Bloodshed Biryani

I went online to check the headlines Monday morning and this is what I found:
“PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The government agreed to impose Islamic law and suspend a military offensive across a large swath of northwest Pakistan on Monday in concessions aimed at pacifying a spreading Taliban insurgency there.” (Associated Press)

Now let me see if I understand this properly. The Taliban has been gallivanting across Pakistan leaving a trail of severed heads in their wake and they are rewarded by getting exactly what they wanted, the imposition of Shariah Law. How this any different giving a two year old the cookie he’s been whining about for over an hour because he just punched you in the nuts? How is it any better then neighborhood shopkeepers paying the mobster that terrorizes them for protection money? What differentiates this from letting a date rapist get away with it because if you don’t he says he’ll come back and hurt you again? The answer is NOTHING!!! This is the very complacency that the Islamic extremists count on.

We saw what Taliban rule had to offer Afghanistan. We’re seeing what a Taliban resurgence is doing to the people of Afghanistan and the men and women of our brave military deployed there. Now think of the Taliban as a hockey team and Afghanistan is their home ice. Now imagine that team USA came into town and hit them hard against the boards. As a result the Taliban plays dirty and ends up being sent (retreating) to the penalty box (Pakistan) to sit it out for a while. So instead of sitting quietly in the penalty box awaiting their chance to make it 5 on 5 again, they move to take over the penalty box and stage attacks on the ice while doing so. Using the hockey analogy almost makes it sound cute and fun. The one big problem is that the penalty box that the refs are so ready to capitulate is nuclear armed and the ice has our soldiers on it.

No quality parent handles their child’s tantrums by purchasing for them the most expensive toy they desire. No good wife combats her husband’s philandering by inviting her sultry bisexual friend over for some hot three way action. Likewise, there should be no country, no matter how battered, that abdicates their jurisdiction in an effort to appease those who are insatiable in their quest for dominance. To do so makes a mockery of the governing body itself and opens the door for further coups of greater degree. I fear that this is just beginning of the capitulation in Pakistan. What’s scarier still is what might happen when nuclear armed India starts contemplating what it would be like to live next door to a nuclear armed Pakistan that’s under Taliban control.