The Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon" Award VII

This time around the coveted "What A Maroon!" Award goes to the foreign policy component of the Obama administration.  Rarely has an administration equaled, let alone exceeded the current one's capacity to be totally divorced from the real world requirements of national interest.  While the Obama foreign policy "Team" has tried hard to demonstrate just how far its policies could be removed from either reality or national interest, their handling of Pakistan surpasses all former gaffes.

Hilary Clinton announced the awarding of a two billion dollar package of aid to the Pakistani military.  With an irony far outstripping the merely heavy handed, the announcement came only hours after the same brain trust alluded to the possibility of barring some Pakistani military units from receiving American largess or training due to personnel from these formations having engaged in extrajudicial executions--at least one of which was caught on video.

By law the US government is precluded from providing aid to military forces which grossly violate the laws of land warfare or those governing human rights.  For reasons left unexplained the Secretary of State did not make any reference to the possible sanctions when passing the word of the latest attempt to bribe the Pakistani government and military.

The US government has a long, bi-partisan history of offering bribes to Islamabad.  These bribes have been unsolicited on rare occasions.  More typically the lads in Islamabad--whether in uniform or mufti--make extortionate demands of the give-us-money-or-something-horrid-but-unspecified-will-happen variety.  The US government showing the courage of a rabbit and the intellectual vacuity of a snail always pays up.

And so it is with Ms Clinton and the others of Team Obama.  Even Secretary of Defense Gates, a man normally well known for his realism, integrity, and intelligence has gone along with the grim charade.  This is most unfortunate as it provides a gloss of respectability to a policy which is both indefensible and contrary to longer term US interests in the region.

Bob Gates, after all, was around in the days of the Reagan administration.  He was there when all hands down in the lower levels of the food chain who were both situationally aware and unheeding of careers warned against turning over more responsibility to the Pakistanis in the end game period of the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.  In those here-there-be-tiger days, the low ranking field hands stated categorically that further Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan would redound ultimately against the better interests of both the Afghans and the US.

The decision makers in and near the Oval trusted the assurances from Islamabad.  They trusted in the power of American bribes.  They trusted in the ability of the Pakistanis to stay bought once we paid their price.

Of course this attitude was unjustified by mere facts, the facts of Pakistani (and Muslim) history, the facts of the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict.  Afghanistan was an annoying sideshow.  Pakistan had been pro-US during all the years when the Indians were locked in a love fest with Moscow.  And, the Pakistanis came cheap--or so it seemed way back then.

It is not that the US did not know what Islamabad's ambitions in Afghanistan were twenty years ago.  We knew them as well as we know the current plans harbored by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the army.  Then as now Pakistan wants to have operational dominance over Afghanistan for reasons outlined in numerous previous posts.

Ignoring Islamabad's plans were part of the bribe in those bygone years.  Similarly, the US had to publicly ignore Pakistan's nuclear hopes--until Islamabad pushed the "Fire!" button.  Even then, presented by an accomplished feat, the US rejoinders to this act of obstreperous nuclear proliferation was mild, not to say weak of knee.  Another part of the never ending bribery.

An unreasoning fear of just what the Pakistanis might or might not do has rendered the Islamabad extortion plot all the more effective.  It has forced our silence over the policies in Afghanistan.  It has forced our acceptance of their nuclear capacity without measurable cost to the proliferator.  It has cost us literally billions of dollars.

To date the positive results have been so close to zilch that an electron microscope would be necessary to detect them.  The negative consequences are far more evident.  They include among others: Taliban, the A.Q. Khan network, the origins of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the stoking of Indo-Pakistani tensions, the support of terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere, and the emboldening of advocates of violent political Islam .

Whew!

With that record it is hard to find any real world based justification for the latest bribe.  It comes hard on the heels of two previous handsome gratuities--the seven plus billion dollar multi-year civilian aid program and the enormous flood rescue and reconstruction effort.  In return for this set of payments, totalling well over ten billion dollars, the US must plan (hope?) to get something in return other than that mythical quality, "good will."

The US expects (wishes?) that in return for these commitments the Pakistani government and military will undertake two critical actions.  One is simply that the army will get off its collective duff and take the war to the final redoubts in North Waziristan.  The other is that neither ISI nor the army nor the government will attempt to derail the tentative talks between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.

The talks which have been admitted to by both Afghan and US officials are in their earliest and most delicate stages.  The talks are underway in response to the success of the US/ISAF/Afghan national forces campaigns to date, particularly that near Kandahar.  (Even the NYT had to admit that we were having real success there, much to its chagrin.)

Taliban, or, more accurately, elements of Taliban are seeing that the better alternative is a political settlement giving them a role in Afghanistan's future.  Intentionally, Mullah Omar has been excluded from the talks along with others of high rank and under the control of ISI.  The position of many even in the Quetta Shura is that Omar's day has come and gone.  There is also a wide spread realization that too many in Taliban and other insurgent groups have suffered too much and too long not for Afghanistan and the Afghan people or even Islam but rather for the agenda of Islamabad, the ambitions of ISI.

In short, nationalism has conspired with battlefield realities to convince more than a few in Taliban that the time to give peace a chance is upon them.  The Karzai government, nationalist to the core, could not agree more.  Beyond that the Karzai government (and at least some in Taliban) know the US and its Western partners will be leaving.  Perhaps leaving soon.

They also understand perfectly that Pakistan is not leaving.  Pakistan is quite willing and able to use any and all means to control Afghan affairs for its own purposes and reasons.  No good Afghan is willing to accept that.  As has been the case before, nationalism trumps the "universal" nature of Islam.  The Pakistanis have ridden the Prophet's Horse too long and too hard.

Still the ISI and other Pakistan players have the potential to play the spoilers role.  There is no doubt but many in the army as well as the civilian government would be willing to do just that.  It is important to the US, our allies, and the Afghans that Pakistan not stop the talks or halt the move to peace in some other way.

Enter the bribe.

It won't be enough.  The Pakistanis will not abandon their goal of having operational dominance over Afghanistan any more than they will abandon their constant building of new and better nuclear systems.  Both are central to their anti-India focus.  While the specter of India may be a phantom now, it is the phantom which will not vanish with the coming of day.  Fear and loathing of India is not simply the only justification for the army's existence at its bloated and expensive level, it is the existential foundation of Pakistan.

It does not matter that there is no reality behind the black myth of India, its existence is central to the continued existence of Pakistan.  Should Pakistanis ever come to grips with the unpleasant truth that Muslims in India not only do not live at some disadvantage compared to their Hindu neighbors but actually have a present standard of living as well as future prospects which exceed those of most Pakistanis things might change.  But, absent that level of a sanity attack, nothing will alter for the better.

Not that anything so banal as reality will beat myth enhanced by generations of internally directed propaganda and reinforced by religion.

Pakistan will try to stop the talks.  Similarly, the army will not move with effectiveness against North Waziristan.  Moving against ones own clients is not in the cards. Or, so dictates the voice of reality.

The bribes will not work.  They will only encourage more demands, more extortion, more reluctance to offer more than minimal compliance to US policy requirements.

Admittedly, the latest bribes come with some thin, slight strings.  The conditions are enough to cause howls of protest from the ever-so-sensitive nationalists of the army and government.  They are not sufficient to have any benefits from the American perspective.

Mental illness, it has been said, exists when a person repeats the same unsuccessful efforts irrespective of experience.  The same might be said of governments, which, after all, are mere assemblages of individuals.

Or, they might just get the "What A Maroon!" Award.