Yes, it is true. I would say that Obama’s swapping leadership in his national security team was about as exciting as the President changing his socks. Obama’s policies won’t be affected by his decision and it’s his policies that are the problem. In particular, sending Panetta over to trim $400 billion more from the Pentagon won’t work. Obama is simply mimicking the Clinton strategy of whacking the defense budget to take pressure off to cut else where. But the Clinton strategy is not sustainable in the world in which we live and here is why. First, when Clinton slashed defense spending the military could live off the “fat” of the Reagan build-up. That fat is long burned-off. We have ships, planes, and vehicles that should have been replaced a decade ago. Second, the world is a more troubled place for the US than it was in the 1990s. The U.S. faces competition from China, an Iran preparing to go nuclear, a more threatening North Korea, and on and on. The reality is that letting the US military go hollow is not an option. It will be a hard sell in Congress.

Comes now the news on Sunday that Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan, in a town not far from Islamabad that apparently caters to retired Pakistani military. Wherever the US relationship with Pakistan may have been headed last week, according to the commentators responding to this question, I suspect that public opinion, once it focuses on the fact that OBL was making a life in Pakistan, will demand a more robust response from the White House. The relationship is about to be tested significantly.

We are locked in a world wide existential struggle against Islamic fringe ijma' groups? Well,yes, if we say so... Iran is an existential threat to the US? No. Iran might some day be an existential threat to Israel. Today, only Zionist paranoia makes anything like that seem even remotely true. The Iranians have no nuclear weapons.
They have no delivery mean for their non-existent nuclear weapons. When they have them, if they are stupid enough to have them, then we can destfroy them and their wretched government, but, not now. A short time ago I invited a supposed Israeli friend and colleague to my Washington club. In the midst of lunchj this person announced to the table that I did not see Israeli and American interests as identical.. He then waited for condemnation to fall on my head. It did not.

We have been lured into a situation in Afghanistan which pits us Americans against islamic zealots. How did that happen? How did we become engaged against Islamicism? What is their medieval nonsense to us? Our economy is falling apart on the altar of self-interest withoiut conscience. Can we not just hunt down and kill our enemies or must we destroy traditional civilizations to feed the 1% solution? And whose solution is that?

Pakistan? Let them go their own way. It is not our way and will never be our way. They will be China's trading partners? There will be a railroad from the Chinese copper concession in SE Afghanistan to Pakistan and then to China? So what?

We are done in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc. We did it to ourselves. Our reach exceeded our grasp..

Not to worry... Allah remains between these countries and the communists,

A wise man once said, after losing large, that he was but "another tired man to lay down his hand and quit the holy game of poker." America is losing a bundle in the poker game of Afghanistan. And Pakistan is one of the main causes. Sadly, we cannot quit this "holy game" and Islamabad is unlikely to change.

Let's not mistake one fundamental fact in this current "poker" game -- the Pakistanis will do what is best for them and when it is best for them. While Washington might decry their duplicity, the Pakistanis know we will not be in the region forever. And that the Taliban are closer at hand in the FATA and more likely to kill them and their families. Thus, that border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is going to remain "porous" to say the least.

So what does it mean for us. We cannot fully disengage from Afghanistan as our enemies will continue to use it as a base to attack us. We do need to continue focusing our efforts on hitting high value targets among our enemy. The Afghans will tolerate it because they need and want our aid. The Pakistanis -- we'll need to understand that their support is premised on what we can do for them in terms of supplies and aid. In short, we can "time share" their love -- but we ain't ever going to owe them.

We are in a long game of high stakes poker here. Our commitment in Afghanistan will outlast the current administration. Sadly, this is one game of poker we can not win in the short term, but also cannot afford to lose in the long run.

The US relationship with Pakistan is deeply disfunctional. It is not a disaster. To borrow a word from high school "mean girls," we are frenemies. It's a mess -- but being plain old enemies would be a lot worse.

At the very highest and very lowest levels, our national security agenda in Afghanistan is actually compatible wth -- though hardly identical with -- that of the Pakistani establishment. (Pakistan as a country is too diverse and divided to speak of it having a single agenda or set of interests). In the broadest strategic strokes, both of us would prefer a stable Afghanistan. At the most day-to-day tactical level, both of us would prefer at least the anti-Pakistani elements of the Taliban be neutralized or destroyed. It's everything in between that's the problem. The Pakistani military won't accept stability in Afghanistan at the price of Indian influence - they fear being outflanked by their longtime and much larger rival -- and they see violent Islamic extremists as at least insurance against such an outcome and often as a legitimate tool of policy. We won't accept stability in Afghanistan at the price of giving those groups sanctuary.

This circle gets squared, a little, because we bully and bribe the Pakistanis to do specific things that they don't want to do. It's ugly and messy, but in the ugly, messy reality of international power politics, it's what countries have to do -- and especially so for imperial powers.

Dr. Brenner as always makes an eloquent case against America taking on an imperial role. As a practical matter, American prosperity depends on the global system of trade -- most obviously but not only in the form of Middle Eastern oil. On a global scale, we have more at stake than any other country and more power to act. That inevitably sucks a nation into performing some kind of imperial role, often against its will, whether it's the Roman Republic repeatedly conquering new provinces to stop barbarian raids against the old ones or trade interests dragging first the British East India Company and ultimately the British government into the internal politics of the Indian subcontinent. The United States may be an inadvertent and reluctant empire, but we are stuck with an imperial role all the same.

