UPDATED: The Shock of Hypocrisy - US Operating From Within Pakistan

Update (16 Feb. --- 7:45 p.m. GMT): Yesterday we predicted a deluge of comment, after Senator Feinstein's revelation of US airbases inside Pakistan, on the lines of "None of these realities [of missile strikes] harm the US. Only appearances do."

Here you go. Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post is fussing, quoting military blogs: "Unfortunately for the US personnel at the Pakistani base, they have now been identified as targets for the militants. US access to Pakistan also became vastly more fragile today. Moreover, the elected government has been weakened, possibly fatally."

It doesn't occur to Ricks that, if you didn't want to expose US forces to insurgent assault and if you didn't want to undermine the Pakistani Government, then you shouldn't have set up the not-so-secret base in the first place. Anyone who wants a bit of history might think back to Cambodia 1970, when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger played a similar disastrous game with "secret" US operations to blast away the sanctuary for the Vietnamese insurgency. The eventual outcome was public embarrassment when someone noticed big ol' American planes on the wrong side of the border, a coup and the emergence of the Khmer Rouge, and a failure to break the Vietnamese enemy.


Sometimes political theatre has to be acknowledged as farce, especially when it is attempting to obscure tragedy.

On Thursday Senator Dianne Feinstein caused a stir when she expressed surprise, in a Congressional hearing, at Pakistani Government objections to US missile strikes: "As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base." Greg Miller in the Chicago Tribune breathlessly exclaimed, "The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counterterrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged."


A much more practical response might have been, "No s***, Sherlock." The Tribune article might have even-more-breathlessly commented, "Many counterterrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft were operated from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan, and remotely piloted from locations in the United States," but my experience, reflected in analysis on Enduring America, is that US-run operations from within Pakistan were close to becoming an open secret.

No, the wringing of hands over Feinstein's statement had little to do with the rights or wrongs of the US conniving with someone in the Pakistan Government to run operations killing Pakistanis; it was consternation that the truth might be known. Witness the fluttering of The Weekly Standard: "The statement gives weight to the notion that the CIA is launching attacks on targets in the tribal areas from a base located on Pakistani territory. And that genie cannot be put back into the bottle, Pakistanis will believe this."

Guess what, boys? "Most Pakistanis", as the Tribune article noted, already believed this --- you know, it's kinda hard to hide the flight of a plane, even an unmanned one, from folks who live nearby. So the pretence of "if they know see it, it doesn't exist" is about two steps beyond ludicrous. As is The Weekly Standard's follow-up concern:

All this has done is harm the image of the United States, as we're portrayed as the big, bad bully that violates Pakistan's sovereignty without a care for the people.

Note, it's not the killing of Pakistani civilians that has harmed the US. It's not the dubious respect for another country's sovereignty that has harmed the US. It's not the effective expansion of a war-going-badly in Afghanistan that has harmed the US.

None of these realities harm the US. Only appearances do.

Right.

Obama v. Petraeus, Round 3: The Battle over Iraq

Here we go. This morning we noted the President's jab at General David Petraeus, the US head of Central Command, discreetly telling the general that Obama would not rubber-stamp "surge" plans in Afghanistan and letting it be known that envoy Richard Holbrooke was the man with White House authority.

Hours later, we learn more about another ongoing Obama-Petraeus battle, this one over Iraq.

Three days ago we reported that, in response to President Obama's plans for a withdrawal of US combat troops within 16 months, the alternative timetables of 19 and 23 months were being reviewed. At the time, we also noted that one version had the military putting forth the timetables without Obama's knowledge; another that Obama had ordered a review of all three possibilities.

Now we have an explanation for what happens and, if true, it confirms the political manoeuvring and even duplicity --- which we have been noting for several days --- of Petraeus, General Raymond Odierno, the commander of US forces in Iraq, and US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker.

Gareth Porter reports that he was told by a military source, "We were specifically asked to provide projections, assumptions and risks for the accomplishment of objectives associated with 16-, 19- and 23-month drawdown options." Petraeus, Odierno, and Crocker had reached a "unified assessment" and had forwarded them to the chains of command.

However, a White House source told Porter, "The assessments of the three drawdown dates were not requested by the president. He never said, 'Give me three drawdown plans'." Obama asked for a review of the "pros and cons" of one and only one plan, the original proposal for withdrawal of all combat troops within 16 months.

Porter adds further background on an Obama-Petraeus confrontation, including Thomas Ricks' just[published storyabout Obama's July 2008 interrruption of a lecture by Petraeus to say he would need to take "a broader strategic view" than the commander.