"So be it.”

John Bolton: We may have to acquiesce in a ‘Pakistani military takeover’

Perennial Neoconservative gadfly John Bolton, who has often been accused of makingexaggerated claims about Middle Eastern threats, is now suggesting that a military coup in Pakistan may be the only viable response to the growing power of the Taliban.
In an op-ed for Saturday’s Wall Street Journal,Bolton writes, “To prevent catastrophe will require considerable American effort and unquestionably provoke resistance from many Pakistanis, often for widely differing reasons. We must strengthen pro-American elements in Pakistan’s military so they can purge dangerous Islamicists from their ranks; roll back Taliban advances; and, together with our increased efforts in Afghanistan, decisively defeat the militants on either side of the border. This may mean stifling some of our democratic squeamishness and acquiescing in a Pakistani military takeover, if the civilian government melts before radical pressures. So be it.”
Bolton’s stance on Pakistan appear to go hand-in-hand with his recent attempts todescribe the Obama administration’s international outreach efforts as amounting to a “tangible projection of weakness” and “revealing a Jimmy Carter-style unwillingness to do what’s necessary in a hard world to protect America’s interest.”
Both Bolton’s temper and his attempts to force intelligence analysis to match his own preconceptions are legendary. When he was nominated by former President Bush to be United Nations ambassador in 2005, the former head of the State Department’s intelligence bureau, Carl Ford, testified that Bolton was “a serial abuser” who had tried to have an analyst fired because he disagreed with Bolton’s belief that Cuba has a biological weapons program. LinkHere