Taking it to the Taliban

forced the rest to flee, the real question is whether the gains will endure. Remember that it was an unnamed "senior Administration official" who warned at the outset "they'll displace the Taliban for awhile. But there will also be a lot of displaced persons and a lot of collateral damage. And then they won't be able to sustain those effects or extend the gains geographically."

Yes, Professor, you are right;-> Flee to where?! Under the Magic Carpet;->> Those guys Fleas made to flee;->>
I think Pakistani Shahs feeding you with BS reports to grant the aid you promised to fill their buckets;->>
Yeah, yeah Taliban is sittting duck waiting to be picked up in Swat Valley by slow moving AF-PAK regular armies;->>
If you move 2M people from their homes just for a few fleas, we have a saying for that;->
"Trying to burn the blanket to get rid of the fleas;->>"
In fact in this case the blanket is not even burned, it has been temporarily shifted to enother bed most probably with all its fleas and all;->>

Grand Sen~or.

Note: Professor, listen to this, you haven't mentioned this book in your list of IR books but have a look at it:

"The wave of 20th century natianalism would then have gone full course. It began as a revolutionary movement against authoritarien repression. It would have ended by invoking a state of authoriterian repression more deliberate and efficient than that which it began its existance by challenging." Revolutions of Our Time 20th Century Nationalism by Glen St.J.Barclay 1971 p 214.

Quite an accurate prediction of SU/EUS dissolve of internationalism. Watch it Mate, it is just around the corner.

Thanks for this post. The U.S. will undoubtedly be blamed for failure in Pakistan, but at least we'll also enjoy some benefits if they succeed. This post made me realize I had some strong feelings on the subject; I linked to you at http://thehegemonist.com/2009/06/the-hegemonic-conspiracy.html

When I spoke with Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group a few years ago, he suggested that Algeria fabricated a lot of Islamist violence in order to justify suspending democracy and to increase aid from Western states that feared Islamism.

I have to wonder whether Pakistan is not to some extent trying to shake some money out of the US pocket so to speak.

Anyway, since the Afpak mess ties directly into the last century of Zionist aggression and the last 150 years of East European Jewish political violence, sabotage, assassination, and murder that preceded and paralleled Zionist criminality, dealing with Jewish Zionist aggression, whether ethnonational financial warfare against non-Jews as described in Forbes or the recent Zionist terrorist rampage in Gaza, is far more important for Americans than events in the Swat valley.

We cannot have a rational realist foreign policy unless we analyze Jewish extremism and fanaticism just as we might discuss Islamic extremism and fanaticism.

My blog entry Minnesota Chabad Rabbi Demands Destruction of Muslim Holy Sites underscores the level of insanity and radicalism among American Jews.

Keep in mind that former Harvard President Larry Summers, who has a major influence over US economic policy, has been very close to Chabad for years.

Realism demands that we look at the fanaticism and subversion of American Jews with eyes wide open just as we would treat any other group threatening the safety, well-being and constitutional rights of Americans.

I agree with your concerns about Pakistani strategy.
How about thinking about this hypothesis: In a peasant based insurgency, the side that escalates the military activity is usually the side that is weakest politically and will lose the conflict.(I'll let someone else phrase that into a measurable form)

Military campaigns are usually a last resort or a smoke screen for not being able to penetrate local communities, recruit or maintain political control. When you think about it, a military campaign is often irrelevant to those political functions.

Also, many of the refugee families have close kin that have been drafted or recruited by the Taliban. Those families are loyal to their immediate family members and consequently loyal to the Taliban. If they stayed contained in their home areas, then the government would have a chance to penetrate those communities and try to create new alliances or patronage ties. But, since they have been dispersed all over the rest of Pakistan; now, the Taliban essentially has agents and contacts in places where they never before had access. That is a serious long term problem.

The Pakistani leadership and any U.S. intervening facilitators need to think seriously about the political organization fundamentals.

Bob Spencer

The Pak govt. has perfected the art of doing just the minimum to assuage western concerns, and nothing more. What accounts for the fact that while Taliban foot soldiers are being killed, none of the top leaders have till now been apprehended? Given that the ISI has extensive contacts with the bearded fringe, one would expect them to have reliable intel to take out the leadership. Obama or not, the US looks like a babe in the woods as regards its South Asian policy. Take away the rhetoric that the US is seeking to do things differently, the US policy in that region looks similar to previous strategies.