Fareed Zakaria is a commentator that the president takes seriously, as you can see from the above photo, which shows Obama carrying a copy of Zakaria's latest book.
In this week's column he comes firmly down on the Biden side of the Afghanistan argument (otherwise known as the "muddling through" argument): there's virtually no Al-Qaeda in that country any more, the Jihadist threat now resides in Pakistan, so that's where the US should focus its attention and resources. More troops in Afghanistan might simply cause a backlash in that country. We should keep existing troop levels there and use them just to keep the threat at bay, rather than trying to control and reconstruct the whole country. I must say, given the parlous state of the state in Afghanistan (especially after the disaster of those elections) this option is starting to sound like the least bad to me.
Zakaria's piece includes this interesting fact, or informed estimate:
It is unclear how many Taliban fighters believe in a global jihadist ideology, but most U.S. commanders with whom I've spoken feel that the number is less than 30 percent. The other 70 percent are driven by money, gangland peer pressure or opposition to Karzai.
Rory Stewart has been saying a similar thing, more colorfully -- faced with a tiger and cat, the US has been hitting the cat (Afghanistan) and ignoring the tiger (Pakistan).
Posted by: peter | October 12, 2009 at 08:31 PM
As a tax paying American, I'm a little upset that Mr. Obama has to stick his finger into his book to keep track of where he left off. Where's the Presidential Bookmark?
Posted by: Dawn | October 13, 2009 at 12:52 AM
Good point. In fact there should be a person employed solely to stick their finger in the book to keep the president's place.
Posted by: Marbury | October 13, 2009 at 08:39 AM