#John Batchelor Show - 14 April 2011

http://wabcradio.com/FlashPlayer/default.asp?SPID=33447&ID=2162106

10 minutes in.  pl

Comments

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks PL and informative interview. So Pakistan and Saudi links longstanding. What did Pakistan do in Desert Shield and Desert Storm, anything for the Saudis and Kuwaitis?

[William R. Cumming]

Pat! Your interview prompts me to ask why or why not Egypt which is closer would or would not be asked to help the Saudis? Is there a longterm antipathy there?

[Patrick Lang]

WRC

Egypt's Army is a large, well equipped graft machine with little real fighting ability. Pakistan's army is a real fighting machine. pl

[William R. Cumming]

Thanks Pat!

[Patrick Lang]

All

Today's news makes thisinterview sound prophetic. Salih is edging toward the door. The Saudis are going to do a peace conference on Afghanistan including the parties mentioned in the interview. The Pakistani Prime Minister is on his way to Kebul to confer with Karzai... In an earlier interview I opined that Bashar Asad is a closet liberal. Now he has announced to his new cabinet that the mergency laws will be abolished. He may regret this. pl

[Dan Gackle]

Having earlier lamented the absence of such interviews, I must rejoice at their return- and what a return. First, 100% PL instead of 50% is a major improvement. Second, the content is if anything better than what went before. In 10-15 minutes we have more substance here than hours of standard programming on the same topics.

After listening, it dawned on me what is so valuable about Col. Lang's commentary. Many people who get tired of MSM pabulum go in for naive conspiracy theories as the readiest alternative. Perhaps it isn't stupidity that drives a skeptical public in that direction so much as inexperience with how governments, militaries and so on actually work. Well, PL's commentary, distinguished equally by how well-informed and bs-free it is, is an alternative to both of these childish options. Who else out there is providing anything like it? I can think of a handful of intelligent commenters with no obvious ideological agenda. But not one has anything approaching this level of first-hand experience and knowledge.

[Dan Gackle]

Col. Lang:

A couple questions from the interview. 1. Suppose Afghanistan resolves the way you describe, in a de facto partition along ethnic lines. Would this indicate that the core conflict has been primarily ethnic all along, as opposed to one of religious ideology (clash of civilizations etc.) as the Taliban have been depicted in the West? 2. What would be required to ensure that such a Pashtun entity would not breed the kind of terrorism that led to the war in the first place, and your estimate of the likelihood of that outcome?