Bill,

I think I appreciate where you are coming from, and while it is a reasonable perspective I think a push into Pakistan in an effort to solve Afghanistan would find the same thing we found in Laos and Cambodia: A lot of targets to destroy, and perhaps are follow-on lull as the insurgency is forced to drop from a high Phase II back down into Phase I for a while as it recovers, and then surges back again stronger than ever. The bonus in Pakistan is that in launching into a nuclear state we risk far greater consequences than the US had to worry about in launching into Laos and Cambodia.

If defeating the insurgent could resolve an insurgency this could work, but I just don't see where any enduring results have come from such actions. Pakistan's role in this is frustrating to be sure, but they are not the cause of our problems. If we want to find the cause of our problems better we look at our own actions:

1. We disrupt the balance of power, allowing the Northern Alliance to prevail over the Taliban. (I am quite sure that as the Taliban fled into Pakistan they were very confident that the Northern Alliance could never have pulled that off without our help, and that as soon as we left they would come back and re-establish their government.

2. We anointed Karzai to be the leader years before any election took place, and then in a result that the entire world recognized as rigged, Karzai wins that election as well.

3. We oversee the formation of a "central" government that disrupts traditional systems of patronage; and guide the development of a constitution that says all the right things, but does all the wrong things, vesting all patronage nationally into that one man who we had anointed and elevated to lead Afghanistan.

4. We then dedicate ourselves to the defense of this government we had created and set out in earnest to force the people of Afghanistan to submit to its rule.

All Pakistan ever did was employ a shared Pashtun populace to maintain a degree of influence over Afghanistan, and quite reasonably supported a Taliban government that also drew its support from that same populace base in both countries.

No, to launch an attack into Pakistan in an effort to "win" might make our egos feel better for a while, but it would not be the best thing we could do for the people of this region.

To just walk away and let it sort out naturally would be less bloody and more durable.

To stay with a focus shifted to building and enforcing trust trust between the two sides may prove to be an exercise in futility, but it is far better than to simply stay and help one side beat up on the other. But first we must change how we think about these things.