The
Jettis don’t fit your stereotype at all.

So you’ve got one country of nutso Muslims determined to blow up shit, and you’ve got another country of peaceful Hindu’s determined to sit quietly in a lotus position an drive around the animals wandering in their streets … why are we surprised India as a government doesn’t fight back but leaves reprisals to the Indian man on the street and his spontaneous riots?

West Germany was a great place in the ’80’s.

I will say the India probably knew it was Pakistan with in hours.

India has the men and the materials to deliver a punishing blow – if not – fatal blow to Pakistan.

Why they have not done so is either lack of spine or a wish for more death on their soil. The Paki-terror factory is like training a dog. The longer you wait to punish a misdeed the more the dog thinks it can get away with his actions. This leads to more torn-up property and dog crap in the house. Sooner or later the dog has to be whipped or put to sleep.

The US can take care of itself in Pakistan. The Pakistan military has proven to be of little or negative use to the US.

India should get on with the protection of their citizens and administration of justice.

I tend to agree with your analyses’ with the exception of Whiskey’s statement about the Madrassa. I yield to no one in my contempt for Hussein Pasha, and I do think he is by Sharia definition a Muslim based on his childhood, but the problem with the trip to Pakistan was the question of what country’s passport he used, not any Madrassa visit that I have heard of. All in all, this is not going to end quietly. Pakistan is in it up to their ankles [noting that they are in head first]. India, governed as it is, has no choice but to push. The Demarche was not there immediately, but the implication is there that it can come in a hot Mumbai-minute. The Paks have one chance to get it right. Looking a Muslim extremists worldwide, their track record of getting it right is not good.

#18 Brock, the necessity of knowing where every Pakistani nuke is, is limited by the degree to which the Indians believe that the Pakistani government, or more precisely the Jihadist factions therein, are likely to order a nuclear strike on India. The higher that degree of belief, and knowing the level of damage that they would sustain in that first strike [they have no defensive capability against the missiles and a very limited one against the aircraft carried nukes], the more risk of missing one or two they might be willing to endure. That last especially if they believe that their first strike will destroy totally Pakistan as an entity capable of mounting a strike with the remaining weapon(s). Keep in mind that this is not a truck full of ANFO explosive. Nuclear weapons built by a nation state have fairly sophisticated safeguards against unauthorized detonation. While the Paks may not have PAL’s like ours, I assume that it takes something more than a smart rap on the nose of the thing to make it go bang. It may not seem to be a unreasonable risk, balanced against the assumed Pakistani first strike; that they can block the delivery and detonation of any orphan Pakistani nukes.

#24 Peter Boston. I agree that they will likely be at war before June, but I contend that this situation is sui generis compared to what has happened before. Skirmishes and even major combined arms battles in a thinly populated area relatively distant from both national centers are one thing. A state sponsored attack on civilians in the homeland is something else. Kashmir may be a theater of operations in the aftermath, but the Schwerpunkt is elsewhere. Once again referring to Clausewitz, I find myself referring to his ON WAR, Book 1, Chapter 1, #24 about the relationship between war and politics more and more on both foreign and domestic matters. In this case, India’s political goals about Kashmir have been subsumed in a greater one involving a proximate strategic existential threat to the Indian nation.

They now have to revise their calculations about the nature of the Pakistani government in the wake of its sponsorship of the Mumbai attacks. Deterrence only works when both sides are rational and each believes that the opponent is rational. The blatancy of the Mumbai operation is such as to cause a massive re-evaluation of both the rationality of Pakistan’s government, and of how much actual control it has over policy versus the amount of actual control wielded by Muslim extremists. It is kind of like a geopolitical equivalent of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

As to your prediction of an Iranian-American rapprochment on the terms described …. Hussein Pasha would probably love to wave that piece of paper and declaim peace in our time. And he would have the same results as the last time that happened. There is nothing that can be said, promised, threatened,or offered to Iran that will prevent their launching a nuclear strike on ourselves, Israel, or both at the first opportunity. If we have a Munich moment; remember that it was not far from September 1938 to September 1939.

#26 John Work:

“But Grey Tribe reality is so-o-o boring. If it doesn’t go well, they can shoot another take, right? It isn’t like anything they do will be real or anything. And if the worst should happen, the media will cover it up, see.” [ Can't do this anymore. The exposure to their mindset is too numbing.]

This is going to be real painful to real people. And it will be terminal to many. Both in the foreign countries where the Democrats try to play out their fantasies, and here.

Subotai Bahadur

Point made re-Musharraf, and taken. However I think he was loosing whatever influence or control of the TalQaeda he once had. Given the red mosque and the rise of open opposition in the NW Frontier and the erosion of what little support he once had amongst the middle class he had already become expendable. I don’t think things would be much different today with or without Musharraf.

Musharraf had many faults, but at least he carried out his end of the deal. I don’t recall the Khyber Pass being closed very often in his day. I think we should start deducting the cost of our stuff destroyed on the road to Bagram from the aid we give their military.

Let’s see their 40 torched uparmored humvees, and raise them some F-16’s.