Obama had an almost providential opportunity to squeeze the army in the immediate aftermath of bin Laden’s discovery in May in the garrison city of Abbottabad. The khakis were at their weakest in four decades. That was the time to bolster civilian rule, to corral the army with fresh ultimatums. Instead, Obama seemed more anxious about pacifying Pakistan for having breached its sovereignty than holding its army to account for harboring bin Laden — which explains the White House’s rush to finesse Amb. Mike Mullen’s candid testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee in September.
Then, in a craven abdication of American responsibility to the citizens of Afghanistan, Obama talked about the need for nation-building at home. For a man who attained the presidency by invoking Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, Obama has rarely displayed any compunction in retreating from battle with men who, given the opportunity, would have lynched King and Gandhi — indeed men who have presided over the slaughter and torture of too many potential Kings and Gandhis of our age. Could there be a more forceful testament to the failure of Obama’s foreign policy in South Asia than the sight of terrorist leader Sirajuddin Haqqani operating with impunity in Pakistan six months after bin Laden’s killing?…
Faced with a re-election campaign, Obama is seeking to obtain a cosmetic “end” to the mission in Afghanistan by cutting deals with the Pakistani army and its clients in the Taliban. This will involve a reduced presence of American troops on the ground, a heightened use of targeted drone strikes, and, to keep this arrangement, bribes to the Pakistan army in the form of vaguely conditional aid.
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