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The group blog of The American Prospect

FORGET IRAN. How about a CIA proxy war in Pakistan? That's what the Washington Post's David Ignatius suggests the United States do to root out al-Qaeda factions in the northwest Pakistani province of Waziristan.

Intervening in another Muslim country is risky, to put it mildly. That's why a successful counterinsurgency program would need Pakistani support and why its economic and social development components would be critical ... The United States can begin to take action now against al-Qaeda's new haven. Or we can wait, and hope that we don't get hit again. The biggest danger in waiting is that if retaliation proves necessary later, it could be ill-planned and heavy-handed -- precisely what got us in trouble in Iraq.
But doesn't evidence show that all Bush administration military interventions are ill-planned and heavy-handed? I continue to be amazed by national security experts who would place any trust in this president.

--Dana Goldstein



COMMENTS

"The biggest danger in waiting is that if retaliation proves necessary later, it could be ill-planned and heavy-handed -- precisely what got us in trouble in Iraq."

This guy is as dumb as a box of rocks. Why did "retaliation" ever "prove necessary" in Iraq?

And what got us in trouble in Iraq is precisely what will get us into trouble anywhere we go - violently upsetting the status quo in a foreign country when we don't have the army or the political will to occupy it successfully and stabilize it.

Which, I hope my fellow TAPPED commenters understand, is an arugment against large-scale millitary intervention unless vital to our nation security. I'm not seeing anything like that in Pakistan or Iran at this point.


"The biggest danger in waiting is that if retaliation proves necessary later, it could be ill-planned and heavy-handed -- precisely what got us in trouble in Iraq."

This guy is as dumb as a box of rocks. Why did "retaliation" ever "prove necessary" in Iraq?

And what got us in trouble in Iraq is precisely what will get us into trouble anywhere we go - violently upsetting the status quo in a foreign country when we don't have the army or the political will to occupy it successfully and stabilize it.

Which, I hope my fellow TAPPED commenters understand, is an arugment against large-scale millitary intervention unless vital to our nation security. I'm not seeing anything like that in Pakistan or Iran at this point.


There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That is a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith. I don?t know if best practices have emerged around things like that, but I am sure that your job is clearly identified as a fair game.

Hrmm that was weird, my comment got eaten. Anyway I wanted to say that it's nice to know that someone else also mentioned this as I had trouble finding the same info elsewhere. This was the first place that told me the answer. Thanks.

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TAPPED, the Prospect's award-winning group blog, is a link-intensive collection of musings, ramblings, opinions and other assorted writing on the political developments of the day. See a list of our contributors.

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