May 3, 2012--It's Pakistan Stupid

The debate about President Obama's commitment to keep American forces in Afghanistan for at least the next 12 years is missing the essential point.

Obama couldn't say it explicitly Tuesday evening in his speech to the nation, but the real reason we are there is not to prop up the corrupt Karzai government, wipe out the heroin poppy crop, or even to keep the Taliban from putting women back in berkas and removing girls from school--it is because of where Afghanistan is . . . geographically: right next door to Pakistan.

We need to remain in the neighborhood so that we have access to al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Waziristan and require bases in Afghanistan to launch drone attacks across the border.

Further, Pakistan is, for other reasons, the most dangerous place in the world.

We worry about the possibility of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons in a year or two or three; but Pakistan already has 90 to 110 nukes and the systems needed to deliver them.

Even more worrisome is the possibility--not at all a remote one--that Islamic militants will overthrow the Pakistan government and thereby, in an instant, have all the atomic weapons they need to thoroughly terrorize the West.

I hate it but that is the new reality and why we need to maintain a large presence in Afghanistan, including well into the future.  After all, more than 65 years after the end of WW II, we still have 54,000 troops in Germany and 28,500 in Japan; and, since the 1950s, at least 29,000 in South Korea.

So add Afghanistan to that realpolitik list.