I’ve posted a few times about that relationship, and argued many times with Rindy–on the blog, by email, over drinks, we may have even text-argued about it, mainly about the use of drones. I’m pretty unsympathetic when it comes to the Pakistani point of view. There’s no doubt that it stems in part because of a conviction that the Pakistani security forces bear some responsibility for the horrible murder of Daniel Pearl, a killing I felt very closely.

But mainly I just find it exasperating that we are paying billions of dollars in aid to a country that takes our money and helps our enemies, all of which has led directly to loss of American lives.

On the day that the US officially declares its war over in Iraq, we are also moving towards ending our war in Afghanistan. I fully support this–sick of propping Karzai’s bizarre and corrupt government, spending billions that is much needed at home and, most of all, still losing American lives in that barren graveyard of a country.

But this essay did what good journalism can do at times: educate and demonstrate a different point of view. There is much to be gleaned from Keller’s piece about the Pakistani point of view, some of which was new to me (the details on how effective the Pakistani military has been in Swat and the loss of life it suffers when it battles the Haqqani clan, for instance) and some of which wasn’t (its all-consuming obsession with India and how that drives its policy).

It may have gotten me thinking a bit more broadly about Pakistan and how it views its relationship with the US, but I still support what former CIA official Bruce Riedel wrote in this op-ed about the US pursuing more of a “containment” policy when dealing with Pakistan. And I definitely support both opening the textile trade in the US while drawing down on the amount of direct financial aid we are giving to essentially a military run country that enables the people that kill US soldiers and undermines our policy.

Thinking a lot this weekend about Afghanistan. I just finished Dexter Filkin’s excellent book, “The Forever War“, and read the piece Filkin’s also had in this weekend’s NY Times Magazine on General Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He is requesting at least another 40,000 troops to win the war in Afghanistan. I have a hard time thinking about any compromise with the Taliban that puts them in charge and abandons the Afghan people to their brutal, primitive rule. But the US has been there for over 8 years now, and I doubt that we can (or should) build a modern state there, in particular with the corrupt Karzai government stealing elections and trafficking in narcotics. Obama has a tough call on his hands, but I think I’m against sending a large number of troops. I think the fight is in Pakistan and dealing with that country’s disfunction. I still feel that way, but reading Part I in journalist David Rhode’s kidnapping saga, I was struck by this section:

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of “Al Qaeda lite,” a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis’ followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

I’m not so sure we can strike a balance in trying to limit an extremist sanctuary and not have a huge number of troops there. Either way we are confronted by a series of bad decisions, it’s just a question of which one is worse.