Joe Klein has been to Afghanistan, so that puts him one up on me. Still, having spent some time pointing out the (widely-acknowledged) complexity of the situation in Afghanistan, Klein concludes his piece with this sweeping pronouncement:
The first step toward resolving the war in Afghanistan is to lay down the law in both Islamabad and Kabul. The message should be the same in both cases: The unsupervised splurge of American aid is over. The Pakistanis will have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade. There are plenty of other reforms necessary — the international humanitarian effort is a shabby, self-righteous mess; some of our NATO allies aren’t carrying their share of the military burden — but the war will remain a bloody stalemate at best as long as jihadis come across the border from Pakistan and the drug trade flourishes.
Well, now that Joe Klein’s pointed this out, Tommy Taliban might as well acknowledge that the game is up.
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