Ideas in Bill Roggio's Head

Bill Roggio muses over at The Weekly Standard:

How Do We Fix Pakistan?

Robert Kagan offers an interesting potential solution to Pakistan’s problem of Islamist extremist groups threatening the viability of the state: "Have the international community declare that parts of Pakistan have become ungovernable and a menace to international security. Establish an international force to work with the Pakistanis to root out terrorist camps in Kashmir as well as in the tribal areas."

The problem with this approach is...

Got any idea how that sentence will end? Will he say the problem is that something called the "international community" could never get together and agree to do this? Or that no international group is going to just suggest it's a good idea to steal parts of a country that has access to a nuclear bomb? This is a crazy neo-con Army Men game that Bill and Robert are considering. How does he finish that sentence?

The problem with this approach is the roots of extremism run deeper than just at the fringes of the tribal areas and in Kashmir. Taliban, al Qaeda, and other extremist activists and sympathizers are entrenched in the intelligence and security services. Terror groups aren't just based in Waziristan and Kashmir.

So the problem with this idea of just everyone in the world getting together and invading and taking parts of Pakistan away from it is just that that would not be enough?! You'd have to really get to it and invade lots of the country and take away all the problem parts and people and ideologies, and you'd want to make sure you did with an "international community" that you got together.

Thanks a lot, you fucking moron.

And don't miss his early submission for dumb-ass paragraph of the year.

After NATO’s debacle in Afghanistan, what international force is going to be willing to take on Pakistan’s Islamists, who make Afghanistan’s extremists look like armed boy scouts in comparison? NATO countries are balking at the historically low casualty rates in Afghanistan and are looking to cut and run. And after trumpeting U.S. casualties in Iraq, will the American public and our political elites stand for similar if not higher casualty rates in Pakistan as were encountered in Iraq?

No other debacle to mention?

"cut and run?" You guys still say that anymore?

Seems he's suggesting that he has the steely reserve to face high casualty rates, where the American public and "political elites" do not



Update: After some consideration, I think it's fair to point out that the quote from Kagan does actually envision "an international force to work with the Pakistanis." That is clearly not the same as the "stealing" I felt he was implying, although I still believe the response from Bill is misdirected. The "problem with this approach" should focus on what Pakistan might think if told "hey, we all got together and came over for an intervention about part of your country - let's do it together, mkay?", or on the potential that such an "international force" could actually reach agreement to do such a thing. But instead, Bill's take is that such an "international force" would actually have to work "with Pakistan" to fix all of Pakistan, not just some sections. This is even less realistic a level of Call of Duty to imagine.