Does it bother ANYONE that our young soldiers are sitting ducks in the middle of an Islamofascist nest?
Maybe it’s time for a strategic withdrawal from Afghanistan, or rather, partitioning it into a relatively peaceful independent country of Daristan, where a variety of Persian is spoken and the Northern Alliance was successfully anti-Taliban even before September 11th, and a rump-Afghanistan or Pashtunistan, where Pashtun is spoken by the general population and most of the Taliban, and where we’d still need to be engaged.
See what the ISI thinks about that and their game-playing with us, with almost half of Punjabi-dominated Pakistan ethnically Pashtun. I’d foresee more cooperation with us when they imagine what our total withdrawal without completely subduing Pashtun militants first would do to their own country.
The ISI might be our biggest problem. On the one hand, I say call a spade a spade and deal with them as adversaries. On the other hand, we need access to their sea ports to move the very heavy stuff through to Afghanistan. I think Musharaf, as the former General, commanded more ISI loyalty than the current guy. Even the Pakistani civilian govt is scared of the ISI, kinda like all those presidents were of Hoover at the FBI - but much worse.