I thought it was an overseas contingency operation...

[mtlinscomb]

An opinion I heard that made sense was this change back to war on terror might be intentional considering the evaluation taking place about an increase in troops. I think the guy simply slipped and said something he was instructed not to say. Any thoughts?

 

[Lake View Too]

George Will's column was printed in it's entirety in the NW Daily News. To sum it up we have nowhere near the resources to ever "clear, hold, and build" all of Afganistan. No amount of troops can do it. It went further to say that the Brookings Institute did a study that said that Afgan was the second most failed state besides Somalia. There is no real government or nation to rebuild. We just have to get out and pay more attention to Pakistan, which really matters.

 

[scooterbug44]

How exactly do you ignore Afghanistan and focus on Pakistan? There is a lot of back and forth across the rather arbitrary border between the two.

 

[Lake View Too]

I'm not sure how to do this. I guess we simply have to give Pakistan whatever it needs to keep a viable government and military(grand scale bribery seems to be our favorite form of foreign aid) The whole situation is "seriously flawed". Makes you wonder what our state department was doing Pakistan for the last eight years, doesn't it?

 

[30ashopper]

I'm not sure how to do this. I guess we simply have to give Pakistan whatever it needs to keep a viable government and military(grand scale bribery seems to be our favorite form of foreign aid) The whole situation is "seriously flawed". Makes you wonder what our state department was doing Pakistan for the last eight years, doesn't it?

They were trying to keep it from becoming a failed state. Which was basically the same approach we've followed since the late 80's. Musharaff isn't the best guy in the world to support, but he does have control over their nuclear arsinal. If the extremists overthrough the government there, all hell breaks lose.

Pakistan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Lake View Too]

Isn't Musharaff out of power now. I thought they elected somebody new. The real concern is a major portion of the Pakistani people do not regard the Taliban as necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps this is where we need to be building schools and doing humanitarian aid to get the polpulace to at least consider that maybe we are the good guys.