Joe Klein writes that he disagrees with both opinion pieces in the Times today (one by Boot and the Kagans and the other by Leslie Gelb). Klein criticizes Boot et al for focusing too heavily on Afghanistan -- the place where U.S troops are fighting and dying. He criticizes Gelb for imposing a 3-year timeline for withdrawal on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which Klein says is based on "little more than whim, so far as I can tell." He should know -- he backed the same strategy in Iraq when U.S. troops were engaged in a fierce fight there.
What is the Klein Doctrine? So far as we can tell, it involves devoting massive attention and resources to anywhere but the central battlefield in the war on terror. When U.S. troops were heavily engaged in Iraq, Klein wanted to get out and focus on Afghanistan. Now that we're sending more troops to Afghanistan, he says that won't fix anything there unless we start focusing on Pakistan -- a problem for which there are no obvious solutions, let alone complicated solutions. Why can't we just kill the terrorists where we are already engaged in fighting them? Would that be too thuggish?
As Donnelly and others point out in the latest issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:
The administration cannot afford to shape its policy toward Pakistan based simply upon the effects it hopes to achieve in Afghanistan; it must instead tackle Pakistan qua Pakistan, even as it pursues a comprehensive strategy for its neighbor. "AfPak" thinking will be wrongheaded about both countries.
