Pakistan angry over Osama bin Laden raid

While the U.S. celebrated the death of Osama bin Laden, one of the world’s most wanted criminals, the reaction from the Middle East has been nothing more than pure outrage.

Hamas had publicly condemned the United States; the Muslim Brotherhood is demanding U.S. military forces leave the Middle East immediately and the Taliban is vowing revenge.

But perhaps the most interesting of all was Pakistan's comments, a country that is supposed to be a U.S. ally. Well apparently it seems as though the so-called ‘alliance’ has been rather bleak these days.

Yesterday, former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf told CNN-IBN “American troops coming across the border and taking action in one of our towns, that is Abbottabad, is not acceptable to the people of Pakistan, it is a violation of our sovereignty. It would have far better if Pakistani special services group had operated and conducted the mission.”

What a load of crap. It has been the case since the moment we entered Afghanistan following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, that the Pakistan Government has swayed back and forth. First vowing to help the United States combat terrorism and insisting al-Qaeda members are not wanted in Pakistan and then deciding to provide safe haven for Osama bin Laden throughout all of these years. It is patently absurd that the U.S. would agree to cooperate with Pakistan military forces, because if that were the case, Pakistan would have most likely alerted Osama bin Laden’s compound and he would have fled, as he has done many times over the course of the last 10 years.

While Pakistan continues to lie to the United States about helping the Taliban and that they provided a safe haven for bin Laden all this time, we still managed to send them over $3 billion in 2010. How does that image help the United States?

Despite the fact that this evil man masterminded the most horrific attack our country has ever experienced, and the countless bombings throughout Europe, and at African embassies and the Bali nightclub bombings, this man is now garnering tremendous sympathy throughout the Muslim world.

That is a hint with relation to the uprising in the Middle East right now. We have the Muslim Brotherhood destabilizing Egypt and Libya, Hamas and Hezbollah forming a coalition to destroy Israel; Iran and Egypt bridging relations for the first time in 30 years and to completely open up the Gaza Strip.

Yes, the death of Osama bin Laden is a great victory, but his death appears to be nothing more than the end of Chapter 2.

Afghanistan situation worsening

Despite the Obama Administration's earlier claims this last year that sufficient improvements to make Afghanistan a solvent country again was working, recent UN maps seem to contradict those claims. These maps are used to help monitor areas of danger in the country and to help NATO address those areas which are dominated by the Taliban.

According to the United Nations, the two maps demonstrated a vast deterioration in certain parts of Afghanistan specifically in areas in battle grounds between NATO troops (which two thirds are from the United States) and the Taliban, as well as under developed parts of the country.

If only things could get worse.

Many will remember President Obama, during his campaign, saying he would pull troops out of Afghanistan in his first term. Well, he failed to live up to his promise to all of his liberal supporters. Instead, he announced to deploy 30,000 additional troops and to work with NATO on its new exit strategy, while continuously saying that the country is trying to stabilize itself and is working towards improvements. The Administration says that they will now pull out by 2014, turn it over to Afghan forces, who will begin to restructure Afghanistan in an effort to become a solvent country, for once.

Like that will ever happen.

Everybody knows by now that Afghanistan has failed considerably over the last three decades to become a stabilized democratic country. Does the President honestly believe that by the time the United States pulls out of Afghanistan, that there will be a newly installed democratic government? Apparently he does. Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration, as well as the Defense Department has mentioned this time and time again. Overthrow the bad government and form a free democratic government.

Wasn't that what we did with Iraq? How did that work out? Not so well, thus far.

Bottom line in my viewpoint is that this particular region of the world is inhabited by radical Islamic and terrorist groups, despicable individuals who cherish their barbarianism and mutant lifestyle.

If indeed the day does come in 2014 that a new government is put in place in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al-Qaeda, or mutants, whatever you wish to call them, can simply recruit new members and go back and take control of it all over again. It has happened many times before.

Same pattern, different era.

NATO putting on the pressure to pull out of Afghanistan

Last weekend President Obama hopped all over the financial summits in Asia to discuss global economic reform, and now this weekend, he is meeting with leaders at the NATO summit in Lisbon concerning the War in Afghanistan.

As many may remember, President Obama repeatedly stated that he wanted troops to come home by 2011 and handover the responsibility to Afghan forces. Now it appears that officials are more or less focusing to withdraw the 100,000 troops, which included the 30,000 troops ordered by President Obama last year, by 2014.

The reason for this?

Mainly because Afghanistan has shown very little signs of stabilizing itself.

It shouldn’t appear to be such a shocker to President Obama, nor for any official in our Federal Government, as Afghanistan remains one of the top unstable governments in the entire world and has dealt with a continuous civil war for many decades, both from the invasion from the Soviet Union in the 1970’s, to an internal war throughout the 1990’s which resulted in the Taliban. Yet every time there seemed to be a war going on in Afghanistan, it was never able to build itself into a stabilized country.

I seem to recall we also went into Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein. Yet after years of fighting a war in that country, Iraq is still quite unstable and the place is pretty much uninhabitable.

Of course, the primary reason for going into Afghanistan back in 2001 in the first place, was to overthrow the Taliban and dismantle the al-Qaeda network, as a direct result of the September 11^th terrorist attacks. Since that time, the U.S. Military has been unsuccessful in capturing the real ringleader behind those attacks, Osama bin Laden, ranging from theories that he is dead, or hiding out someplace in Pakistan.

President Obama has quite a bit to deal with right now in the Middle East, from leaving Iraq, to stabilizing Afghanistan, and apparently ignorant over Iran’s nuclear program.

At the NATO summit, leaders are pressuring President Obama to implement a better strategy for exiting Afghanistan by that time. While NATO has no exact departure date to be set in 2014, it is projected that the new war efforts in Afghanistan will cost American taxpayers $125 billion through these next three and a half years. Never mind the fact that the United States has enough problems on its plate including servicing its $14 trillion national debt, and providing health care for veterans that just returned from Iraq.

The real question remains as to when the United States does in fact leave Afghanistan, is that country going to be able to sustain itself as a stable government with democracy and its Afghan forces; or will it just become another breeding ground for future generations of al-Qaeda, again posing as a threat to our country’s national security, and the rest of the world?