Rethink Afghanistan

Editor,

As has been reported on many occasions in the NYT, the Pakistani military are sympathetic to the Taliban and were instrumental in their rise to power in Afghanistan.

Why then are the Pakistani military, who shoot at empty buildings to make it look like they are fighting insurgents and who surrender instead of fighting with their Taliban brothers, the linchpin in the American war against the Taliban, a war which on its face is misguided in the first place?

Invading Afghanistan after 9/11 was exactly the wrong response, a wholly inappropriate emulation of a Texan cowboy movie. And trying to impose a strong central government on a tribally oriented society, in which authority has traditionally -- and effectively -- been distributed, serves Western ambitions at the expense of Western interests.

It is time to revisit the explicit reasons bin Laden himself has voiced for having attacked the United States and formulate an intelligent response driven not by macho posturing or paranoid fantasies whose real purpose is to drive the American republic ever closer to the abyss of 21st Century fascism and a police state.

re: "‘Running Out of Time’" (9/22/2008)