; it is required. This is a common principle of all legal systems, America’s included.
Keelie
Are you sure you mean that? Nuking anybody is not Hashem’s will. This is the most evil, unjewish sentiments that could possibly be expressed.
Problem is, Pakistan has probably secreted its A-bombs to some far-off place – like the middle of Karachi or Lahore. You could easily hit the nuclear facilities and it would do little good… except for getting rid of some of the military and scientists… Hmmmm… that’s something to think about…
Bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities? What a novel idea! We ought to tell Obama about that!!! (Sorry – the sarcasm isn’t directed to you Laura; only to the people who may actually have come up with the same idea… then dropped it in favour of appeasement.)
We don’t need to reduce our oil comsumption, we simply need to drill here in the USA.
Why should it come to that. We should simply bomb Pakistan’s nuclear facilities along with Iran’s. Problem solved.
The solution to the energy situation is actually relatively easy. I’m tired to explaining from a technical standpoint what it is… And the multinational company for whom I work is totally off on a government funded tangent that will do nothing to alleviate the oil dependency situation. The will is not there, and will is everything.
As for the other part: being able to protect ourselves from a few barbarians with nukes – well, the first thing we (the West) ought to do in no uncertain terms, is to assure Pakistan that if they decide to use their nukes as aggressors, the country will simply disappear. No conditions. Allah will, I’m sure, be delighted.