AfPakanistan – What Has Barack Obama Inherited

U.S. Marine under fire in Afghanistan, Spring 2008, Reuters

U.S. Military Surge in Afghanistan Can It Work?

U.S. Ally Pakistan – Working Next Door at Cross Purpose

If you’re at all interested in the future of the “War on Terror” and the current version of the Great Game being played out Afghanistan and Pakistan you need to read two stories from the Sunday New York Times:

• Fearing another Quagmire in Afghanistan
• In Pakistan, radio amplifies terror

What a mess.

No question about it, we didn’t finish the job in Afghanistan.  We pulled personnel and resources from the fight and sent it all to Iraq.  Six or seven years later, the Taliban controls swaths of territory, they use the Afghan-Pak border like a revolving door and they still terrorize those who don’t bend to their Dark Ages world view.

I’ve read that President Barack Obama is sending anywhere from 7,000 to 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in order to deal with a resurgent Taliban, drug lords and assorted other characters from Earth’s version of Tatooine’s Cantina.  He might listen to former Secy of State Colin Powell:

Think Iraq was hard? Afghanistan, former Secretary of State Colin Powell argues, will be “much, much harder.”

“Iraq had a middle class,” Mr. Powell pointed out on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” a couple of hours before Mr. Obama was sworn in last Tuesday. “It was a fairly advanced country before Saddam Hussein drove it in the ground.” Afghanistan, on the other hand, “is still basically a tribal society, a lot of corruption; drugs are going to destroy that country if something isn’t done about it.”

Remember the post-Soviet era in Afghanistan? Forget about all the great powers that have had their militaries ground down in the mountain redoubts of the country, just think back to when the Soviets left.

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Colin Powell – The Real Republican Maverick

What did John McCain do after the Bush-Rove political machine ground his good name into the South Carolina mud in 2000? Something very unmavericky – he played ball with them all the through eight years of failed policies. What did John McCain do after who he called the “agents of intolerance” besmirched his name in that same 2000 campaign? He gave a commencement address at Liberty University. Why did John the Maverick lose his straight-talkin’ ways? He figured he had as good a chance as any to be the Republican nominee in 2008. John McCain sold out for a job.

What did Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell do when Dick Cheney and George Tenet fed him bad information and sent him to the United Nations a la Adlai Stevenson? He waited an appropriate amount of time because he’s a gentleman, he packed up Dick Armitage, and left the Administration that stabbed him in the back and left him out there hanging. Now that was Mavericky. Not relying on the broken down Republican Party, Powell took his own counsel this weekend and endorsed Barack Obama for president. In part, on Meet the Press he said: Read more

Video: Powell Endorses Obama; Chuck Todd on Meet the Press | October 19

Transcript: Colin Powell on Meet the Press Endorses Barack Obama | October 19

(Source: NBC’s Meet the Press)
MR. TOM BROKAW:  Our issues this Sunday:  He served as President George W. Bush’s secretary of state and was once called the man most likely to become the nation’s first African-American president.  He has been courted by both the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns and said this last month:
(Videotape)
GEN. COLIN POWELL (RET.):  I have been watching both of these individuals.  I know them both extremely well, and I have not decided who I’m going to vote for yet.
(End videotape)

MR. BROKAW:  Is he now ready to make an endorsement in this presidential race?  What are his thoughts on the major issues facing the country and the world?  Our exclusive guest this Sunday, former Secretary of State General Colin Powell. Read more

Colin Powell to Endorse Obama?

That’d Be Cool …

Read about it from Fox News.  Shortly after Bill Kristol pronounced this, Powell denied it.