Hi Addi; Getting Pakistan to give the ultimatum has a bunch of advantages for the US. First, note that ObL's daughter is married to the Taliban leader, so there is no way in Hell that they're going to give him up. In addition, since they're religious fanatics, they undoubtedly believe that God will provide, and that He will either save them, or let them be killed by the pagans for some sin they've already committed. (Masturbation, I'd guess. Funny thing is that Hitler took the same attitude towards Germany. If Germany was unable to achieve his goal of world domination, he did not want it to survive. It's sick, sick, sick to send human soldiers out to fight a hopeless conflict.) Anyway, there are lot of major advantages of getting Pakistan to make the ultimatum (and all ultimatums must have a time limit):
(1) It implicates a Moslem country into the process.
(2) The US probably isn't militarily ready anyway. Ideally, they'd like to have training missions, they need to get troops and stuff moved over, they need to update plans, etc.
(3) The US probably isn't diplomatically ready either. Did you notice that Bangladesh gave us permission to use their facilities? I mean, come on, what possible use could Bangladesh's facilities be to us when India's already signed on. What Bush is doing is letting the Moslem nations (like Bangladesh) get a chance to implicate themselves in this. That takes diplomacy, and he probably isn't done yet.
(4) Having Pakistan give the ultimatum has caused the Taliban to mobilize their forces to the Pakistan border. This forces Pakistan to recognize the true nature of their relationship with the Taliban -- the Taliban has no respect for Pakistan's government and intends on eventually replacing it with their own, or one similarly fanatical. That same lesson is being taught throughout the Moslem world to all the moderate or even radical, but non-Taliban governments. If the US did accept all of the Taliban's demands, (exit Saudi Arabia, leave Iraq alone, quit supporting Israel), the result would be that the Taliban would begin destabilizing each of the other governments in turn. This forces the other Moslem nations to side with the US, and this reduces the amount of bloodshed we will have to inflict and endure.
(5) In order to rebuild a government for Afghanistan, the US needs the assistance of moderate Moslem nations. That means everything from military forces to people who can train policemen. All that is going to take time to plan out. Remember the Kuwait liberation? If I recall, Kuwait city was actually liberated by the Egyptians. Little details like that make for a lot of advantages later, Bush has to plan that stuff out. At least with Kuwait there was a government in exile, by contrast, Afghanistan is a mess.
All in all, I think this is being handled amazingly well. I hope that I will not have to eat these words.
-- Carl |
