COMMENTS (Agha .H Amin in underlined bold black italics with yellow highlighting )
On
Obama's wars the Pakistan conundrum
'We need to make clear . . . the cancer is in Pakistan'
by
Bob Woodward
President Obama dispatched his national security adviser, retired Marine Gen. James L. Jones, and CIA Director Leon Panetta to Pakistan for a series of urgent, secret meetings on May 19, 2010.
Less than three weeks earlier, a 30-year-old U.S. citizen born in Pakistan had tried to blow up an SUV in New York City's Times Square. The crude bomb - which a Pakistan-based terrorist group had taught him to make - smoked but did not explode. Only luck had prevented a catastrophe.
Is something seriously wrong with US Intelligence agencies.Perhaps munching too many doughnuts,KFC and Macdonalds Big Macs and doing little real intelligence works .The laurels and imperial wars and faux pas of the CIA have been well documented by a US scholar in his book " The Ashes"
"We're living on borrowed time," Jones told Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at their meeting in Islamabad. "We consider the Times Square attempt a successful plot because neither the American nor the Pakistani intelligence agencies could intercept or stop it."
If it is borrowed time that USA is living on it is a singularly US failure ! You have high sounding agencies like Homeland Security ,DIA,CIA,FBI,DEA,BATF and then you end up with accepting clowns like Faisal Shahzad as US citizen.A low IQ so called terrorist who could not assemble a decent explosive device in Times Square !
Jones thought that Pakistan - a U.S. ally with an a la carte approach of going after some terrorist groups and supporting others - was playing Russian roulette. The chamber had turned out to be empty the past several times, but Jones thought it was only a matter of time before there was a round in it.
I would say General Jones and Americans are rather naieve.How on earth have they never pointed out why Pakistans 1500 Km border through which major Taliban infiltration takes place in Afghanistan has no Pakistani troops.
It is also a mystery why only some groups in FATA are being Droned by USA while the vast bulk of Taliban fighting the vast bulk of US forces with bases in Pakistani Balochistan are not being droned !
US Drone attacks actually brilliantly suit the Pakistani military because they target two Pakistani tribes "not at war with US at all " but " only at war with Pakistan Army" . It is difficult to find a race with such a low strategic IQ in history other than the naieve Americans ! While two books " The Quiet American " and "The Ugly American" made many headlines in the past a new book " The Naieve American Higher Leadership" is the need of the time !
Fears about Pakistan had been driving President Obama's national security team for more than a year. Obama had said toward the start of his fall 2009 Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review that the more pressing U.S. interests were really in Pakistan, a nuclear power with a fragile civilian government, a dominant military and an intelligence service that sponsored terrorist groups.
They say that hope is a good breakfast but a bad supper ! What has the USA done tangibly to strengthen democracy in Pakistan in the last 60 years ? Nothing ! It has all along supported military regimes , has financed agitation against the first democratically elected Prime Minister Z.A Bhutto and actively acted as midwife and mother of terrorist groups created in Pakistan with US aid and weapons to destabilize the de facto and de jure government of Afghanistan from 1978 to 1992 ! Later the USA supported the Taliban because the Taliban were supporting a US Oil company UNOCAL which had close links with US Government !
One may ask what exactly has US done to discourage Pakistani military to support some 80 % of Afghan Taliban fighting some 80 % of US Forces in Kandahar,Helmand,Farah,Uruzgan,Zabul and Ghazni ?
These Taliban have not the remotest connection with the FATA groups being droned !
So how does drone attacks support the 80 % US forces fighting 80 % Taliban , described by Pakistani military as good Taliban in South Afghanistan ! Taliban who have nothing to do at all with the Taliban groups being droned ! Has Bob Woodward or Obama properly studied the map of Afpak ?
Has the brilliant lawyer from Chicago and the brilliant oracle writing for Washington Post bothered to understand that FATA the area being droned has little connection with the real 80 % Taliban fighting 80 % US forces in South Afghanistan !
Not only did al-Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban operate from safe havens within Pakistan, but - as U.S. intelligence officials had repeatedly warned Obama - terrorist groups were recruiting Westerners whose passports would allow them to move freely in Europe and North America.
The solution to terrorists recruiting westerners is not to drone FATA because the recruiters are not based in FATA !The recruiters are based worldwide so droning FATA wont change anything ! The very idea is naieve ! But naieve is one magic word that brilliantly sums up all that US leadership stands for !
Safe havens would no longer be tolerated, Obama had decided. "We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan," he declared during an Oval Office meeting on Nov. 25, 2009, near the end of the strategy review. The reason to create a secure, self-governing Afghanistan, he said, was "so the cancer doesn't spread there."
