POLITICAL MADNESS: LINDSEY GRAHAM AND THE WAR AGAINST
PAKISTAN
Senator Lindsey Graham the main adherent
of the eternal war of America against the world calls up for the
conflict with Pakistan now. During his recent interview to the Fox News
he claimed the following: «Pakistani participation in the hostile
activities against the USA and our ally Afghanistan has
to be stopped...»
Senator Lindsey Graham the main adherent
of the eternal war of America against the world calls up for the
conflict with Pakistan now. During his recent interview to the Fox News
he claimed the following: «Pakistani participation in the hostile
activities against the USA and our ally Afghanistan has
to be stopped...»
He made this comment after the U.S. authorities accused ISI (Pakistani
Inter-Services Intelligence) of supporting the Haqqani insurgent group.
ISI employees might have allegedly directed its members to attack the U.S.
embassy on the 13th of September. While speaking
in Senate, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, called the group a direct extension of the Pakistani
body.
Almost instantly after a miraculous Graham’s statement a number
of comment (even by Al-Jazeera) appeared, precisely reflecting the
problems that the USA may face in case if it brings the
initiatives of Graham and other «hawks», standing for the strong-arm
policy in the relationship with Pakistan, to life. The essence
of those comments may be reduced to the following:
1) The USA is unable to achieve any sound success in Afghanistan
without close cooperation with Pakistan. Pakistan itself is a knot
of intertwined problems and internal contradictions — agenda
of its civil government doesn’t match the military priorities. Military
priorities, though, contradict the ISI vision of the situation, which has
turned into the political power of its own long time ago. ISI itself
consists of groups, which aspirations are completely opposite
at times. Yet, Pakistan has already lost and keeps losing thousands
of soldiers and intelligence officers, fighting against Pashto separatism
and Afghani fundamentalists. Is the USA ready to assume this
burden?
2) Pakistan is a nuclear state. The USA has never had an open
conflict with a nuclear power and striving to gain such experience
would be unwise. During the Cold War there was a term «guaranteed
mutual destruction». There are no grounds whatsoever to think that
the term loses its topicality when the USA faces an enemy with
an inferior nuclear potential.
3) Today Pakistan is an ally of China. Bringing Graham’s
initiative to life will finally push Islamabad towards the Beijing
embrace. In case the USA clashes with Pakistan, China will hardly abandon
its ally, whom it treats as an ’ace upon a sleeve’ in the
upcoming conflict with India. Pakistani-American war will hardly grow into
a Sino-American one, but will aggravate their relationship
up to utterly unforeseen consequences.
4) The strength of a Pakistani army makes up 610 thousand people
and may be increased by half a million of reservists
if need be. If 15 thousand Taliban fighters fetter dozen
thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan, how many of them
will be required to fight an army of more than
a million people?
5) Pakistani population us more than 170 million people. Let’s
be frank about it, the USA were powerless to fight Iraqi
insurgents in a country with 25-million-strong population. What
awaits American army in a hostile country with a seven times
larger population?
An obvious fact is constantly left out of the hawks’
sight — Pakistani-American alliance is a marriage
of convenience and the field of their cooperation is rather
narrow. Without doubt, Pakistan is interested in weakening
of the «old-school» Taliban and the Hezb-e Islami of Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar. At that, part of ISI officers tends to maintain the
Haqqani network, based in the North Waziristan. Their goal
is obvious — to keep an efficient tool for holding the
Afghani situation in leash after the USA and its NATO allies
leave it. Pakistan is the U.S. ally in the fight against
Taliban — but only against a certain part of Taliban and nothing
more. As for the other «enemies of America», Pakistan has quite
definite plans of using them, part of which it already started
bringing to life, preparing for the «post-American Afghani» game. Nothing
new here. In the geopolitical games, «enemy of a friend»
is not necessarily «my enemy»...
Frankly speaking, describing Lindsey Graham as a mirror image
of the Washington «hawks», we have to mention that Pakistan
wasn’t actually the only goal of his bellicosity. He also
consistently assures everyone that the U.S. troops cannot be brought out
of Iraq. His main argument is that in this case Iraq inevitably
falls under Iranian influence. «The U.S mission» — Graham states
«Is preventing Iran from strengthening».
It goes without saying that Iraq was the U.S. stronghold, standing against
the Islamic Republic of Iran up to 2002. Iraq «opened up»
to Iranian influence after a non-provoked America aggression and
Graham was one of the fiercest adherents of that war.
Erroneous actions, that Graham called for then led to the consequences,
which the same Senator urged to fix with another war. If that’s not
a political madness, then I don’t know what is.
By Igor Pankratenko
|
