[paraclete]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...mpUTgD9H7JU5O1
France declares war on Al Qaeda. I cannot help but wonder if it is true that the French don't live on planet Earth

[Curlyben]

Na, the French just have more important things to think about, like what's for dinner ;)

[speechlesstx]

Well, better late than never I suppose.

[tomder55]

Sarkozy and Fillon are not from the appeasocrat class of Chirac and Dominique De Villapen.

Actually their war against Algeria was a nasty affair. It was a COIN operation that had all the elements of the current conflicts including terrorist bombings in Paris . In roughy a decade the French lost almost 29,000 troops .

[paraclete]

Sarkozy and Fillon are not from the appeasocrat class of Chirac and Dominique De Villapen.

Actually their war against Algeria was a nasty affair. It was a COIN operation that had all the elements of the current conflicts including terrorist bombings in Paris . In roughy a decade the French lost almost 29,000 troops .

Yes, I don't doubt they would like to tell us they were fighting the Ummah while the rest of us watched, but the French have a pecular way of looking at things, all their colonies are part of France so any move to independence is treason. The French lost many troops in indo-china also. Terrorism is not the invention of Al Qaeda and some Muslim terrorists like Arafat have even become responsible citizens but their legacy goes on in our many conflicts, however once terrorism reached the north american continent it became fashionable to fight it in an all out war

[tomder55]

however once terrorism reached the north american continent it became fashionable to fight it in an all out war

Can you site a comparable example to 9-11 ,over 2000 people killed ,the financial ,political and military infrastructure of the nation attacked simultaneously ? Material destruction comparable to the leveling of many a town in this country.

Fashionable ? I don't care how you catagorize it .All out war is the corrrect response. Unfortunately ,that is not how it's been fought .

[paraclete]

Can you site a comparable example to 9-11 ,over 2000 people killed ,the financial ,political and military infrastructure of the nation attacked simultaneously ? Material destruction comparable to the leveling of many a town in this country.

Fashionable ? I don't care how you catagorize it .All out war is the corrrect response. Unfortunately ,that is not how it's been fought .

Tom, we all know 9-11 stands alone in respect of a successful terrorist strike and the response, in attacking Al Qaeda, was necessary to prevent future attacks. It did not, however, prevent attacks in other places even though their severity was less, no doubt because nations were then alerted and wary.
However, before 9-11 the campaign against terrorism was haphazard and uncoordinated, and afterward it was successful in dislodging Al Qaeda from its safe haven but not cutting off the head of the serpent. It was even "fashionable" to support certain terrorist activities under the guise of freedom fighters.

However, if you want to count casualties, you should do more that focus on one event, because terrorist acts are now killing far more each year than were lost in 9-11, so it may be a very moot point that an all out war is the correct response. I doubt the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan would agree with you and certainly the population of Pakistan would not, 11,700 people died there from terrorist activities last year, a direct result of the destabilising effect of your necessary war. What the Pakistan statistic tell us is the more intense the war the greater the civilian casualties. The reality remains more people are killed each year by automobiles than terrorists I wonder when it will be fashionable to declare war on the automobile

[tomder55]

Perhaps the wacki Pakis could stabilize if they just decided who's side they were on. The Wikileaks release of the Afghan War Diary if nothing else confirms what has been common knowledge since the beginning of the GWOT (or any other name it's been called )... that the Pakis are playing a double game. They support the jihadists while at the same time fear and battle them.

The French are late in the game . I guess after watching 10s of thousands of cars torched ,and having to cede major urban and suburban enclaves to the enemy inside their own country reality hit them between the eyes. My point in bringing up the Algiers war was that perhaps that experience made them gun shy appeasers .It is a valuable lesson in the futility of... what did President Obama call it... oh yeah... soft power.

[paraclete]

My point in bringing up the Algiers war was that perhaps that experience made them gun shy appeasers .It is a valuable lesson in the futility of ......what did President Obama call it .....oh yeah .......soft power.

I don't think it could be said the French were believers in soft power, their responses have at times been brutal. Their problem is they believed their own line of BS and took foreign populations into their population.

As to Pakistan there is a problem of who is ruling that country, for a long time it has been ruled by the military and even those at the top are close to the Taliban, who knows what ties would be exploited to gain power, but having a war on your doorstep is very useful in keeping the military close to power. Pakistan is not a natural country, it was cobbled together from what was left over from the British great game. It has proven religious affiliation is not a good reason for forming a country and it is very close to being a failed state

[tomder55]

Even more important since you bring up some history. Their interest controlling Afghanistan is to have a safety valve in case their paranoid image of an Indian invasion ever were to occure .
There were an aweful lot of people killed in the war of separation and I guess those memories die hard .

[paraclete]

Even more important since you bring up some history. Their interest controlling Afghanistan is to have a safety valve in case their paranoid image of an Indian invasion ever were to occure .
There were an aweful lot of people killed in the war of separation and I guess those memories die hard .

Don't know about your safety valve theory Tom, they would first have to get the Afghani refugees to go home. I don't think the Pustun have shown great affinity with Pakistan. Yes there were a lot of people killed at the time of partition but that is because of the third religious group in the equation, the Sihk. It would be a very bad thing if large numbers of Pakistani migrated to Afghanistan due to war but there are physical barriers more likely to prevent that than the movement of people between India and Pakistan in 1947. An Indian invasion is likely to trigger atomic war and add to the wastelands in that part of the world

[tomder55]

The safety valve theory is nothing new. I have heard this from intel analysts for a decade .

