The Answer Is Yes

The headline over an opinion piece in The New York Times asks a good question: “Is America Abandoning Afghanistan?” Several thousand U.S. soldiers are in Afghanistan but the country is slipping into chaos and needs more security assistance than it is likely to receive. The New Republic comes to a similar conclusion in a piece about Pakistan, criticizing the Bush Administration for failing to provide the free-trade benefits that Pakistan deserves, such as the lifting of quotas on textile imports. It’s not a moral issue of helping countries in need; if Pakistan becomes more destitute, and if Afghanistan returns to pre-Taliban anarchy, America’s next nightmare in Central Asia will have begun.

Author: Peter Maass

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. In 1983, after graduating from the University of California at Berkeley, I went to Brussels as a copy editor for The Wall Street Journal/Europe. I left the Journal in 1985 to write for The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, covering NATO and the European Union. In 1987 I moved to Seoul, South Korea, where I wrote primarily for The Washington Post. After three years in Asia I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans. I spent most of 1992 and 1993 covering the war in Bosnia for the Post. View all posts by Peter Maass