The United States and Pakistan have divergent interests in Afghanistan. Therefore, their views as to desirable/acceptable outcomes are different. The United States and Washington have different conceptions as to what constitutes a satisfactory relationship. Therefore, there is no easy diplomatic mechanism for reconciling interests in a shared strategy. Today's heightened tensions as reflected in the hostile tone of public remarks stem directly from those disagreements.

Cumulative grievances have created such strain that each side is fed up with the other. That untenable state of affairs is the natural outgrowth of Washington's relentless pursuit of unreachable war aims and Islamabad's implacable resistance to being America's client.

The initial purpose of the American operation in Afghanistan was to eliminate any further al-Qaidi threat. That meant not just neutralizing al-Qaidi as an organization able to mount attacks on the United States. It came to mean something more ambitious: ensuring that no group like al-Qaidi would be able to do so in the future. As a consequence, this more extreme formulation dictated that Afghanistan territory be under the secure control of political forces hostile to al-Qaidi, beholden to the United States, and, therefore, that the Taliban too be eliminated as a viable political force throughout the entire country. Zero threat tolerance permits no place for the Taliban and their allies in the country's political life and no possibility of their acquiring one in the future. Talk about engaging in a dialogue with some Taliban elements is just talk since it is heavily conditioned on their being sanitized and their suing for peace on bended knee.

By logical extrapolation, reaching this goal has meant eliminating, or at least neutralizing the Taliban, its affiliates and its supporters across the Durand Line in Pakistan, too. A grand project. One that has demanded a Pakistan fully committed to serving as Washington's auxiliary in carrying out those tasks. Following this line of thinking, any outcome that did not guarantee zero threat forevermore necessitates the continued presence of some American counter insurgency forces in Afghanistan indefinitely. Bases to support them also are required. Those bases, in which the United States already has invested several billions, have taken on a strategic life of their own. The Pentagon wants to hold them in perpetuity as a key component in an archipelago of bases from the Persian Gulf far into Central Asia. This latter objective explains the desperate efforts now underway to muscle the Baghdad government into asking for a major American military presence beyond the agreed December 31 deadline for withdrawal. This presence would be independent of the 16,000 mercenaries who will serve our diplomatic mission and will report to Secretary of State Clinton.

Little of this strategic vision is shared by the Pakistani leadership, certainly not by the powerful military under General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani’s direction. Their strategic concerns in Afghanistan are keyed to their preoccupation with the growing military and economic might of India which they view as a hostile neighbor. For the Pakistani leadership, it is imperative that Afghanistan be in friendly Afghan hands. In concrete terms that means a predominantly Pashton government whose military and intelligence services are not under Tajik or Uzbek control. It means that ethnic, tribal and religious bonds across the Durand Line remain viable, that Pakistan's friends (such as the Haqqani network) remain politically intact, and that Pakistan's voice will be heard and respected in the negotiation of any settlement. The Pakistanis draw a crisper line of distinction between al-Qaidi and the Taliban (broadly defined) than does the United States. Islamabad has no use for al-Qaidi; it has considerable use for the others.

It is not obvious that these different conceptions of the situation are compatible. That can only be determined, in the Pakistani view, if Washington treats Pakistan as a true partner. That precludes dictation, coercion and the presumption that Pakistan as the dependent party must subordinate itself to the United States. General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, head of the ISI, personally took that message to the Pentagon and CIA last week and had it flatly rejected. If the Islamabad feels that's its core interests are being jeopardized and/or that the United States is trespassing on its sovereignty, it will react - whether by blocking the supply route through Pakistan from Indian Ocean ports, by restricting autonomous American intelligence operations anywhere on Pakistani soil, or by refraining from pressuring 'non-cordial' Taliban and Taliban friendly elements in the Northwest. This position has been bluntly stated recently by General Kayani and General Pasha, who cut short his tumultuous visit to Washington incensed at America’s unremitting demands. The United States has responded by intensified drone strikes against Pakistan friendly groups in North Waziristan reinforced by angry public remarks from Admiral Mullen and Secretary Gates. As Brigadier F. B. Ali has explained, there is an inexorable conflict dynamic in these increasingly acrid relations.

The political climate in Pakistan, moreover, is growing progressively more averse to American pressure. Anti-American sentiment is spreading and growing more embittered by the drone strikes and the killings in Lahore by CIA hireling Raymond Davis. Washington has relied on the compliant attitude of President Asif Ali Zardari - an American dependent in more ways than one. His current popularity ratings barely break into double digits. He is almost certain to be ousted in the next election to be replaced by opposition leaders less chummy with Washington.

In short, Washington is irrevocably committed to dominate Afghanistan on its own terms, based on a dire reading of its own interests, and expects Pakistan to serve as an obedient client. The objective (including a permanent military presence in Central Asia) and the method conjure visions of a supposedly bygone era. The self-righteousness and hubris that are hallmarks of American foreign policy in the 9/11 decade mean that everyone out there is a native. It is a an archaic vision based on simplistic thinking that has taken root among the faction that now controls the Pentagon. Mr. Obama has neither the conviction nor the character to override them. He is further handicapped by having surrounded himself with the weakest national security team in living memory, with Obama his own self-appointed NSA.

Hello empire; goodbye a second term?