Eye On The Ball

Today I am shedding some "lyte" on focus.  After 9/11, the Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan.  I totally supported this idea.  I also thought we should sit down with the Saudis and ask why 17 of the 19 hijackers came from their country, but that never happened since they are our oil suppliers.  Kind of like a junkie lecturing their pushers.

Then we invaded Iraq.  I never got this.  Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.  Saddam was a paper tiger.  Every justification that the Bush administration trotted out just insulted my intelligence.  WMDs, the central front in the war on terror.  No, I thought we wanted to control a major source of oil and picked Iraq as the easiest country to knock off.  Boy, were we wrong.

While we were busy in Iraq, the Taliban quietly took over Pakistan.  Moving across Afghanistan's porous border and taking advantage of the Pakistanis obsession with India, the Taliban has infiltrated and possessed the Swat valley.  Now they are within shouting distance of Islamabad and all those nukes.

Thanks George, Dick, and Donald.  While you guys played "Let's Make A Democracy" in Iraq, Al Queda slowly and patiently moved towards getting their hands on some nuclear weaponry.  Now it seems that Pakistan has woken up to the fact that India isn't their most pressing problem.  But their army isn't well-trained in counter-insurgency.  Doesn't this sound distressingly familiar?  

Where would we be if the previous administration had focussed on Afghanistan and Pakistan?  The real front on the war on terror.  Where the people who actually attacked us have been hiding.  Then we could say that they did keep us safe after 9/11.  

Instead, we are facing the unpleasant possibility of our avowed enemies possessing weapons of mass destruction.  For real this time.  I am confident that President Obama and his team will do everything they can to prevent this from happening.  But Pakistan needs to step up too and so far they have been reluctant.

At what point will Obama call for a time out?  He has been handed a plethora of problems created by former President Bush:  the economy, the environment, healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Pakistan.  The sheer level of incompetence and the consequences of that incompetence boggles my mind.  Obama is going to have to step up his game, big time.  Good thing he is a baller.  Or I couldn't sleep at night.