America is focused on the war in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion last year. NATO with America have been supplying the Ukrainians with arms, weapons, ammunition and funding to help it fight the war against Putin and the Russians. After some initial successes against the Russians, it appears as if the war has settled into a stalemate, with neither side making much progress. But the Russians are still holding onto large portions of Ukrainian territory and has formally annexed these areas after a sham referendum. Throughout this period, Putin and his lackeys have been making threats about using nuclear weapons if Russia is threatened, trying to staunch the flow of aid to Ukraine. It is unclear whether Putin would ever resort to the use of nuclear weapons, but thus far he has been restrained.
While Ukraine has gotten most of America’s attention, a nasty conflict is occurring in Pakistan between the government and extremist elements including the Taliban, the Islamic State and the remnants of Al Qaeda. At one time, America was militarily invested in Pakistan, supplying their military with weapons and training. But we seemed to have stepped away from that role when it is needed even more. The extremists in Pakistan have been killing hundreds to thousands of Pakistani citizens, mainly in the area bordering Afghanistan but also in major cities like Lahore and Karachi. Afghanistan is providing sanctuary for these extremists who cross the border and kill Pakistanis with bombings and suicide bombings at mosques and political rallies, or wherever people gather. They are particularly angered by Shiites whom they consider as heretics, but the goal of the extremists is to take over the country.
Meanwhile, for the most part the police and the military sit on their hands and do not mount major campaigns against these extremist groups. The military command says that there is inadequate funding for serious and prolonged campaigns and that the extremists have better weapons than they do, picked up when American forces left Afghanistan.
After the Afghanistan war, it is understandable that American leaders do not want to get involved in the quagmire of Pakistan, which would probably also alienate the Indians. But the crux of the matter is that Pakistan possesses nuclear weapons and it would be disastrous if those weapons fell into the hands of one of the Islamic extremist groups. It is not hard to imagine them using nuclear weapons against Western targets, including those in the United States. We should be doing everything in our power to prevent the extremists from taking over Pakistan as they did neighboring Afghanistan, even if it means funding, weapons and training the Pakistani military. Hopefully, American troops would not have to be employed in the fighting, but if necessary, they should be used. The threat of nuclear weapons being utilized by Pakistani militant Islamists is real, and presents as much if not more of a danger to the United States and the world as the threats emanating from Russia. The jihadists look forward to dying and can kill millions with them.
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Posted at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Islamic state, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, Taliban
Political junkie, Vietnam vet, neurologist- three books on aging and dementia. Book on health care reform in 2009- Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System. Book on the need for a centrist third party- Resurrecting Democracy- A Citizen’s Call for a Centrist Third Party published in 2011. Aging Wisely, published in August 2014 by Rowman and Littlefield. Latest book- The Uninformed Voter published May 2020