Recently, President Obama announced his timeline for getting out of Iraq, mostly by late 2010, entirely by 2011. This is to be celebrated. May lefty peaceniks though, are not happy because Obama is putting more into Afghanistan. But Afghanistan is not Iraq, and it is not just Afghanistan.
Pakistan is a country in utter chaos. It is a country that possesses nuclear weapons. It is a country that has a tense relationship with its neighbor, India, who also has nuclear weapons. The situation in Pakistan must be, far and away, the greatest threat to global security that exists. The Middle East, Iran, North Korea, they are all minor issues in comparison.
So we focus on Afghanistan, rather than leaving it, because of Pakistan, because in Pakistan lies the fate of Afghanistan and global security. Here, the leftist tendency towards pacifist disengagement is dangerous. I don’t know what the way forward is regarding Pakistan, but I do sense that ignoring the issue isn’t the solution.
March 8, 2009 at 5:08 am |
The only solution for Pakistan is that, when Uncle Sam will stop sticking its nose in this area. The very element which scares the shit out of you, is your own CIA creation, and now you have landed us in hell.
Its simple. You reap what you sow
March 8, 2009 at 9:54 am |
I don’t dispute that America’s habit of playing political favorites, even to the point in opposing democracy, has been problematic (see Iran) or believing that the enemy of our enemy is our friend (see Osama bin Laden). Though the fact that India and Pakistan are nuclear powers has little to do with the U.S.
But I’m a policy person, not a historian. My job is to take the situation as given and move it in a positive direction, not to provide a trial of past errors. And given where we are right now, as opposed to where we could be if better policy had existed in the past, I just don’t think abandoning the area will produce a particularly good result.