JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
Enter
assessment that Pakistan was becoming a dangerous center of al
Qaeda’s radicalism, compared with
Afghanistan. Backing him was no
less a figure than CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus, who
said in May of the same year that
al Qaeda was no longer “operating
in Afghanistan,” but rather, was
“clearly ... rooted in the border region of Western Pakistan.”
Of course, this all came at a
time when NATO’s International
Security Assistance Force, ISAF,
was largely attempting to execute
a counterinsurgency strategy, in
an attempt to keep Afghans from
LOOKING FORWARD
IN ANGST
HUFFINGTON
01.19.14
I’m sorry to say that
Secretary Gates is wrong
— Vice President Biden
has not had a 40-year reign
of error. Not if you recall
the war on Afghanistan.”
falling back under the sway of the
Taliban, prop up the Karzai regime, and hold whatever tenuous
gains had been obtained from our
misadventure in the “graveyard of
empires.” Biden took a dim view
of that approach as well, and he
strongly advocated instead for a
counterterrorism approach in Afghanistan as an alternative to the
counterinsurgency-feeding troop