If a clever lawyer who has made in mark gives an apparently brilliant theory that " safe havens will no longer be tolerated" this is a political statement only designed to impress his voters ! But this statement has no military or strategic value !
Safe havens from where Taliban are not in FATA alone ! Rather FATA contains less than 10 % of save havens ! The safe havens of the 80 % of Afghan Taliban at least logistically are in Pakistani Balochistan which has never been droned !
Jones and Panetta had gone to Pakistan to tell Zardari that Obama wanted four things to help prevent a terrorist attack on U.S. soil: full intelligence sharing, more reliable cooperation on counterterrorism, faster approval of visas for U.S. personnel traveling to Pakistan and, despite past refusals, access to airline passenger data.
These four demands reminiscent of Hitlers ultimatum to Poland in 1939 are also debatable ! "Full Intelligence sharing" is never done by any state ! Some intelligence is shared while some is always hidden ! This is true for both USA and Pakistan and for any two states working as allies or as ambiguous allies ! Cooperation on counter terrorism has been generally good ! Leading US strategic thinkers agree that Afghanistan or FATA do not represent any existential threat to US ! Indeed after 9/11 US soil has not been attacked by terrorists so why this Chicago type storm in a tea cup ! All breeds of Americans are being issued visas in Pakistan and they have achieved no laurels ! All flight data is already in full US control through a UAE based US company and this applies to all international flights originating from two third rate vassal states called Pakistan and Afghanistan !
So the famous four conditions that Woodwards talks about makes no sense !
If, God forbid, the SUV had blown up in Times Square, Jones told Zardari, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Should a future attempt be successful, Obama would be forced to do things that Pakistan would not like. "No one will be able to stop the response and consequences," the security adviser said. "This is not a threat, just a statement of political fact."
However hard Obama fans may try to paint Obama as an angel , we see a sub conscious desire in Obama to be Bush , the American Warrior threatening Pakistan after 9/11 that you are with us or against us or that we will bomb you into stone ages !
It is naieve and only an American can do it to link all attacks on USA to Pakistan ! Threats Obama can make but can he follow them up ! With USA already strategically dumbfounded and directionless despite occupying Afghanistan and Iraq , Obama wants to imitate Bush and launch another Operation Enduring Freedom !
This is good Chicago Bully Boy tactics but poor statesmanship !
Jones did not give specifics about what he meant. The Obama administration had a "retribution" plan, one of the most sensitive and secretive of all military contingencies. The plan called for bombing about 150 identified terrorist camps in a brutal, punishing attack inside Pakistan.
There are some mysteries , one may say fabricated intelligence that only Bob Woodward can fabricate ! Where are these 150 terrorist camps ! Only Bob Woodward the intelligence supreme knows ! Nearly 90 % of Pakistans FATA region has been subjected to US drones or Pakistani F 16 bombs ,Tow Cobra Shelling , 155 mm artillery salvos , 120 mm mortars and many more types of direct and indirect fire ! All praise to Bob Woodward !
Wait a second, Zardari responded. If we have a strategic partnership, why in the face of a crisis like the one you're describing would we not draw closer together rather than have this divide us?
Now wait a second ! President Zardari does not run Pakistans security policy ! So its pointless asking this poor soul already under attacks engineered by Pakistani military who despise him for being a Sindhi and not a main stream Pakistani from land of the pure , Punjab !
Zardari believed that he had already done a great deal to accommodate his strategic partner, at some political risk. He had allowed CIA drones to strike al-Qaeda and other terrorist camps in parts of Pakistan, prompting a public outcry about violations of Pakistani sovereignty. He had told CIA officials privately in late 2008 that any innocent deaths from the strikes were the cost of doing business against senior al-Qaeda leaders. "Kill the seniors," Zardari had said. "Collateral damage worries you Americans. It does not worry me."
Long before Zardari a cheap social climber called General Pervez Musharraf had meekly submitted to US drone attacks and Pakistan has actually been housing many US operatives linked with the Quixotic Drone attacks on windmills they see as Al Qaeda and terrorist monsters in Pakistans FATA ! How naieve to state that poor Zardaro agreed to drone attacks when the poor guest actor was never even asked !
As part of the partnership, the Pakistani military was billing the United States more than $2 billion a year to combat extremists operating in the remote areas near the Afghan border. But that money had not prevented elements of the Pakistani intelligence service from backing the two leading Afghan Taliban groups responsible for killing American troops in Afghanistan.
It is again naieve to state that Pakistani military has fought any terrorist group attacking US forces in Afghanistan ! In reality Pakistani military has all along fought only Taliban groups with no connection with Taliban fighting 80 % US forces in Afghanistan ! This happened because some brilliant sage in US intelligence came up with the idea that the real terrorists were in FATA !
