Saving US Mideast Policy
Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org) Source URL (retrieved on Jul 1, 2011): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/saving-us-policy-the-mideast-5556 Saving U.S. Mideast Policy | More [1] | July 1, 2011 Leon Hadar [2] You don't have to be a strategic analyst or a regional expert to figure out that U.S. policies in the Middle East and Central Asia—ranging from Afghanistan to Libya—are reaching a dead end. In Afghanistan, more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops, a huge contingency of special operations forces and a bevy of private companies have failed to crush the Taliban-led insurgency and bring political stability and economic growth to the country. Instead, Washington has subsidized an ineffective and corrupt government in Kabul while the U.S. military presence has eroded U.S.-Pakistan relations. The American public's patience for war is running thin. Disdain for the nation-building effort in Afghanistan was compounded by the military intervention in...