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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (365065)	1/2/2008 5:30:56 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574203

Yes, but in the end Stalin screwed the West. When you break bread with rats and pigs expect to get up with fleas and very little in your stomach. Okay, so you're saying we should not have allied with Stalin, but let Hitler crush the Soviets. Of course, once their eastern front was taken care of, we would have had a much bigger task invading and conquering Nazi-occupied Europe. Not the decision I'd make. You could claim we'd more morally pure, but there would be a cost for that. --------------------------------------------------------- And if you insist on perfect purity for your allies, you won't have any. There is a huge distance between criminals and imperfect purity. It doesn't do anyone any good to put everything in a black or white context. I agree. Course, I don't really see Mushareff as a criminal. Even if he were, if there were no more reliable ruler of Pakistan in the wings, he'd still be preferable to a hostile islamist regime. -------------------------------------------------------- His helping capture Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, among others counts for something. The fact that Pakistani soldiers are fighting in the NW tribal areas is worth something even if they are being beat. Are they really fighting, or are they playing at fighting? And if they are fighting for real, then they are worse than the Iraqi army. The beheaded Pakistani soldiers weren't pretending. As for beign worse than the Iraqi army, they might well be. ------------------------------------------------------- However, you should be aware that it was the Bush administration that urged Benazir Bhutto to return to Pakistan to help restore democracy there in hopes that would strengthen the government. They also persuaded Mushareff to resign from the army and run for election. Yes, definitely a positive. Gasp, you just used the word positive to describe a Bush administration foreign policy. Watch it! Dude, I would gladly give Bush more positives if only he made them happen. This is an administration that doesn't know what's it doing half the time while blundering through the other half. What infuriates me is people like you who pretend otherwise. The Bush administration has made plenty of blunders. I don't see the point in attacking the Bush administration though when the leftwing is engaging in insane attacks on them. ---------------------------------------------------- I've seen nothing to shows Mushareff has a Swiss bank account. The Bhutto family certainly does. The corruption of that family is well documented. We'll find that out when he gets deposed. If he loses power, I doubt he'll survive to retire overseas. ----------------------------------------------------- What is the real alternative to Mushareff? I don't see one. You mention India - well the Bush administration is pursuing a much closer relationship with them and our support for Mushareff hasn't hurt that - the opposition has come from the Indian leftwing parties. But pursuing a closer relationship with India doesn't mean we ought to write Pakistan. Its a nuclear power - for it to be taken over by forces that, unlike Mushareff, are really hostile to the west would be disastrous - for everyone. The fact that it has nukes is worrisome..but then India has nukes.....so they in a sense neutralize each other. If the islamists are reasonable calculators. If they aren't there could be a nuclear war with hundreds of millions dead. Then there is the issue of whether an islamist ruled Pakistan would give nuclear weapons to other parties - say Al Qaida. All Al Qaida would need would be a ship to float it into any harbor in the world. I suppose the Proliferation Security Initiative (something the Bush administration organized) member countries might catch it. Then again they might not and we wouldn't find out the failure till a mushroom cloud showed up over NY harbor (or San Francisco, Seattle, etc.) ---------------------------------------------------- AQ taking over a gov't may be the best thing to happen......they can not act the renegade and get away with it so easily. Secondly, what do you think they would do with those nukes? I think they are not just big talkers. They would use any nuclear weapon they got hold of. If we received such a nuclear strike, what would you propose to do in response? Wipe out Pakistan?