Rice - NATO Warn Pakistan On Boarder Incursions

Pakistan needs to do more to prevent Taliban militants from launching attacks into Afghanistan from its territory, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday, echoing earlier remarks made by the chief of NATO.

Speaking in Australia, Rice suggested to reporters that a surge in Taliban-related violence in Afghanistan had its source in the restive semiautonomous tribal areas along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

"We understand that it's difficult, we understand that the northwest frontier area is difficult, but militants cannot be allowed to organize there and to plan there and to engage across the border," Rice said. "So yes, more needs to be done."

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer called Thursday for Pakistan to be more involved in tackling extremist bases on its soil.

Scheffer made the remarks as he visited Kabul amid increasing tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan over violence, including the bombing of the Indian embassy earlier this month that Pakistan has directly blamed on its neighbor's intelligence agency.

"I cannot think of anyone who would consider it acceptable that many terrorists from all over the world gather in a certain area and create mischief and havoc there," Scheffer told reporters, referencing militant bases in Pakistan.

DKK
Fox News

What A Strategic Thinker Knows -- Mr. Obama Can't Seem To Understand

Yet Mr. Obama's account of his strategic vision remains eccentric. He insists that Afghanistan is "the central front" for the United States, along with the border areas of Pakistan. But there are no known al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan, and any additional U.S. forces sent there would not be able to operate in the Pakistani territories where Osama bin Laden is headquartered. While the United States has an interest in preventing the resurgence of the Afghan Taliban, the country's strategic importance pales beside that of Iraq, which lies at the geopolitical center of the Middle East and contains some of the world's largest oil reserves. If Mr. Obama's antiwar stance has blinded him to those realities, that could prove far more debilitating to him as president than any particular timetable.

Washington Post -- Mr. Obama In Iraq
DKK

Obama Turns Democratic Talking Points Into Strategy -- Deep Thinker That He Is

 Fred Barnes discusses Obama's failure on the surge and how Obama has taken the democratic talking point about Afghanistan and turned it into a grand strategy to explain away his failure on Iraq.


via Redlasso

I think I recall Obama turning an error in the debates into a grand strategy too.  Perhaps on meeting with dictators?
DKK

Obama, Afghanistan, And Another Failed History Lesson

I really can't believe we have to go through this again but here we go.

History does not support Barack Obama and the Democrats criticism of Bush's handling of the Afghan front in the War on Terror.

Obama's plan of redeploying tens of thousands of additional troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to find one man and to quell an insurgent Taliban has been tried and failed miserably for the two Empires that tired that same strategy in the last couple of centuries. As a matter of fact the Soviet Afghan policy helped defeat the Soviet Union and the British Empire could never get a handle on the nation.

That is why the Bush administration's handling of the War on Terror has been so novel and successful so far -- they have managed to do what couldn't be done.

I have yet to see a single policy proposal by Senator Obama, whether it be domestic policy, foreign policy, or the conduct of the War on Terror that hasn't been tried and shown to be historically unworkable. But somehow Obama clings to them as if he can magically transform historically failed (and in some cases disastrously so) policies into modern day successes.

That is a common thread of the modern Democrat. The messianic belief that the same policies that have never worked anyplace and every time they have been tired can somehow be made to work now just because this time Barack Obama is the one implementing them.

Well, it is the policies that are flawed it doesn't matter who carries them out. Trumpeting them as change is either a fraud or a fundamental misunderstanding of history.

Is there no Democrat in politics today with a fundamental knowledge of history that can lend a hand to their standard bearer, for his and all of our sakes?
DKK

Karzai Warns Pakistan

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has warned that he is ready to send troops over the border into Pakistan to confront militants based there.

He said that when militants crossed over from Pakistan to kill Afghans and coalition troops, his nation had the right to retaliate in "self-defence".

Mr Karzai's remarks came two days after Taleban fighters attacked an Afghan jail, freeing hundreds of prisoners.

Pakistan denies providing a safe haven for the Taleban or other militants.

DKK
BBC --Karzai issues warning to Pakistan

New Allies Refuse To Accept The Left's Characterization Of Bush

In an interview, Sheik Ahmad al-Rishawi told The New York Sun that in April he prepared a 47-page study on Afghanistan and its tribes for the deputy chief of mission at the American embassy in Kabul, Christopher Dell. When asked if he would send military advisers to Afghanistan to assist American troops fighting there, he said: "I have no problem with this; if they ask me, I will do it."

(...)

"Al Qaeda is an ideology," Sheik Ahmad said. "We can defeat them inside Iraq and we can defeat them in any country." The tribal leader arrived in Washington last week. All of his meetings, including an audience with President Bush, have been closed to the public, in part because the Anbari sheiks, while likely to win future electoral contests, are not themselves part of Iraq's elected government.

Of his meeting with Mr. Bush, Sheik Ahmad said he was impressed. "He is a brave man. He is also a wise man. He is taking care of the country's future, the United States' future. He is also taking care of the Iraqi people, the ordinary people in Iraq. He wants to accomplish success in Iraq."
(...)
In Washington, Sheik Ahmad also met with some members of Congress. He said he told them that American soldiers should stay in Iraq for at least as long as it takes to rebuild Iraq's national army. The Democratic majority in Congress has tried and failed to mandate deadlines for the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq regardless of conditions on the ground.

DKK

NY Sun -- Iraqi Sheik Offers To Take Fight To Bin Laden

Taliban At Tipping Point Of Defeat

Missions by special forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have "decapitated" the Taliban and brought the war in Afghanistan to a "tipping point", the commander of British forces has said.

The new "precise, surgical" tactics have killed scores of insurgent leaders and made it extremely difficult for Pakistan-based Taliban leaders to prosecute the campaign, according to Brig Mark Carleton-Smith.

In the past two years an estimated 7,000 Taliban have been killed, the majority in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But it is the "very effective targeted decapitation operations" that have removed "several echelons of commanders".

This in turn has left the insurgents on the brink of defeat, the head of Task Force Helmand said.

DKK

Telegraph UK -- Afghan insurgents 'on brink of defeat'