Bin Laden was found, not in a cave in the Hindu Kush, but in a cozy McMansion in Abottabad. The implication is that Al Qaeda's most imporant state or quasi-state ally is not the Afghan Taliban but Pakistan, or more narrowly Pakistan's military-intelligence establishment.

That being the case, then Afghanistan is a sideshow. The ISI cannot be defeated in Kandahar, and the US forces in Afghanistan are essentially hostages to their supply line through Pakistan.

A blockade of Karachi, on the other hand, would be decisive in forcing the surrender of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and the dismantling of their production complex. If we didn't have 100,000 US soldiers hostage to fuel and water trucks from Quetta.

I certainly think the experience of the last administration, after it ignored military advice as to the resources and commitment needed for postwar operations in Iraq; how to proceed both before and after the first battle of Fallujah; and on numerous other occasions, would commend careful consideration of Central Command's opinion about Afghanistan to President Obama.

President Bush, after all, is generally acknowledged to have screwed up often in matters of war and peace. His closest associates, and most dedicated admirers in the Defense Department especially, came to be known as screw-ups themselves. They wasted a huge amount of money and got a lot of Americans killed for no good reason. Obama doesn't want to go down that road.

Now, the military's advice has not always been good in recent years. There are actually not that many government departments in which a major effort that has gone backward after almost a decade would invest its leaders with much credibility. No one wants to believe that the persistent optimism about Afghanistan emanating from Gen. Petraeus is an echo of American military optimism in Indochina forty years ago, but since we're dependent on Afghans to achieve an acceptable end-state in this war that possibility must at least be considered.

In any event, the case for Obama giving a clear explanation, conceptually, as to the course he means to pursue seems to me quite sound. Afghanistan to the United States is like a dumbbell held at arm's length right now, a major military deployment that must be supplied through many miles of hostile territory. Because it depends for success on Afghans, the commitment could fail even if the American military does everything right from here on out. The military leadership absolutely should be able to make its case that sustaining this commitment indefinitely is the right thing to do, and President Obama should be very clear in public if he concludes this view is wrong.

Hi,

Hopefully the situation at Afghanistan will find soon. The war cause many death and damage at there. There need the country that become the representative of the world to become as peace agent. We all love the peace. The world leaders should forward to stop the war at Afghanistan to make sure the people live there is safe with harmony.

Regards,
business

That's what this is now. My guess is he hears more from lobbyists that he wants to hear than the military which he apparently does not want to hear. Understanding that it sounds like classic Leftist conspiracy mongering, the fact remains that much of what the US government does has far more to do with the money that gets poured into campaign war chests than it does with any think tanks, military blue ribbon commisions, or policy advisors be they military or civilian.

The seeds of the ‘current Afghan tragedy’ were sowed in Washington when Bush administration decided to allow Musharraf to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz in November, 2001. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan (now relocated to Karachi by Pakistani ISI to protect them from possible US drone attacks) and Haqqani network (HQN) in North Waziristan from where Mullah Omar’s QST and Haqqani’s HQN have been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

Duplicitous Pakistan has poor U. S. over the barrel of a gun. US can NOT use its aid leverage to force Pakistan to stop supporting terrorist groups who kill US/NATO troops in Afghanistan day in and day out because US needs Pakistan’s help in ferrying supplies to those very US/NATO troops.

Adm Mullen had following to say about America’s primary ally in its fight against terrorism, to the foreign news media on 1/13/2011: “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it [Pakistan] is the epicenter of terrorism in the world right now. It is absolutely critical that the safe havens in Pakistan get shut down. We cannot succeed in Afghanistan without that. It’s not just Haqqani Network anymore, or Al Qaeda or TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan), the Afghan Taliban, or LeT (Lashkar-e-Tayyeba), it’s all of them working together.”

And previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan, wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly sponsoring four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

However US has been deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections in fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/2010, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/2010 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/2010 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

American soldiers are dieing in Afghanistan because of their own government’s misguided policies. For deliberately ignoring Taliban’s Pakistani connections, US deserves to be duped by Pakistan.

At this stage in the game, as far as the US is concerned, the war on terror is over; feeble clarifications by the State Department, that the larger war on Al Qaeda shall continue, are inconsequential. Pakistan knows that by skillfully holding out till now, it is close to getting its proxy regime in place in Kabul. If it is able to sell the idea of an Islamabad-friendly Government as being of strategic utility to Washington, there’s no reason why the Americans should object to that. Pakistani and American interests, both short-term and medium-term, converge at this point; a broke America cannot afford to look at long-term interests, not at this moment.

And thereby hangs a tale — of Pakistani and American perfidy. The US has been, and shall remain, mindful of the “paranoia of Pakistan”; Islamabad’s sensitivities, its faux victimhood, will always take precedence over Afghanistan in Washington.

Obama administration is already asking Pakistan to provide access to Afghan Taliban leaders safely ensconced under Pakistani ISI's protection. A facade of peace deal will be reached with Afghan Taliban leaders chosen by Pakistan and as dictated by Pakistan. US will begin its drawdown and finally exit the theatre of a war it is desperate not to be seen as having lost, not so much to the Taliban and Al Qaeda as to the wily Generals of Rawalpindi who have proved to be smarter than the Americans.

That facade of peace will crumble within few years after the departure of US troops and Pakistan will bring Afghanistan under its suzerainty with reimposition of Taliban rule just as it did in 1996, as Uncle Sam helplessly looks the other way.