Statements by SecDef Gates have been equivocal and noncommittal on the Afghanistan timetable. Understandable, given that the strategy is to use current forces to pressure various tribal elements to negotiate despite the prospect that relief will come to them soon, in the form of a US withdrawal. (Of course a negotiated settlement can never happen in any meaningful way, given the heterogeneity of these tribal elements, for which the generic moniker Taliban is misleading, and given the rampant corruption of the Karzai "regime".)
The more interesting piece of this puzzle concerns the use of India and Pakistan against one another: a $2 billion military aid package for Pakistan, coupled with US drone attacks inside Pakistan (and coinciding with a Mosque bombing there); and at the same time gestures seeming to invite India to even greater presence in Afghanistan - a strategic threat to Pakistan. A sly game, and difficult to predict the outcome.
Whatever the outcome of that complicated gambit, the cost benefit ratio of conquering and holding this particular foreign nation as a method of dealing with an estimated 50 AQ in Afghanistan and 300 in Pak does not support a continued presence, nor does any remote prospect of TAPI. Even more so in the context of movement repudiations of AQ as a result of its impact on innocent civilians.
Time to shut this one down.
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