Pakistan Is Not The Enemy
It has long been public knowledge that elements of the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) have been working actively with terrorist groups. The Mumbai attacks in India have been directly attributed to intelligence agents in Pakistan, and although not confirmed, at least suspected in many other attacks.
The story isn't much different in Afghanistan and inside Pakistan itself. Reports have surfaced indicating that elements of the ISI have been training and arming Taliban militants to fight inside the country as well as in Afghanistan. It's an unfortunate circumstance that the Pakistanian government is in, finding itself at odds at different times with the military and the Intelligence services. However, Pakistan has never been so willing to take the fight to its ungoverned areas, allowing NATO and Pakistani forces to capture and kill record numbers of al'Queda and taliban leaders. If anything, the new course set by President Obama in the efforts to bring stability to the region has borne fruit in the sense that after 9 years of stagnation, goals are beginning to be met.
The reason the issue of Pakistan has become so prominent today is because of the website Wikileaks, which has released a total of over 90,000 leaked documents (mostly reports from soldiers and intelligence officers) which indicates a duplicitous role being played by Pakistan. After very briefly scanning some of the documents I can say that it does paint a bad picture of the progress being made, but it should be noted that the documents end in December of 2009 before the President initiated the new strategy.
The bottom line is that it's a complicated situation and shouldn't be boiled down into talking points for political gamesmanship like I saw from Joe Scarborough this morning. I've even heard people like him say that nation building isn't working despite only having tried it for 7 months after the failure of military tactics for 9 years. Thankfully, Mika Brzezinski's father and former National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski was asked to be on the show to give his thoughts on the subject, which I believe thoroughly debunk the armchair analysis from Joe.
Watch the clip below:
The story isn't much different in Afghanistan and inside Pakistan itself. Reports have surfaced indicating that elements of the ISI have been training and arming Taliban militants to fight inside the country as well as in Afghanistan. It's an unfortunate circumstance that the Pakistanian government is in, finding itself at odds at different times with the military and the Intelligence services. However, Pakistan has never been so willing to take the fight to its ungoverned areas, allowing NATO and Pakistani forces to capture and kill record numbers of al'Queda and taliban leaders. If anything, the new course set by President Obama in the efforts to bring stability to the region has borne fruit in the sense that after 9 years of stagnation, goals are beginning to be met.
The reason the issue of Pakistan has become so prominent today is because of the website Wikileaks, which has released a total of over 90,000 leaked documents (mostly reports from soldiers and intelligence officers) which indicates a duplicitous role being played by Pakistan. After very briefly scanning some of the documents I can say that it does paint a bad picture of the progress being made, but it should be noted that the documents end in December of 2009 before the President initiated the new strategy.
The bottom line is that it's a complicated situation and shouldn't be boiled down into talking points for political gamesmanship like I saw from Joe Scarborough this morning. I've even heard people like him say that nation building isn't working despite only having tried it for 7 months after the failure of military tactics for 9 years. Thankfully, Mika Brzezinski's father and former National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski was asked to be on the show to give his thoughts on the subject, which I believe thoroughly debunk the armchair analysis from Joe.
Watch the clip below:
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