Tom, let’s be clear about why the United States is bogged down in Afghanistan

By “Marty Martel”

Best Defense guest columnist

Here’s the answer in one word: Pakistan.

It is not, as Tom asserted the other day, because the U.S. military shifted from a small, special forces approach, to a large conventional approach. It is much more because the U.S. permitted the Pakistani government to relocate Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda to safe havens in North Waziristan and Baluchistan. That in turn has led to this never ending Afghan war and the suffering of its people.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said on Jan. 16, 2017 that perpetrators of recent attacks in Afghanistan were “living and being recruited from Pakistan.” And he was correct when he said last August that, “Our country is in an unannounced 14-year war with Pakistan.” Why did he say that? Because he knows that the Afghan Taliban is just a Pakistani puppet.

Why do American presidents permit this situation to go on? Partly because they buy into the fiction that they must support Pakistan, lest its nuclear weapons fall into the hands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. In other words, Pakistan is using its nuclear weapons to blackmail the United States and the United States has gladly fallen for it.

It’s quaint that U.S. worry about a “rogue commander” with “radical sympathies” seizing control of a Pakistani nuclear bomb. The fact is the Pakistani Army radicalized and went rogue many years ago — beginning under Zia-Ul-Haq in 1976.

There is only one way for President Donald Trump to prevent Pakistan from installing its puppet Taliban rule: permanently station U.S. troops in Afghanistan, just like in South Korea.

“Marty Martel” is the pseudonym of an Indian-born American.

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