It is incomprehensible why US satellite imagery cannot make out that there are no Pakistani troops cordoning the entire 1500 Km Pakistan Afghan border through which some 80 % of Taliban fighting 80 % of US forces cross without a visa and without any immigration control !
"You can do something that costs you no money," Jones said. "It may be politically difficult, but it's the right thing to do if you really have the future of your country in mind. And that is to reject all forms of terrorism as a viable instrument of national policy inside your borders."
"We rejected it," Zardari responded.
Jones and Panetta had heard such declarations before. But whatever Pakistan was doing with the many terrorist groups operating inside its borders, it wasn't good or effective enough. For the past year, that country's main priority was taking on its homegrown branch of the Taliban, a network known as Tehrik-e-Taliban, or TTP.
Here again Woodward misses the real point ! He states that " Pakistans priority is its home grown Taliban TTP " but fails to note that US has also been droning only the areas where the Pakistani TTP is located and that the USA has never droned the Pakistani bases of some 80 % Taliban ! Woodward needs badly a map orientation and so does President Obama and more so the DCI of CIA ! Even a child knows the map better than Woodward !
Panetta pulled out a "link chart," developed from FBI interviews and other intelligence, that showed how TTP had assisted the Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad.
The TTP is badly hit in Pakistan by both Pakistani forces and US drones ! Here again Woodward badly misses the point ! Why has US failed to significantly attack or drone attack the leadership of 80 % Taliban fighting 80 % US forces !
"Look, this is it," Panetta told Zardari.
"This is the network. Leads back here." He traced it out with his finger. "And we're continuing to pick up intelligence streams that indicate TTP is going to conduct other attacks in the United States."
Again a storm in a teacup ! Faisal Shahzad was a shabby ill trained man who miserably failed in his training of basic explosives !
This was a matter of solid intelligence, Panetta said, not speculation.
Solid intelligence ! What a joke ! How did 9/11 happen ! You read CIAs history " The Ashes" and you find that the CIA has never had anything to do with solid intelligence ! They were so incompetent that they could not even body search sources entering their secret facilities in Khost which resulted in some 11 CIA fatal casualties !
Jones and Panetta then turned to the disturbing intelligence about Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group behind the horrific 2008 Mumbai attacks that had killed 175, including six Americans.
What has the USA done about Lashkar e Tayyaba ! This is Indias problem and the Indian intelligence are dealing with it ! The LeT , Excellency Bob Woodward is an Indian problem and the Indians are dealing with it !The Indian record in COIN is far better than US record and so far India has not been kicked out of any place like Vietnam the way the naieve Americans were !
Pakistani authorities are holding the commander of the Mumbai attacks, Jones said, but he is not being adequately interrogated and "he continues to direct LeT operations from his detention center." Intelligence shows that Lashkar-e-Taiba is threatening attacks in the United States and that the possibility "is rising each day."
Zardari didn't seem to get it.
"Mr. President," said Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi,
who was also at the meeting,
"This is what they are saying. . . . They're saying that if,
in fact, there is a successful attack in the United States,
they will take steps to deal with that here,
and that we have a responsibility to now cooperate
with the United States."
Poor foreign minister Qureshi only deals with Maputo and Botswana ! The rest of foreign policy is run by Pakistans military bureaucracy !
"If something like that happens," Zardari said defensively, "it doesn't mean that somehow we're suddenly bad people or something. We're still partners."
Afterward, the Americans met privately with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, chief of the Pakistani army and the most powerful figure in the country.
In Pakistan it is the army chief that runs the show ! Pakistan after all is an army with a state and not a state with an army !
Although Kayani had graduated from the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., he was a product of the Pakistani military system - nearly 40 years of staring east to the threat posed by India, its adversary in several wars since both countries were established in 1947.
This was part of a Pakistani officer's DNA. It was hard, perhaps impossible, for a Pakistani general to put down his binoculars, turn his head over his shoulder and look west to Afghanistan.
Jones told Kayani that the clock was starting now on Obama's four requests. Obama wanted a progress report in 30 days, Jones said.
Kayani would not budge much. He had other concerns. "I'll be the first to admit, I'm India-centric," he said.
Panetta laid out a series of additional requests for CIA operations. Obama had approved these operations during an October 2009 session of the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review.
The CIA director had come to believe that the Predator and other unmanned aerial vehicles were the most precise weapons in the history of warfare. He wanted to use them more often.
Pakistan allowed Predator drone flights in specified geographic areas called "boxes." Because the Pakistanis had massive numbers of ground troops in the south, they would not allow a box in that area.
