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Saturday, Dec. 6, 2008 | 2:07 a.m.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met with leaders in India on Wednesday, and on Thursday she met with leaders in Pakistan. She had an important message for both governments — work together.
The immediate priority is for the bordering nuclear powers to cooperate on finding and prosecuting anyone involved in planning or helping to carry out the coordinated terrorist attacks last week in India’s financial center, Mumbai.
Rice’s visit was a necessity, as India and Pakistan have gone to war against each other three times since they both became independent of British rule in 1947, and to this day tension between the two remains unremitting.
With the terror attacks, which savagely killed more than 170 people, the tension has been heightened.
This is because India says there is evidence the terrorists who attacked Mumbai had links to a militant group in Pakistan known as LET, or Lashkar-e-Taiba. The New York Times reported Thursday that LET is officially banned in Pakistan, but that it has a history of links to Pakistan’s intelligence services and has been “hiding in plain sight for years.”
It is easy to see that India could come to blame Pakistan for its acquiescence toward this group, just as Americans are frustrated and angry with Pakistan for its acquiescence toward al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists in its tribal regions bordering Afghanistan.
It is clear Rice is correct in trying to impress upon Pakistan the urgency of the need for it to take strong actions against the growing number of terrorist groups within its borders. The country’s leaders have been passive for too long. They need to start tangibly showing the world that their country is not a safe haven from which terrorists can launch attacks.
Tension between India and Pakistan — and the United States and Pakistan, for that matter — could be reduced significantly if Pakistan would demonstrate that terrorists who believe they are safe in the country are wrong, dead wrong if need be.
This is where a naive vision of the world can hurt us.
There is a significant portion of the Pakistan's population that has very strong sympathy toward Islamic extreme militants. It is something that they teach to their children at very young age and they hear it weekly from their religious leader and daily from friends and relatives.
That sympathy flows into the Pakistan's political parties, military, and intelligence agencies.
It is not something that is going to change by talking to them or giving them jobs.
There are only two options, in my opinion to deal with this problem.
One is containment and playing games with government. Putting just enough pressure on government and making military strikes deep into their territory. Too much pressure, one will topple whatever pro-west elements there are in the government and have a much bigger mess on their hands including a pro-Islamic militant government that has nuclear weapons.
The other option is all out war with Pakistan. We need to invade the country. During the war and after the war, we need to humiliate the Islamic militant elements, like we did Japan pro-emperor and Germany pro-Hitler elements. That is the only way to stomp out that sympathy. They need to realize there is no power behind the Islamic militant movement.
I doubt if the USA will ever invade Pakistan unless they do something dumb like use a nuclear device on a western country.
Our only option is the first option and hope that it is success enough. It means that we have to be in Afghanistan for a very very long time. It also means that Pakistan will be somewhat a safe-haven to Islamic terrorists and that once in a blue moon those terrorists will be successful in performing some damage on a western country.
I think at first some, including Obama, will be naive and believe that they can get the Pakistan government to root out Islamic elements from its society to a significant degree. But Obama is a smart man. Within a couple of years, he will figure out that will never occur.