Spencer Ackerman talks to Barnett Rubin. Rubin says that with Bhutto dead, American strategy is "in tatters."
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Early Pakistan Punditry
27 Dec 2007 10:08 am
Comments (11)
How is American strategy in tatters? Musharraf is the American strategy. Everything seems to be going according to the plan.
Musharraf is the Cheney strategy.
Almost by definition, it's in tatters.
was it really untattered before the assassination?
Nope. It has been tatterific for months.
Yeah, but Cheney's strategy is the American strategy; what other strategy is there - Rubin's, Ackerman's, Yglesias'? That's just hot air.
what other strategy is there
It just got assassinated. I'll grant you, it was definitely the second tier approach.
I was excited at first because I assumed Bhutto was an Iranian scientist. I thought the US finally grew a pair and took Instaputz's brilliant advice and started taking nasty civilians out around the globe. But since the assassination of Bhutto won't be good for the US, I think we should all condemn it and become morally outraged at these raghead barbarians ("all they know is how to kill" and so on). Thank God we don't do stuff like this.
Pakistan is a mess, and the assassination of Bhutto is a big loss, but the idea that events in Pakistan have been, or could be determined, to any great extent by American policy is unrealistic. It's all we can do to influence things at the margin.
Wasn't Bhutto very widely suspected of having assassinated her own brother a few years back in their political struggle for control of Pakistan?
Given the obvious risks, I'm really not sure why she decided to go back to Pakistan. Maybe she'd lost too many of her stolen billions in bad hedge-fund CDO investments, and needed to go home to pick up a few more...
I think the real problem is that America's recent behavior toward the entire Muslim world has now rendered our image so totally toxic that being perceived as "America's friend" is almost a death-sentence. This certainly wasn't true in previous periods...
I don't think "in tatters" quite captures the flavor of the strategy. The strategy, anointing puppets and trying to orchestrate the internal affairs of a foreign government, is fundamentally flawed. Assassination of the puppet is the most obvious reason why.
The United States government in general, and the Bush Administration in particular, is simply not capable of choosing good proxies. History has proven this over and over, in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central America, South America, the Philippines, Cuba, Haiti, and so on.
Even with the best intelligence in the world, the President just doesn't know these people. He can't ascertain their motivations, can't imagine how they'll handle the corrupting influences of power, and can't predict how they will react to unforeseen future events. The puppet strategy comes back to bite us in the ass, time and time again.
It's like having an affair with a married person. If they cheat with you, they'll cheat on you. How does one ensure the loyalty of someone who's known to be corruptible? By forever remaining the highest bidder, of course. This raises another important question: who's the puppet and who's the master?
Thus, the puppet strategy faces long odds, even for a good President. Given his open hostility towards facts he didn't want to hear, Bush's odds are far worse. Still, even had Bush miraculously beaten the odds and chosen the perfect proxy to execute the most brilliant strategy, poof! She's dead.
Nah, Jalmari, it's nothing like "having an affair with a married person". It's exactly like the mob, mafia. You're the godfather and they are your capos and lieutenants. When you find out that they cheat you whack them and promote the next guy. It's not too complicated.
"the idea that events in Pakistan have been, or could be determined, to any great extent by American policy is unrealistic. It's all we can do to influence things at the margin."
So why did we spend $10 billion of taxpayer money trying to influence those events?
This is my main point. There was never any need to "support" Musharraf since he can't - or won't or both - do anything about either Al Qaeda or the Taliban anyway.
All this candidate talk about "going into Pakistan" or "focusing on Pakistan" is as stupid as the notion of invading Afghanistan was (let alone Iraq.)
Afghanistan was not the problem. Iraq was not the problem. Pakistan is not the problem. Al Qaeda is only peripherally the problem.
The problem is US foreign policy.
There was never a need to "get" bin Laden, and certainly never a need to do so by invading Afghanistan and overthrowing an irrelevant government. Al Qaeda could have been dealt with in other ways.
The exact same situation now exists in Pakistan (because we drove the "problem" next door by our stupid invasion.)
Comments closed January 10, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
was it really untattered before the assassination?
Posted by upyernoz | December 27, 2007 10:27 AM