U.S. Begins Official Effort to Destabilize Pakistan

by Erick Erickson

The ineptitude of this administration as it wages foreign policy knows no bounds. What makes it all the more disturbing is that the Obama administration is beginning to engage in an official effort to destabilize the government of Pakistan and potentially foment a civil war there.

On egg shells ever since Musharraf’s resignation as President and the assasination of Benazir Bhutto, USA Today has obtained a confidential State Department memo outlining how the administration intends to escalate Pakistan’s descent into chaos.

The sad thing is the administration thinks it will be helping.

The problem — according to the memo by C. Stuart Callison, an economist with the U.S. Agency for International Development — is that Holbrooke is canceling successful programs run by U.S. contractors and preparing to bypass them by giving large sums to local organizations with shaky financial track records.

Holbrooke, the top civilian overseeing Obama administration policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan, has asked to personally approve every project funding renewal involving U.S. contractors, Callison wrote — and “the disapprovals already received are shockingly counterproductive.”

In other words, the United States is shifting money from efficient operations that work to inefficient operations that line the pockets of people who we probably don’t want to make wealthy, given their loyalties.

It is willfully naive. And it is dangerous.

If Pakistan falls, war will come with India. Both have nukes. The consequences for this administration’s ineptitude will be major and the lives lost catastrophic.

Maybe Obama wasn’t misspeaking during the campaign when he said he wanted to bomb Pakistan . . . er . . . Pockeestun.