{"id":179550,"date":"2018-01-04T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/04\/i-am-not-sure-if-this-is-well-done-or-wtf\/"},"modified":"2018-01-04T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T01:00:00","slug":"i-am-not-sure-if-this-is-well-done-or-wtf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2018\/01\/04\/i-am-not-sure-if-this-is-well-done-or-wtf\/","title":{"rendered":"I Am Not Sure If This Is &#8220;Well Done&#8221;, or WTF"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The US has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/us-accuses-pakistan-over-violations-of-religious-freedom\/2018\/01\/04\/7ee2efd4-f168-11e7-95e3-eff284e71c8d_story.html\">suspended security assistance to Pakistan<\/a> because they have been paying footsie with the Taliban and the Haqqani network:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The United States announced Thursday it was suspending security assistance to Pakistan for failing to take \u201cdecisive action\u201d against Taliban militants targeting U.S. personnel in neighboring Afghanistan.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">The State Department\u2019s declaration signaled growing frustration over Pakistan\u2019s cooperation in fighting terrorist networks, but it was not immediately clear how much money and materiel was being withheld. The vague details suggested the primary goal was to substantiate President Donald Trump\u2019s surprising New Year\u2019s Day tweet that accused Pakistan of playing U.S. leaders for \u201cfools.\u201d<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the restrictions covered security assistance above and beyond the $255 million for Pakistani purchases of American military equipment that the administration held up in August.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Nauert said details were still being worked out on the additional funds, and referred questions to the Defense Department. Earlier Thursday, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the policy on military aid was \u201cstill being formulated.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>One of the corner stones of the conventional wisdom that is the foreign policy community some times called, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2016\/05\/08\/magazine\/the-aspiring-novelist-who-became-obamas-foreign-policy-guru.html\">The Blob<\/a>,&#8221; is that Pakistan is a crucial ally in the, &#8220;War on Terror.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I remember that Osama bin Laden lived for many years in, and was found, and killed, <a href=\"http:\/\/%22the%20blob,%22\/\">in the same neighborhood as the Pakistani military academy<\/a>, as well as their long history of playing footsie with the Taliban, so I am inclined to think that they are a part of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The US has suspended security assistance to Pakistan because they have been paying footsie with the Taliban and the Haqqani network: The United States announced Thursday it was suspending security assistance to Pakistan for failing to take \u201cdecisive action\u201d against Taliban militants targeting U.S. personnel in neighboring Afghanistan.The State Department\u2019s declaration signaled growing frustration over &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,402,373,454],"class_list":["post-179550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-foreign-relations","tag-south-asia","tag-terrorism","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179550"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}