President Obama met with the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan Wednesday, said Matthew Yglesias in Think Progress, and it seems “upside down,” even “perverse,” that Obama had to try to convince Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari of the dangers posed by Taliban in his country. The Taliban is waging a deadly war to overthrow Zardari’s government—shouldn’t he be asking us for help?
What’s perverse, said Steve Chapman in the Chicago Tribune, is the U.S. government’s “questionable assumption” that it knows “better than a democratically elected Islamabad government how to ensure its survival.” Pakistan’s army, with some justification, sees the Taliban as a “manageable nuisance,” rather than a harbinger of “Armageddon.”
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