Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Rory Stewart: The 'Impossible' Afghan Mission

Rory Stewart appeared on "On Point" with Tom Ashbrook for a reality check on Afghanistan's election eve. Asked whether Pakistan and Afghanistan should be treated as one problem, as the administration asserts, he dismissed the notion with a colorful analogy:

"It's like you're going into a room with an angry cat a big tiger. And the angry cat is Afghanistan and the big tiger is Pakistan. Pakistan has nuclear bombs. Pakistan has Bin Laden. Pakistan can destabilize India. And you're in that room and you're whacking the cat. And somebody says to you, 'Why are you whacking the cat?' And you say, "Oh, it's a cat-tiger strategy - it's an Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy.' Really the reason we're whacking the cat is we don't know what to do about the tiger."

You can list to the full audio interview with Rory Stewart here. The interview with Rory begins at 5:45 point.

1 comment:

mebz72 said...

I've heard him give that analogy before, and I find it spot-on. I think it's clear that we have no idea what to do about Pakistan.