India and Pakistan have long vied for influence in Afghanistan, with Islamabad convinced that a friendly government in Kabul was essential for "strength in depth" vis à vis India. That policy resulted in support for the Taliban regime in the 1990s and, according to India, in continuing proxy attacks on Indian interests in Afghanistan – not least last July's bombing of its Kabul .

Simon Tisdall: A US surge in Aghanistan could destabilise Pakistan | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Why do the Pakistanis interfere in Afghanistan? Because they require an Afghan puppet state to supply them with strategic depth for their conflict against India. Therefore, keeping Pakistan from making Afghanistan a base of extremism in the future will require constant U.S. involvement in managing the India-Pakistan rivalry,” writes American journalist Robert D. Kaplan, in an e-mail debate on America's war on terror in Slate Magazine, January 2002.

Afghanistan: terrain for India-Pakistan proxy war

But what is missing from the leaked documents is context. What exactly does Pakistan's ISI hope to achieve in Afghanistan? For years, the short answer has been "strategic depth," Pakistan's longtime policy of maintaining a security buffer should archrival India attack.

Read more: Wikileaks: Info but Not Context on Pakistan in Afghanistan - TIME

[paraclete]

I think america exercises the mind of Pakistan as much as India, they want an ally and they know they haven't found one yet, whereas Pakistan exercises the mind of america greatly, it is a bottomless pit and you can't be sure which side they are on. Ask yourself what happens if america attacks Iran. To side with america would be very costly for Pakistan. Pakistan has a large shia population so civil war could eventuate. Then you would have a three sided contest. People easily forget Pakistan is not only divided by religion it is also divided by language

[tomder55]

I have argued here that India is our natural ally and we should do more to nurture it. This alliance with Pakistan is a Cold War relic.

Iran also vies for control of territorial Afghanistan,and so do the Chinese (they see it as a land route into Central Asia) and the Russians (their traditional strategy to spread their influence outside their territorial borders to natural geographic borders ) .
They didn't call the politics of the region 'The Great Game' for nothing .

[paraclete]

I have argued here that India is our natural ally and we should do more to nurture it. This alliance with Pakistan is a Cold War relic.

Iran also vies for control of territorial Afghanistan,and so do the Chinese (they see it as a land route into Central Asia) and the Russians (their traditional strategy to spread their influence outside their territorial borders to natural geographic borders ) .
They didn't call the politics of the region 'The Great Game' for nothing .

Yes, you might need India to stem the Chinese hordes, but remember the Indian mutiny, they are a little funny about the way war is conducted, better put aside the chili and get used to curry

[tomder55]

I think the American Indian alliance would and should grow to a mature alliance of mutual interests. I think all the English speaking nations should join in an Anglo-alliance.

But I see there are people walking around Aussie asking them if they are prepared for a post-American dominant world .
Sun could set suddenly on superpower as debt bites | The Australian

If you isn't thinking about it the Chinese are. They told us to stay away from the Yellow Sea during our latest exercises with the South Koreans and the Obots bowed. The Yellow Sea is international waters and in the past no one would've dared tell us we couldn't sail those waters.This comes sadly when the exercises themselves were designed to send a signal of resolve to NORKS following the Obots decision not to respond to the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel the Cheonan.

This comes after recently watching the Russians exercise in the Gulf of Mexico . So perhaps Ferguson is right about the rate of the US collapse.

[paraclete]

I think the American Indian alliance would and should grow to a mature alliance of mutual interests . As a matter of fact ,I think all the English speaking nations should join in an Anglo-alliance.

But I see there are people walking around Aussie asking them if they are prepared for a post-American dominant world .
Sun could set suddenly on superpower as debt bites | The Australian

If you aint thinking about it the Chinese are. They told us to stay away from the Yellow Sea during our latest exercises with the South Koreans and the Obots bowed. The Yellow Sea is international waters and in the past no one would've dared tell us we couldn't sail those waters.This comes sadly when the exercises themselves were designed to send a signal of resolve to NORKS following the Obots decision not to respond to the sinking of the South Korean naval vessel the Cheonan.

This comes after recently watching the Russians exercise in the Gulf of Mexico . So perhaps Ferguson is right about the rate of the US collapse.

A little jingoistic Tom. We couldn't persuade UK to consider broader interests when it joined the EC, why do you think a little sabre rattling on the other side of the world should persuade UK, Canada and our small nations over here to back you. What more do you want? You already have NAFTA, the USAustFTA, the Anzus treaty, NATO and heaven knows how many other treaties and alliances. I think it is right, america has seen its era, The nineteenth century was the age of Britain, the twentieth century was the age of America, the twentyfirst will be the age of Asia. So someone has called you on your gunboat diplomacy, at last, you have to think realistically.

North Korea is a worry for us all, not because they have the ability to hurt any of us much, but they have the ability to trigger a wider conflict. What can change attitudes is trade and open doors, and we should work at sweeping this last vestage of the cold war away by openly engaging with them. It worked on China thirty years ago, took a while, but who could have envisaged what is possible now. If Obama is serious he should visit Kim, then he truly would deserve that peace prize

[tomder55]

Maybe in a post Kim world