Not that our own – much more expensive – military is proving any more useful in Iraq and Afghanistan and wherever else neocon nutballs decide to send them before the next election.
Despite billions of dollars in U.S. military payments to Pakistan over the last six years, the paramilitary force leading the pursuit of Al Qaeda militants remains underfunded, poorly trained and overwhelmingly outgunned, U.S. military and intelligence officials said.
But rather than use the more than $7 billion in U.S. military aid to bolster its counter-terrorism capabilities, Pakistan has spent the bulk of it on heavy arms, aircraft and equipment that U.S. officials say are far more suited for conventional warfare with India, its regional rival.
That has left fighters with the paramilitary force, known as the Frontier Corps, equipped often with little more than “sandals and bolt-action rifles,” said a senior Western military official in Islamabad, even as they face Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters equipped with assault rifles and grenade launchers.
We are “led” by incompetent gits who persist in the ideology of “my enemy’s enemy must be my ally”.
With no understanding of the history of any of these conflicts. With the result being the same morass of corruption leftover from colonialism led by stalwarts in France and England over the centuries preceding the American decision – to rule the world.
Better to give them the ARMS, and such then MONEY…
We could have bought them WHOLESALE, and PAID LESS..
“With no understanding of the history of any of these conflicts.”
They have no need to understand history when they can just rewrite it http://www.conservapedia.com
Haha I knew that Pakistan was getting fucked by the US but I never really worked out why they were allowing it to happen but now I get it, they just want to be able to take on India independently without having to get help from China. Then China can deal with the US and we are sorted 😀
Wow. Only seven billion dollars over six years to produce incompetence? What a bargain! Too bad we couldn’t have applied this strategy in Iraq. We’ve already spent over $466,000,000,000.00 there for the same results.
This just goes to show you that a C average at Yale is still a C average.
Imagine if the US government had spent $466 Billion on improving the US infrastructure? WOW.
Verizon will spend 4.7B to provide fiber optics across 28 states. Bush spent $466B and yielded nothing. Thank goodness it was borrowed.
#6 – Imagine if the US government had spent $466 Billion on improving the US infrastructure? WOW.
Testify brother…
And there would be a significant long term advantage as well as a short term boom to those of us who work for a living.
Verizon will spend 4.7B to provide fiber optics across 28 states. Bush spent $466B and yielded nothing. Thank goodness it was borrowed.
“Borrowed” “Stolen” It’s all semantics.
Here is a big picture question — if in the last 50 years we had just minded our own business.
No Korea war. No Vietnam war. No Cold War arms race.
Would America be worse off or better? More of Europe and much of the Third World may have been communist, I assume. I would guess that Communism would have collapsed under it’s own weight by now, too.
We cold have plowed those TRILLIONS of dollars into our own infrastructure and national R&D and have a much better educated and developed USA, though,
It’s something to think about.
As for Pakistan — I happen to know it very well and I fear terribly for that country. Most Pakistani I know can’t picture the radical minority taking over but It think they’re naive. If it could happen Iran, I don’t see why it couldn’t happen in Pakistan.
And, if Pakistan goes radical — that’s a REAL mess.
Ironically, it’s the kind of serious danger Bush that LIED about to get a war started in Iraq. But, thanks to the quagmire in Iraq, we American are in far less control that we used to be before Bush’s disastrous leadership.
So all this is Europe’s fault? Don’t people living in a country ever get blamed for their own corruption? Some countries managed to get out of that muck, mostly by adopting Western ideas. But the ones that don’t, they end up stuck in poverty. Then again, maybe it is the West’s fault since communism is a Western invention.
MikeN,
America (and Europe, I guess) certainly SHARE the blame in this, as far as they funded it.
Isn’t that just common sense? If you knowingly finance the the drug dealer down the street, you share in his guilt, as far as I’m concerned and I assume legally, too.
So, if the US is a MAJOR funder of the Pakistan military knowing darn well that they are corrupt, support militants and finance terrorism, etc, then the US shares in that guilt.
And make no mistake about it — Bush and the US government KNOWS DARN WELL that the Pakistan military supports terrorism.
This is absolutely no secret — not even among average Pakistanis who may defend it but don’t deny it.
How many guns and AMMO could I have bought and shipped TO THEM.
Throw in a couple hummer 2’s and it would be a DEAL.
Well if you’re talking about Pakistan, that’s one thing, but colonialism applies to much more than that one country, and it seems like people are trying to reflexively blame Europe and America for everyone’s problems.
Gee Devork. You know that money was just washed through Pakistan and back the US military contractors. Hence the expensive hardware.
#6 you don’t get it – it was borrowed from you and your other fellow americans 🙂