Friday night’s US attack on a pair of Pakistani military bases, a deadly strike which left 24 soldiers dead and many others wounded, is still going through its usual periods of revision in the West, with diplomats struggling to come up with a story explaining why the killings weren’t that big of a deal.
The initial story had NATO calling in air support to defend its troops from an attack by militants from the other side of the border. This doesn’t really explain anything, of course, but Pakistan’s military is insisting its not true, with no evidence of any militants in the area and with the US attack targeting the bases directly for more than an hour.
Western officials are even terming the attack on the bases “self defense,” even though there is no indication that they are accusing the soldiers of doing anything and Pakistan says the troops were sleeping at the time.
The stories are all falling pretty well short of a good excuse for killing large numbers of Pakistani soldiers, and the Pakistani government doesn’t seem to be buying it. Pakistan’s military spokesman added that the post which suffered the brunt of the attack was on top of a mountain, adding that “militants don’t operate from mountain tops, from concrete structures.”
The elephant in the room of course, is the possibility that the US warplanes intentionally attacked a Pakistani military base. It isn’t clear why they would do this, but in the absence of a decent excuse for why warplanes would cross the border and attack a known base on top of a mountain on a clear night, it remains impossible to discount.
Main stream outlets report that the US attacked two checkpoints after they were fired upon.
"…stories are all falling pretty well short of a good excuse for killing large numbers of Pakistani soldiers…" It doesn't pass the smell test.
I'm curious to know whether Obama was informed of this after the attack or before. My gut tells me he found out when the phone call from Zardari came in. You know, with Iraq being removed from the free-fire zone and Afghanistan winding down, the military generals are quickly running out of playground. Imagine the opportunities if the generals were to get the US involved in a conventional-type war (at the beginning, at least) with the Paks.
How dare the politicians tell the generals that they can't wage indefinite and unlimited war. Fools.
They knew that this was a Pakistani Military outpost. They give detailed maps of all these positions to our military. The idea that the attack was an accident of any kind is simply not possible. So that leaves self defence or a deliberate attack. The case for self defence is also non existant. Why? because there is no indication that at the time of the attack that they were under direct fire let alone pinned down. So as far as I can tell it was a deliberate attack on a Pakistani outpost.
So now we have to ask why would we do this? I don't know but I would guess it's some type of brinksmanship. What is the goal of the brinksmanship? Who the heck knows with these guys? It could be we want a complete break with Pakistan so we can continue or escalate the wars even further.