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Read other letters about this article
to those who think Obama's judgment on foreign policy is so wonderful. This incident is evidence of how unstable the Indian subcontinent. Sec. Gates and Obama are invested in the notion that putting more troops in Afghanistan and invading Pakistan will calm the terrorist situation. The fact is that the attacks were caused by Indian security services cracking down on Muslims in their country. They beat them in the streets of the slums, invade their homes, and jail them indiscriminately. Also, this is also directly related to the Indo-Pakistani war in Kashmir. Not everything is about al-Qaeda and the US "war on terror."
Should Obama make the error of invading Pakistan (launching air strikes counts as an invasions and does any insertion of military personnel however small or brief) just for the purpose of catching Bin Laden, it will destabilize their already fragile government. Even if Bin Laden is still alive, his message has become viral to the point that he is largely irrelevant. Terrorists of all stripes have adopted his business model. Crossing the Pakistani border to capture him in order for Obama to appear tough on terror would be insane. The Pakistani government has already expressed its objection to Obama's promise of invasion. Pakistani citizens are outraged by the idea. If the government does not retaliate it would be severely compromised and undermined to the point that Islamic extremists could easily seize power, perhaps by democratic means. Then they would have legitimate and lawful access to 150 nuclear warheads. Their first order of business would have nothing to do with the US, it would be India. They would do anything to settle the conflict in Kashmir by blowing it into oblivion, if need be. It would most likely act on the mutually assured destruction these two warring states have invested in. Anyone who thinks India would just wait around for the radical Islamists, who are nihilists, to attack them first, is crazy. India would likely strike first. If Obama wants to plunge the subcontinent into nuclear war by further destabilizing the fragile Pakistani government, he is well on his way. Bellicosity and trying to look like Johnny Badass will not do in this case. Obama seems to think that a troop surge in Afghanistan like the one in Iraq will help. The problem is that Baghdad proper, the place where the surge took place, has roads leading in and out of it. Afghanistan has little or no infrastructure to speak of. The violence takes place in small pockets of the country. It is not centralized like the violence in Iraq. There is no way to transport thousands more troops throughout Afghanistan and no place to put them. Obama, Gates, Clinton, and the rest of them who have this one troop model fits all notion of foreign policy are mistaken. I hope Obama rethinks this good judgment call of his, but based on a call he made to Pres. Karzai, I doubt it.
There is the strong possibility that Islamic extremists who could take over Pakistan would provide terrorist cells with nuclear material to make a dirty bomb to detonate here. Obama and his brain trust seem well on their way to helping that process along.
