Word: pakistans
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...protect the troops serving under his command. That's critical, given the fact that U.S. troops are fighting Islamic militants in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama has also made it clear that the worsening situation in Afghanistan requires delicate negotiations and cooperation with Muslim, and nuclear-armed, Pakistan. And his reversal has one more advantage: Obama is slated to speak in Egypt - on U.S.-Muslim relations - on June 4, a week after the photographs were to have been released...
...rude truth of the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan was revealed at a lunch the Presidents of both countries attended with 27 U.S. Senators, an event that really did merit a few over-the-top encomiums like "unprecedented" and "brutal." The climax came when Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee asked President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan what the purpose of the U.S. mission was in his country. Karzai filibustered, and Corker told him, in no uncertain terms, that his answer was incomprehensible. At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing a few days later, Corker confronted Holbrooke about the lack of credibility...
...mistake a shift in body language for a breakthrough, to mistake a breakthrough for a solution. And so it was slightly disconcerting to hear Richard Holbrooke, our very best diplomatic negotiator, deploying words like "extraordinary" and "unprecedented" to describe the recent round of talks with delegations from Afghanistan and Pakistan in Washington, during a White House briefing for columnists just after the talks ended. He was flanked by General David Petraeus, who reinforced Holbrooke's message. The talks "exceeded my expectations," the general said. A good deal of this is, obviously, puffery designed to keep the diplomatic balloon aloft...
...also met, as did, most significant of all, military and intelligence representatives. (The idea that the Afghan intelligence service would break bread with the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, which created the Taliban, is mind-boggling.) These advances were given greater heft by positive developments on the ground - especially Pakistan's apparent decision to stop the Taliban advance toward Islamabad, using six to eight brigades transferred from the Indian border. (See pictures of the battle against the Taliban...
...Indeed, neither President is exactly a paragon of statesmanship. The reality in Afghanistan and Pakistan is that both governments have been unable to provide the most basic services - security, education, justice - for their citizens, which is why the Taliban, which has some fairly strong ideas about law and order, has been able to intimidate its way back into control of some areas. Karzai has an excuse: his country has suffered through 30 years of war, although the alleged participation of his brother in the Kandahar-province opium trade and the utter corruption of the Afghan civil service don't help...