April 27, 2009

Afghan-Pakistan: Al Qaida's new safe haven

By James Lewis

The Obama administration looks like it's going to acquiesce in the face of a nuclear-armed radicalized Pakistan, just as Jimmy Carter bowed down low in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini. Soon we will have two radicalized Muslim states with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles: A Shiite Iran, and a Sunni Pakistan.

Afghanistan is slipping out of control. But worse, Afghanistan is no longer the main battleground: a Taliban-controlled Pakistan is.

And in case you've forgotten, in the decade before 9/11 Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida suiciders found safe haven with the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Talibs are Islamist fanatics just like Ahmadinejad. They will die for Allah. That means they may not be rational actors in the Western sense. They certainly will stir up terror attacks in India and maybe Sri Lanka and the Philippines, just as the Iranians are sponsoring terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Gaza and Egypt.

Once they have nuclear weapons, they will have safe havens for further terrorist attacks. Expect nuclear weapons and long-range missiles to start spreading even faster.

Weakness? Our enemies have taken the measure of Obama and Hillary Clinton. They are not bothering to wait. They know this is Jimmy Carter II in the White House, and they are acting accordingly. Expect push, push, push on all the fronts: South America with Chavez, Ortega and the Castro brothers, now trying to control Brazil; Africa with Zuma, another mad radical now in control of the modern state of South Africa; the Sudan under its genocidal regime, backed by the Arab League and tolerated by the UN; Iran and Syria now within reach of their own nukes and missiles; and Russia, which will play big power games in the Middle East as long as it hurts the West.

The Taliban just accepted Pakistan's surrender in six provinces. They promptly moved on the seventh province, and are now within a day's drive of the capital of Pakistan. And the West? The West can't even hold down medieval terrorist pirates in little speed boats, who are making a good living off kidnapping Westerners and terrorizing Western shipping companies. The pirates are making the West pay for the Shabab Islamist rebellion in Somalia.

Remember Osama Bin Laden's strong horse and weak horse? Barack Obama is the weak horse. The Muslim world may have hated Bush, but they despise weakness.

Around the world radical Islamists will see the Talibanization of Pakistan, which its glittering jewels of nukes and missiles, as a sign of Allah's favor on their world-wide battle. They will see Tehran's nukes the same way. Europe's major cities are now majority Islamist.

Europe is frozen in fear, and reverting to traditional anti-Semitism to please the enemy at home. Even Britain is doing it.

The Obama crowd just refused to use our best radar facility merely to track North Korea's new missile launch. Tracking Kim's missile might have been "provocative". They are talking down missile defense, and failing to support our military. Instead, they are going to assault the Bush Administration's defense of America after 9/11. The only question is whether they will conduct that assault through the New York Times and the anti-American media, as the Democrats did during the Bush years, or whether they will do it by criminalizing members of the military and the intelligence agencies and actually putting them in the dock.

It will be the first time in American history that an administration has prosecuted its predecessor for defending the United States from enemies, foreign or domestic.

This is going to be a very dangerous decade.