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Invade Pakistan?

By Michael Crowley | @CrowleyTIME | October 21, 2010 | +

Considering what may be the toughest foreign policy quandary of Barack Obama’s presidency, Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security reminds us of a famous credo:

“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.”

Exum continues:

George Bush said that on 11 September 2001. And whatever you think of the former president, not distinguishing between transnational terror groups and the individuals, groups and states that sponsor them makes a high degree of sense. What to do, then, about a country that, on the one hand, supplies much of the intelligence that allows the United States and its allies to target al-Qaeda but, on the other hand, most certainly also sponsors transnational terror groups to promote its own foreign policy? That’s our Pakistan problem in a nutshell, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone that U.S. policy toward Pakistan is schizophrenic….

Maybe we should invade (or threaten to invade) Pakistan’s tribal areas, suggests former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad :

The United States should demand that Pakistan shut down all sanctuaries and military support programs for insurgents or else we will carry out operations against those insurgent havens, with or without Pakistani consent…. [T]he Obama administration should be forcing Pakistan to make some choices — between supporting the United States or supporting extremists.

Wait! Bad idea, argues a former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Ryan Crocker:

[T]he U.S. should not carry out cross-border military actions, which I strongly resisted as ambassador. They are clearly counterproductive, and not just because we hit the wrong target. If NATO can carry out military actions in Pakistan from the west, Pakistanis wonder, what stops India from doing the same from the east? There are other options, including drone strikes, which the U.S. is now coordinating more closely with Pakistanis.

So it goes with Pakistan. I wish I had a pithy summary for this debate, but it defies simple solutions. For the moment, our policy seems to consist of heavy drone strikes, private pressure, and lots of giving the Pakistanis more of what they want.

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  • deconstructiva

    Michael, thanks for upcoming debate and realistic last paragraph, but can we like totally finish all our other wars first before starting another one? I’m sure the MIC will find other ways to keep making millions in profits busy. Maybe we could spending war money here at home on our jobs / economy, HC, and cleaning up mortgage fraud, but I digress.

  • nflfoghorn

    Since we more or less know where OBL is now, are we going to tell the Pakistani govt that either you get him or we will (hopefully a drop-a-bomb-and-get-out thing)? I know we’d be invading their space but that would put a rush on ending this Afghanistan war.

  • http://gum0nshoe.wordpress.com gumOnShoe

    I’ve been waiting to hear this argument for either Pakistan, as I just did, or Yemen. Yemen is currently doing something to find the terrorists, but it might not be successful, whereas Pakistan, a nuclear armed nation, is far closer to our current interests and we’re almost positive has within its borders, Osama Bin Laden (aka leader of Al Qaeda the group that caused 9/11).

    While you might argue we should invade, I don’t believe we have the resources, be them real, emotional or what have you, to sustain yet another war. But, considering this is really the largest front in the war in Afghanistan it still goes the other way.

    Maybe what we should just do is out fit a few hummers with some of those drone remote controls, pop some tyco rc cars with cameras in the back of them and have them scout out the neighborhoods where we think Osama is and have the remote vehicle make the hit, with some solar panels or something to recharge the batteries.

    Because as crazy as that above solution sounds, it could be done and be more effective than anything else proposed so far.

  • kathy

    I thought we already have invaded Pakistan.

  • apr2563

    Michael, I hope your caution and your admitting you are no expert filters out to the rest of the traditional media. We don’t need another war supported by a complacent, uneducated, self-interested press.

  • stuartzechman

    Seconded.

  • http://forgottenlord.livejournal.com forgottenlord

    I would argue that addressing Pakistan is a far more pressing issue to resolving the War in Afghanistan (for better or for ill) than ending the War in Afghanistan and ending the War in Afghanistan without resolving Pakistan makes resolving Pakistan nearly pointless. Whether that makes a stronger argument for getting out and letting the region collapse or blowing up Pakistan (or something in between) is up to the individual but my point stands.

  • liberalmeltdown

    Nope, no more invasions until we have another major attack.

  • formerlyjames

    We ask the question now? Our foreign policy and war experts should have focused on this before gushing money all over irrelevant middle east endeavors. A day late and a dollar short as the saying goes.

  • Cliff

    Invading Pakistan is a goddamn terrible idea.
    Listening to anything W Bush has to say is a goddamn terrible idea, for that matter.
    .
    We’ve been fighting in Afghanistan for ten years and a trillion dollars, with no end in sight, and Khalilzad wants us to invade another broke-ass mountainous country full of embittered fundamentalists who hate us?
    .
    If we hire any more diplomats like him, we’re going to have to reinstate the draft.

  • allthingsinaname

    Oh come on folks, if you have been paying attention, and I have been saying for months. Pakistan is the only reason we are in Afghanistan.
    .
    We simply can not walk away from those those Nukes, that we have no idea where they are, in the hands of an unstable government.

  • gpanfile

    What really needs to happen here is what happened in the Balkans and has yet to occur in Palestine… fix the mess the British made and left. Kashmir for one, and the obsolete and ridiculous Durand Line for another. Either Pakistan and Afghanistan take responsibility for their Pashtun areas (unlikely if not impossible) or the Pashtuns get their own country and take responsibility for it. And the ongoing mess in Kashmir requires some sort of border redrawing, or creation of a third country. Without addressing these issues, the current mess or a new variant of it will go on, with both India and Pakistan sniping at one another directly and through surrogates both inside and outside Afghanistan and Kashmir, and the Pashtuns playing both sides off of one another in a quest for independence.

    All conflict in this area since the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 has these issues at its roots… 21 years and counting. Either this continues, wasting blood and treasure and signifying and accomplishing nothing, or it escalates to a nuclear confrontation, or it gets settled in some sort of peaceful way. There is no fourth option.

  • michaelfury
  • famosa2008

    1) Osama is in PAKISTAN
    2) Al-Qaeda/Taliban runs out of PAKISTAN
    3) Almost all terrorists have been trained in PAKISTAN

    Why did we invade AFHGANISTAN again?

    Damn, I think we got the wrong *STAN!

  • ohiolibb

    well, at the time of the invasion, Osama was in Afghanistan. A better question would be, why did we invade Iraq again?

  • herby002

    ohiolib,

    Because “he tried to kill my daddy!”

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