Burning anger

[unhappycamper]

Burning anger
Saturday, October 02, 2010 Shawwal 22, 1431 A.H.

When you have NATO/ISAF helicopters crossing your internationally recognised border and killing and wounding members of your military; the news that the CIA has promised to respect your sovereignty commands a degree of incredulity. Yet Leon Panetta, chief of the CIA and master of The Dark Arts, told our leaders just this tale when he met them on Thursday. He was speaking on the tail of a developing story that the increased drone strikes in September were linked to a plot being hatched in our Tribal Areas to unleash a Mumbai-style attack on European cities. We cannot comment on the veracity of this latest plot one way or another, but suffice to say that it is more than likely that radicalised western-born Muslims will gravitate in this direction, characters in search of an author, like the misguided Americans who were picked up tried and jailed last year. Notwithstanding this, the use of manned aircraft to raid into our territory is a significant upping of the ante and in a different league to the drone strikes that have become a part of the landscape of warfare.

But is it really an upping of the ante or merely the exercising of an agreement of which we are unaware? There has been no 'taking into confidence' of the population outside the upper echelons of government and the military as to just what has been agreed with NATO/ISAF in terms of their operational envelope, terms of engagement and depth of penetration. Simply, we do not know what our government has agreed with NATO/ISAF regarding their actions on our soil. Are there agreements which allow foreign forces to operate at will inside our borders? It is not enough for the government to deny that such agreements exist; it needs to actually prove their non-existence by revealing to us precisely what has and has not been agreed. How else are we supposed to make any informed judgment as to the violation of our sovereignty? Was parliament involved in the making of any agreement or were these agreements made unilaterally without reference to any legislative body? The blocking of NATO/ISAF convoys will be a temporary 'protest' measure. Anger was seen to burn bright in the speech to parliament on Friday afternoon by PM Gilani who said that 'other options' would be considered if our sovereignty was similarly violated in the future. If we are to read between the lines this could be an indication of a stiffening resolve, and a signal to ISAF/NATO that they really have crossed a line too far.



unhappycamper comment: I'm amazed at the stupidity of the American government, especially one theoretically led by a Democrat.

At the moment we have two occupations going: Afghanistan and Iraq.

We have been droning Pakistanis on a regular basis lately. Hell, we've even taken UAVs out of Afghanistan to drone people in Pakistan.

United States airplanes bombed Somalia the other day.

The United States is continually poking at Iran.

WTF is up at the State Department? I though they had diplomats.

[yellowwood]

1. I hope people are paying attention

You are so right. Sometimes I despair over the fact that our people, even Democrats, just don't seem to realize what we're getting ourselves into.

More expansion of military operations could be an Obama dealbreaker for me.

Posts like this one don't seem to evoke the emotional reaction that posts like "my 19-year old dog died."

Why is this?

[JohnnyLib2]

2. Or worse yet, do realize what we are getting ourselves into.

:banghead: Rec.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

3. All congress has to do is...

...NOT propose a bill to fund this.

And if the president sends his own funding request all congress has to do is NOT schedule it for a vote. Unless I'm mistaken the House Speaker schedules the votes and the Senate leader does the same in the senate.

Our leaders can literally ignore this war to death...

...if they wanted to.

[Obamanaut]

4. I think it is way past time to bring all those troops home and let the

tribal leaders 'hash' things out amongst themselves.

As part of that, bring all the troops from the 700+ sites in more than 30 other countries and close those sites.

At my age of 68, I don't have any real hope of this happening in my lifetime.

eta 'rec'