Broken Records

A quick and friendly note to those who are ever so fond of beating the drums to war: SLOW DOWN!  Seriously.  We’re still mired in the warzone that is Iraq, we haven’t even STARTED our war against Iran yet, and yet these folks are now promoting making war in Pakistan?

Unfortunately I can’t say that I’m particularly surprised that the AEI’s Fred Kagan has teamed up with that liberal critic of Bush, Michael O’Hanlon, to make the case launching military operations in Pakistan.

Their plan would be first for Special Forces to go into Pakistan to secure nuclear weapons and relocate them to a safe place, and barring that, send in a broader military force to get the job done.

For this latter, scarier plan of putting boots on the ground in Pakistan presumably while we still have boots on the ground in Iraq and, if these guys have their way, in Iran as well, they assure us that everything will be okay because members of the moderate Muslim world will lend a helpful hand.

Except they won’t.  In case you weren’t paying much attention, extremist Muslims, moderate Muslims, Muslims in general in that part of the world pretty much hate our guts.  I can’t see why.  It’s not like the US has been a benevolent and peaceful presence in the Muslim world up until…

Oh.

China Hand puts it pretty well here:

That’s not just jumping the shark.  That’s jumping on the shark, tap-dancing on its nose, and using a secret brain ray to force it to type the plays of Shakespeare on a vintage Underwood.

And that’s before they come up with the idea of abducting Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal to a secret location in New Mexico.

I actually had to check the New York Times website to make sure this wasn’t a spoof or some piece of anti-American psyops by the Pakistani media.  And yes, they really said it .

They are like broken records, and all of a sudden I’m wondering what life in the O’Hanlon household must be like.

“Honey, the light in the garage is out.”

“Bomb it.”

“The garbage disposal is on the fritz.”

“Invade it.”

“The dog has worms.”

“Send in the troops.”

Echdne Of The Snakes I think adequately sums up what the result of following O’Hanlon and Kagan into Pakistan would be:

In short, the U.S. does indeed have the largest stock of WMDs and nuclear bombs and the like, and the largest military budget of any country on earth (in fact, several times larger than the next largest such budget), but the U.S. does not have millions and millions of spare soldiers. Any attempt to extend some sort of warfare to several countries would fail unless it was carried out by distance bombing only. I wish the little drummer boys would make it clear that they are talking about turning countries into glass-covered parking lots, because that’s what the only realistic strategy to winning such wars would entail.

And for those of you who think that electing Hillary Clinton is the way to go because she’s such an awesome progressive, just keep in mind that Michael O’Hanlon is on her team.