Obama’s Afghan-Pakistan challenge | al Jazeera online

How tough are the issues the U.S. faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan?  Rob Reynolds for al Jazeera asked PCR Project Codirector Karin von Hippel that question:

"Together, the two are the toughest foreign policy challenges we've faced in years, if not decades.  They dwarf Iraq and many other complexes we've dealt with in the past two, three or four decades.

Part of the problem is how the U.S. has sold the war with al Qaeda and the Taliban to the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan:

If they think they're just fighting our war, they won't put in an effort.  What the US needs to do is support the Pakistani government to protect themselves.

In the long run, that's the only way we can secure the nuclear weapons. We're not going to take over the country, we just can't. We're not capable of doing it. Flikr photo by Edge of Space used under a Creative Commons license.