Sometimes it's the little things that go unnoticed that can turn out to make the biggest difference. Sometime in the last two or three weeks, our policy toward Pakistan changed. We are no longer letting the Taliban use the border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan as a safe haven. I'm not sure whether this is a result of better cooperation with the new government of Pakistan or frustration with the fact that American, NATO, and Afghani troops and security forces have lost more men in the first nine months of this year than they did in all of last year. At any rate, this is a game-changer, and may be the prelude to the kind of turnaround in Afghanistan that we have seen in Iraq. To me, though, one of the main problems in Afghanistan is that other than the illegal poppy crop, these people have no visible means of support. I know we are building power plants to give them electricity, and that may help, but until we give them an economic alternative to an illegal drug trade that funds terrorism, we will be fighting an uphill battle.
Just one more comment about the war in Afghanistan. The war in Afghanistan has essentially been under NATO, and there have been some problems with that. Canada has contributed greatly and lost a large number of troops in that war, but some of the European NATO members have not even been willing to allow their troops to go into combat. Because of what is happening to the demographics in Europe (and the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Spain), many European countries are afraid to fight the war on terrorism openly. This does not bode well for the future of democracy.
There is an article on the war in Afghanistan and a link to an interview with Ollie North concerning the war at CBN News.
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