We're the Military and Airpower Guys of Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online + a stray we found wandering around looking lost. All original material JHD, BHD, JR, WT, and KA 2003-2010 http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2008/07/central_front_o.html Thu, 21 Jan 2010 15:55:42 Z Movable Type 4.12 en Copyright 2010 http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2008/07/central_front_o.html http://www.thedonovan.com/archives/2008/07/central_front_o.html Mon, 21 Jul 2008 00:23:21 -0600
The only thing that has prevented Pakistan from dissolving into chaos has been the rise of politicians who knew how to form lasting alliances or to recruit huge numbers of voters into the party ranks. They do that by morphing into a strong parental figure -- the Family Bhutto knew how to play the role so well that Daddy and Daughter only fell from grace when each one's corruption became too blatant to ignore.

When one politician with a strong Salafist base starts rising, there's going to be trouble. The Pak military has always been apolitical and religiously moderate, but the security forces are heavily sympathetic to the Taliban -- they're just not overt about it because Musharraf purged the ISI upper echelons of the officers making jihadi noises a few years ago, and the rest have either been toeing the line or channeling their sympathies to the Kashmiri terrs working the Line of Control area between Pakistan and India.

Oh, and when Shakespeare said, "First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," he must've foreseen Pakistan...
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GO is a game where if your white pieces surround a black piece totally, that black piece becomes white.

For a few years, Syria and Iran looked like they were going to crush Iraq between them and assimilate that nation as an ally. But Iraq and Afghanistan can do the same thing to Iran. And Iraq and Israel can do the same thing to Syria. And Pakistan and Iran can do the same thing to Afghanistan.

Pure strategy is always interesting, oftentimes more interesting than tactics.
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When I saw that census in the CIA World Fact Book when the debates about Pakistan first began soon after 9/11, I was amazed that this was NEVER reported in the media, when the media was "gung ho" about invading or bombing Pakistan.

That's a lot of terrorists, "I thought". Or potential terrorists. And you know why I thought that? Because when the Cartoon Jihad came about, Google had a map up by somebody that tallied the number of incidences geography and the size of the protests or caliber of violence produced.

Pakistan's entire NORTHERN border was full of those little black and red balloons. Each one indicating a riot or protest against the "cartoons".

Woah, that's a lot of grassroots support going on there.
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