Pakistan is the central front in the GWOT and right now they are only holding their own.
NATO has the political guts and courage and firepower to barely scrape enough to send to Afghanistan: 8000 troops from 36 NATO and NATO-partner nations.
PATHETIC.
Yet most people criticize Musharraf before they criticize NATO.
BOTTOM-LINE: Musharraf is a better ally than NATO.
He needs our support.
Which means if you want Pakistan to remain an ally (and if you want to keep those Pakistani nukes out of the hands of the jihadists), you CANNOT vote Democrat.
"At considerable domestic political risk - not to mention the risk to his own life - Musharraf has 90,000 troops fighting the enemy in the federally administered tribal regions"
ReplyDeleteWhile I agree it would be nice if NATO countries provided more troops to Afghanistan, it is not right to compare the quantity of European forces in Afghanistan to the number of Pakistani forces in Pakistan... the Pakistanis are protecting their homeland, while European forces are deployed thousands of miles from home which a) costs much more per troop, and b) provides several limitations to the number of troops actually able to be deployed due to the nature of a mission abroad, and c) means it will be more difficult to rally domestic political support for the mission since the link with national security is less direct.
Europeans aren't fighting in Afghanistan because they are being told to by America, but instead they are fighting in Afghanistan because they see a real threat to their ownn lands there. At the same time, Musharraf is not America's dog in Pakistan... his reliability is questionable and strongly circumstantial, while the US-European NATO partnership is based on SHARED VALUES and has a track record of over 50 years.
Anyhow, what is the link between voting for a democrat and keeping Musharraf in power? What about the Republican Pakistan policy has been so successful... see:
http://www.atlanticreview.org/archives/952-Europe-has-no-Pakistan-Policy,-US-has-a-Bad-One.html