"We need to have that box," Panetta said. "We need to be able to conduct our operations."
Kayani said he would see that they had some access.
Now where does the Americans need boxes ! My sources state that they have never demanded any boxes other than FATA !
Jones and Panetta left feeling as though they had taken only baby steps. "How can you fight a war and have safe havens across the border?" Panetta asked in frustration. "It's a crazy kind of war."
What can poor Panetta change ! Every war is crazy and USA is already a party in negotiations with Pakistan linked 80 % Taliban ! So where is the war ! How many Americans have died in Afghanistan in last eight years ! Can US attacks in Afghanistan be seen as anything beyond puny pin pricks !
The United States needed some kind of ground forces to eliminate the safe havens, Panetta concluded. The CIA had its own forces, a 3,000-man secret army of Afghans known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Some of these pursuit teams were now conducting cross-border operations in Pakistan.
Now where is this famed force ! I did see Americans training some clowns in the Commando school in Rishkor near Kabul ! The Wazirs and Mehsuds brilliant marksmen still preferring bolt action Lee Enfields would welcome these 3000 Quixitos !
This is a grand yarn spun by Woodward or Panetta !
"We can't do this without some boots on the ground," Panetta said. "They could be Pakistani boots or they can be our boots, but we got to have some boots on the ground."
Army Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, the National Security Council coordinator for Afghanistan and Pakistan, also traveled with Jones and Panetta to Pakistan. He supervised the writing of a three-page trip report to the president that Jones signed.
It contained a pessimistic summary, noting first the gap between the civilian and military authority in Pakistan. The United States was getting nowhere fast with these guys. They were talking with Zardari, who could deliver nothing. Kayani had the power to deliver, but he refused to do much. Nobody could tell him otherwise. The bottom line was depressing: This had been a charade.
Jones said he was alarmed that success in Afghanistan was tied to what the Pakistanis would or would not do. As he saw it, the United States could not "win" in Afghanistan as long as the Pakistani safe havens remained. It was a "cancer" on the plan the president had announced at the end of 2009.
Interesting rhetoric with no connection with reality ! Despite so much expense that the US taxpayers have made in trillions in Afghanistan , I remembering many times entering Kabul as recently as last month without being checked at any security point after 11 o clock at night !
The US is fighting a losing war ! Reinforcing failure in Afghanistan ! Secretly negotiating with Talibans through Pakistani military intelligence's support !
I do remember meeting a spirited US officer in Kabul who described his superiors as W____t P______s hiding behind e mails and he said this is why the US would lose this war ! Doug Scherer had summed it up brilliantly in 2005 !
Second, the report said the Pakistanis did not have the same sense of urgency as the Americans. There were regular terrorist strikes in Pakistan, so they could not understand the traumatic impact of a single, small attack on the U.S. homeland.
If the Americans get traumatized then God help this so called super power ! What a disgrace !
The Pakistanis were making another mistake by applying that same logic to India, in Jones's view. If Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group behind the Mumbai attacks, struck there again, India would not be able to show the kind of restraint that it had then. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had barely survived Mumbai politically, would have to respond.
The Indians know counter insurgency far better than Americans and the Americans should worry about their own flanks and rear or their soft under belly !
The options for Obama would be significantly narrowed in the aftermath of an attack originating out of Pakistan. Before such an attack, however, he had more options, especially if Pakistan made good on his four requests.
After the Jones-Panetta trip, Pakistan's cooperation on visa requests did improve. When I interviewed Obama two months after the failed Times Square bombing, he highlighted Pakistan's recent counterterrorism efforts. "They also ramped up their cooperation in a way that over the last 18 months has hunkered down al-Qaeda in a way that is significant," he said.
"But still not enough," I interjected.
"Well, exactly," Obama said.
One expects Woodward to be more subtle in future !
CHEERS AGHA H AMIN
--
Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death." --
Albert Einstein !!!
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22151765/History-of-Pakistan-Army-from-1757-to-1971http://www.scribd.com/doc/21693873/Indo-Pak-Wars-1947-71-A-STRATEGIC-AND-OPERATIONAL-ANALYSIS-BY-A-H-AMINhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/21686885/TALIBAN-WAR-IN-AFGHANISTANhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/22455178/Letters-to-Command-and-Staff-College-Quetta-Citadel-Journalhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/23150027/Pakistan-Army-through-eyes-of-Pakistani-Generalshttp://www.scribd.com/doc/23701412/War-of-Independence-of-1857http://www.scribd.com/doc/22457862/Pakistan-Army-Journal-The-Citadelhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/21952758/1971-India-Pakistan-Warhttp://www.scribd.com/doc/25171703/BOOK-REVIEWS-BY-AGHA-H-AMIN
