The Existential Threat

Posted by lex, on September 29th, 2011

Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen went a little off the reservation this week, openly saying what everyone in the national security establishment knows to be true: Pakistan’s Internal-Services Intelligence directorate – the ISI – is deeply in bed with the same network of jihadists that provoked a 20-hour firefight in Kabul last week. The Haqqani network is tolerated for three reasons in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Area: 1) Because they only attack Afghan and Coalition targets, 2) because Pakistan believes that the Taliban and their Haqqani allies will give them leverage in Afghanistan after the US withdraws, and 3) because launching an army sweep of the FATA will be both too costly in lives, and too emotionally wrenching to the fragile Pakistani body politic.

Credo

"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me."

— John Paul Jones

"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature"

— George Bernard Shaw, Caesar and Cleopatra

"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."

— Friedrich Nietzsche

"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."

— Edmund Burke

"Μολὼν λαβέ"

— Leonidas

"Blogito Ergo Sum"

— Neptunus Lex