Smart diplomacy on the Pakistan border
Yesterday at Blackfive, Matt wrote about the mistaken attack on a remote Pakistani border crossing with Afghanistan which cost the lives of three pakistani soldiers. As a result, Pakistan has closed access to main border crossings by NATO resupply vehicles.
As a result, the New York Times reports that 27 fuel trucks were attacked in Pakistan;
Senior local officials said “extremists” are believed to have carried out the attack on the tankers in the southern town of Shikarpur early on Friday.
About 12 people, with their faces covered, opened fire with small arms in the air to scare away the drivers and then torched some 30 vehicles.
I’m sure a large check written on money we don’t have will make Pakistan forget about the cross-border attacks until next time. I don’t know what intelligence led the drone operators to fly a mission against three man-jammied privates on a border outpost (at least it wasn’t the Chinese Embassy, huh, Matt?) but when you fight a war from the air, these mistakes are bound to happen.
The Obama should make the Pakistani government understand that either they accept the losses from our air campaign or accept US forces on their ground. If the Pakistanis want to be free from the terror inflicted on them from their former allies, those are their only two choices.
Unfortunately, I suspect that the Obama/Biden team will use some more of that “smart diplomacy” bullshit that we’ve watched work so well on Iran.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War
Agreed. We need a Hot Persuit policy with Pakistan. This ain’t Vietnam and this ain’t Hazzard County where if you cross the county line, you’re safe from Sherrif Roscoe P Coltrane.
We need to teach the Taliban that they can make a run for the border, but they will only die tired.
I still don’t understand why we can’t take all the B-52s out of storage and just carpet bomb the hell out of the mountains between the two countrys.
I’m with you Rob. A modern day ‘Operation Arc Light’ is starting to sound appropriate.
There’s more to the story behind the 3 dead Pakis, which were probably Tribal Militia rather than Paki Regular Army.
It was a manned aircraft, likely helo, that crossed into Paki airspace while going after an enemy mortar team. The Paki border guard fired “warning shots” at the bird. The bird returned fire, with greater accuracy. Proving my long held belief that it is stupid to fire at armed aircraft. They probably wouldn’t have known where you were other than those tracers.
Details here: http://waronterrornews.typepad.com/home/2010/10/1-afghan-war-news.html (Other articles cover the cut supply lines & attacks on them.)
Chinese Embassy = Bad maps and have you seen the margin of error for a JDAM (“Smart” Bomb)?
I think they shut the border as a show for the govt (Pakistan, not the O admin) and the ISI to demonstrate to the hardliners/extremists that they are not in our pocket. Panetta was just there to talk about the “European” terror plot.
Jacobite #4: Agreed, AND an Arc Light raid is simply a beautiful thing – from a distance. Watched one from sea at night.
Sorry, not really on topic, but it was spectacular. Akin to watching the New Jersey firing.