Is the U.S. military having second thoughts about a Kandahar offensive?
I think what we’ve had is a better appreciation for how hard it’s going to be, a better understanding of the real capability gap in the Afghan security forces. And I think we’re also bumping strong, hard against Afghan governance problems that are harder to unravel than we thought they were going to be. I’m frankly flummoxed by President Karzai. I don’t know what to do about him. His actions are increasingly erratic, and I would argue that … his commitment to the anti-corruption efforts that the United States is correctly focusing on is very much in question. Islamist extremism is growing all over the region – Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia. We can’t invade them all. Is there a better way to do it without antagonizing locals? There is, and we are. Yemen is a good example of this. We just put a request in for an additional slightly more than $1 billion in order to increase the capability and capacity of Yemeni security forces. Yemen is the right model to use about what the future of conflic
