Author Gets It Right: Pakistan is Our Enemy

[Doncorelone]

Never considered it a question, you said it in form of statement, which was a presumption of my belief on your part.

[Philly]

You have your own reading comprehension to blame for that.

MOVE ON

[Doncorelone]

My reading comprehension is fine, your inability to let go of your own error is what is preventing this from moving forward.

[Philly]

If you're unable to move on it's going to be your own problem after this post. It was a question, that's why there was a question mark [?] at the end of it. You can continue to whine about it but that makes it a question, conclusively.

[Doncorelone]

It wasn't a question, it was something you posed as a presumption. Hence the strawman.

[Philly]

It will be interesting and awful to see what happens when we finally pull our resources out of Afghanistan. It will likely be an epic collapse and circling back to the OP, I think it spells bad news for any semblance of stability in Pakistan.

In other words we can't really leave

[Doncorelone]

Our resources aren't ever going to be withdrawn from Afghanistan, they're just not going to be as large as they are now. There are negotiations in place to leave a residual presence in Afghanistan in order to combat terrorism and to train the Afghan security forces, not to mention, Karzai signed a strategic partnership agreement with the US, plus structures will need to be in place in order to bankroll the Afghan army and government institutions.

[Philly]

Had we just propped up the right dictators in the first place we could have been where you want to go years ago and for much less money.

[Doncorelone]

The Soviets tried with dictators before, it failed miserably and was in part the reason why the Taliban came to power. Also, if this war against the Taliban is going to go anywhere, providing ammunition to the narrative of 'The West pays money to dictators to oppress Muslims' is hardly the way in which to win this war. Afghanistan doesn't have to be a Western style democracy, but it can still be somewhat democratic and better than what it was back in 2001.

[Philly]

Afghanistan is going to be an uncontrollable wasteland with dictator or democracy. A dictator who is in our pocket is a cheaper and more effective way to go if our plan is to maintain a permanent presence in there. But outside of the major cities it's still going to be largely outside of our influence, just as it would be outside the influence of a dictator or of a democratically elected government.